In 2016, California voters overturned a 1998 law that curtailed bilingual instruction in the state’s public schools. 

When it comes to the education of English learners (ELs), the state of California — whose 1.3 million ELs make up 25% of the total enrollment of ELs in U.S. public schools (Snyder, de Brey & Dillow, 2019) — has had a particularly eventful history. For example, it was a lawsuit against the San Francisco, California, school system that led to the seminal Supreme Court case Lau v. Nichols (1974), in which the Court found that the district’s Chinese-speaking students were being denied English language instruction in violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This case set the stage for policy changes at the federal level through the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (1974), which mandated that states and districts take concrete steps, including the provision of bilingual education programs to help ELs overcome any language barriers that stood in the way of full and equal participation in school (Wiese & Garcia, 1998). 

California again became a focal point of debates about EL education in 1997, thanks to the high-profile “English for the Children” campaign against bilingual education. According to the campaign’s founder, Silicon Valley multimillionaire Ron Unz, bilingual programs harm the children they purport to serve by denying them the effective English language instruction they need to be successful. Others, however, viewed the campaign as a bigoted and fear-based response to the state’s changing demographics. As researcher and advocate Laurie Olsen wrote in her 2009 case study of the fight for bilingual education, “The initiative . . . fed on a sense of unease that immigrants, particularly Latino immigrants, were not assimilating quickly or thoroughly enough” (p. 830).  

The campaign led to Proposition 227, a 1998 ballot initiative asking voters to eliminate bilingual instruction in favor of English-only approaches. Specifically, ELs were to be immersed in English for one year to help them attain proficiency in the language. California voters approved the measure by a wide margin (61% for and 39% against), and over the following decade the state’s bilingual programs and its efforts to prepare bilingually certified teachers declined sharply.  

However, Proposition 227 didn’t have the effects its supporters had promised. For example, a large-scale five-year study found that the English-only approach did little to increase EL student achievement across the state (Parrish et al., 2006). Opposition to the law began to mount, and in 2014, state Rep. Ricardo Lara introduced a bill (SB 1174) that would eliminate the English-only requirement and allow families to enroll their children in the language acquisition program of their choice, including dual language immersion and other bilingual programs. The bill was framed as a tool to help all students become multilingual and emphasized the potential economic benefits that a multilingual workforce would bring to the state. In 2016, an overwhelming majority of voters (73.3%) approved Proposition 58, in support of the measure (Hopkinson, 2017a). 

Today, school districts across California are using their new flexibility to develop and implement dual language immersion programs that provide instruction in English and a partner language such as Arabic or Spanish. Further, the state launched a competitive grant program in 2018 to help incentivize districts to start offering bilingual programs, including programs at state-funded preschools.  

Twenty years of English-only instruction led to steep declines in the number of experienced bilingual teachers in the state

However, to create, implement, and scale up these programs, educators will have to overcome the challenges left behind by Proposition 227. Perhaps most important, 20 years of English-only instruction led to steep declines in the number of experienced bilingual teachers in the state (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017), which means districts now face intense competition for teachers with the necessary knowledge and skills. Further, California’s EL population has become much more diverse, creating a demand for programs, teachers, and resources that can serve students from many different language backgrounds. (In the 2018-19 school year, 81% of the state’s ELs spoke Spanish; however, the remaining 19% represented more than 60 different languages, with sizable numbers speaking Vietnamese, Mandarin, Filipino, Arabic, and Cantonese.) At the same time, because dual language instruction has grown increasingly popular with English-dominant families, many districts are coming under pressure to steer scarce resources toward those students, which could limit ELs’ access to these programs (or to the most experienced teachers).  

Given these challenges — and given how much has been learned about language instruction since the last time California invested in bilingual education, more than 20 years ago — what sorts of programs should school districts strive to create, and what will communities need to do to take advantage of the state’s reinvestment in bilingual education?  

Leading the way: Westminster School District 

For one promising example — which highlights the critical role local community members can play in advocating for ELs — consider Westminster School District, which designed and implemented California’s first Vietnamese dual language immersion program.  

Westminster City lies in the northwest part of Orange County, which has a reputation for affluence, conservatism, and a healthy tourism industry. However, according to Renae Bryant, former executive director of the Office of Language Acquisition in Westminster School District, the city stands out from the rest of the county: “80% of our students are eligible for free and reduced-price lunch. People don’t think of those demographics when they think of Orange County” (personal communication, April 25, 2017). The city is also home to an important legacy, the landmark state court ruling in Mendez vs. Westminster (1946), which prohibited the segregation of Mexican-American children in California’s schools and helped set the groundwork for Brown v. Board of Education (Donato & Hanson, 2019; Valencia, 2005; Wollenberg, 1974). Today, 40% of Westminster City’s students are ELs, and the majority of students are Latinx or Asian. 

