Education of limited English proficient students in California schools: An assessment of the influence of proposition 227 on selected teachers and classrooms

Bilingual Research Journal, Winter 2000 by Stritikus, Tom, Garcia, Eugene E

Abstract

This pilot study provides documentation on policy-and practicebased questions regarding the implementation of Proposition 227 in eight selected but representative districts. Focusing on teachers' reactions to Proposition 227, this study examines how teachers both shape and are affected by Proposition 227 implementation. Proposition 227 was intended to place a premium on English language development in a highly uniform and prescriptive manner throughout the state. Our initial study reveals that the nature of Proposition 227 implementation has a great deal to do with teacher ideology.

When 227 passed, I felt anger. I was really pissed off. I mean they keep attacking education, so in that respect teaching was difficult. But in other ways, I felt more charged and more committed to do bilingual education. They are not going to stop me from doing what I need to do. (fifth grade teacher from district 6)

I am really glad the proposition passed. Because the longer we kept the students in Spanish, the more we kept them back. (third grade teacher from district 5)

In their examination of the success and failure of a century and a half of American school reform attempts, noted reform scholars and educational historians David Tyack and Larry Cuban (1995) claim that Americans "have translated their cultural anxieties and hopes into dramatic demands for educational reform" (p. 1). The passage of Proposition 227 represents the latest manifestation of public hope and anxiety, but-as scholarship on school reform has clearly indicated (Cuban, 1993; Rowan, 1990)-attempts to change educational institutions and educational practice do not always have their intended results. Reform attempts are complicated by the nature of schools as "buffered institutions" and the political and social climate in which the reform effort takes place (Tyack & Cuban, 1995). In addition to political and institutional factors which influence the nature of reform attempts, teachers play an important role in resisting, appropriating, and adapting elements of reform. The largely autonomous nature of the profession and a professional socialization process which has been described as "sink or swim" have been highlighted as reasons why reform attempts seldom are enacted as they are planned (Lortie, 1975; Rosenholtz, 1989).

However, as the opening interviews excerpts indicate, when it comes to teacher reactions to Proposition 227 all teachers are not created equal. For example, for the teacher in school district 6 who rebuked the voting public's recipe for change, Proposition 227 served to strengthen his commitment to bilingual education. For the teacher in school district 5, Proposition 227 allowed her to abandon primary language support for her students and adopt the English-only provisions. The dramatic difference in their responses to the passage and subsequent implementation of Proposition 227 raise two important questions: First, what perspective can be built to account for the extreme differences of these two and other teachers' reaction to Proposition 227?; second, once a perspective that accounts for these differences is built, what is its relevance in understanding the nature of Proposition 227 as a reform strategy? In answering both questions, we hope to draw lessons about the nature of Proposition 227 as a reform attempt and to build an understanding of its influence on classroom practice.

Theoretical Frame: Understanding Teachers' Role in Top-Down Reform

While district, state, and federal reform is nothing new to public schools, the idea of direct intervention from the electorate in the workings of public schools is a significant departure from past reform attempts. This research, which builds on open-ended interviews with 32 teachers in eight districts across California, argues that seeing Proposition 227 through the eyes of teachers offers a clear look at how Proposition 227 is behaving as reform and its long term impact on the education of language minority students. A generation of reform scholarship has grappled with the question of what types of reform work best. Although the field is not in complete unanimity, a picture has emerged which has questioned the potential success of top-down reform strategies-that is, reform attempts that come from with-out rather than with-in the institution of schools (Cuban, 1993; Tyack & Cuban, 1995; Rowan, 1990). These reforms, it has been argued, have met with limited success because they ignore important realities about the structure of schools as institutions. Because top-down reform stresses increased bureaucratic control and oversight, it has been less successful. Rowan (1990) has argued that reform based on control strategies is more likely to fail because it damages teacher commitment to overall school goals. Further, such control strategies ignore an important reality about the organization of schools and the teaching profession. Lortie (1975) convincingly argues that the cellular organization of teaching-the reality that teachers work in virtual isolation with little or no professional interaction or supervision-creates a situation of a highly individualistic and autonomous profession. To address these problems with reform, Rowan (1990) concludes that for reform strategies to work they must be based on plans which seek to build teacher commitment through collegiality rather than control. Collegiality and commitment, argues Rowan, move teachers away from a situation where they are merely dependant on their own resources to resolve educational issues they face.