In the 70 years since Mendez v. Westminster, English language instruction has continued to be hotly contested in the school district, which has shifted back and forth a number of times between English immersion and bilingual instruction. In the early 1990s, for example, the district offered primary language instruction classes (PLIC), which provided ELs with core instruction in their primary languages, and primary language assistance classes (PLAC), which delivered core instruction in English while students received assistance in their home languages from a paraprofessional. However, these efforts came to an abrupt halt in 1996, when the school board voted to become an “English-only” district, shortly before the passage of Proposition 227 (Bailey, 1996). 

That changed again in 2015, when DeMille Elementary School (located in an area known as Little Saigon) launched a Vietnamese dual language immersion program with two kindergarten classes (Chan, 2015). Then, in 2016, the district launched a Spanish dual language immersion program at Willmore Elementary School for students in preschool and kindergarten. Both schools use a 50/50 model, in which instruction is split evenly between English and the partner language. Importantly, these programs, which aim to help students become bilingual and biliterate, represent a marked shift from the district’s bilingual programs in the 1990s, which sought to quickly transition students into English-only settings and promote English language proficiency only. (Westminster was the first school district in California to start a dual language immersion program. Today, there are programs in three other districts in the state.) 

Research strongly suggests that well-implemented dual language immersion programs are effective.

The district implemented these programs in response to the growing research base suggesting that dual language immersion is one of the most effective instructional approaches for promoting ELs’ linguistic and academic development. As Takanishi and Le Menestrel (2017) note, a wide range of studies have found that “ELs who develop high levels of proficiency in both [their first language] and English relative to those with low levels of bilingual proficiency are more successful at closing the achievement gap in reading with their native English-speaking peers” (p. 229). Emerging evidence strongly suggests that over the long term, ELs enrolled in dual language immersion programs have higher levels of achievement (Alvear, 2019; Steele et al., 2017; Valentino & Reardon, 2015) and rates of reclassification (Umansky & Reardon, 2014) than ELs enrolled in other types of instructional programs.  

In addition to their academic benefits, bilingualism and biliteracy also have great value in and of themselves, argue district leaders. “Our entire district supports dual language immersion because we know it’s a critical component for preparing our students for the 21st-century economy and will give them a competitive advantage whether they are going into college or careers,” said superintendent Cyndi Paik (personal communication, April 25, 2017). 

Leveraging partnerships  

On a typical morning in Huong Dang’s kindergarten classroom, a group of 15 students sits on the rug in front of an interactive whiteboard as she leads them through a Vietnamese language arts lesson about the Trung sisters, who are national heroes for leading a rebellion against Chinese rule in A.D. 40. The sisters are shown wielding swords while riding on their elephants, an image that has been immortalized in statues and processions and that Dang now uses to teach her students vocabulary and engage them in a discussion.  

Vietnamese materials are hard to come by, so Dang adapted material from a textbook and pulled pictures from the internet during her daily planning time. She worked with one of her classroom parents, Annie Phan, to translate the history book into language that kindergartners could comprehend. Another parent, Nancy Pham (personal communication, April 24, 2017), explained the difficulty of translating materials into Vietnamese: “On the Vietnamese side, there’s no books, no translations of ‘The Cow Jumped Over the Moon.’ When you translate from English, it’s very difficult to read,” she said. “Some of the words that are translated are very hard; even I don’t understand them.” 

Making it even more challenging, many members of the local community oppose using anything produced under Vietnam’s Communist government (Haire, 2015). Explained Vincent Thieu Vo, who runs the Westminster Vietnamese Language and Culture School and has played an active role in developing the bilingual program, “[In Vietnam], there is a tendency to do propaganda — even rewrite history. We don’t like that. We don’t want that. We want to teach the students the real history of what happened” (personal communication, April 25, 2017).  

In light of these concerns, the district formed a textbook vetting committee to help select culturally and linguistically appropriate materials. Further, district leaders recruited Vo to be on the Dual Language Immersion Task Force (made up of parents, community members, teachers, school staff, administrators, and experts in dual language immersion programs from the Orange County Office of Education), which was charged with reviewing the research on dual language instruction, helping design the program, promoting it to the local community, identifying resources for families, and sharing progress. 

Renae Bryant, who led the planning process, also relied on community partners to help promote the Vietnamese program. For example, the Vietnamese-language television station, Saigon Entertainment Television, provided opportunities to discuss the program on its shows. The Vietnamese American Chamber of Commerce disseminated flyers to stakeholders, as did the local Vietnamese culture and language schools. DeMille parent Nancy Phan started keeping a stack of brochures in her car to give to people in the community. 

According to Natalie Tran, director of the National Resource Center for Asian Languages (NRCAL) at California State University, Fullerton, “Community engagement is key to dual language immersion. There are a lot of resources in the community such as heritage language schools that have been around for decades. The challenge is to draw on these resources and align them to mainstream education” (personal communication, April 24, 2017). NRCAL, which is funded by a U.S. Department of Education grant and is one of seven language resource centers across the country, is an important district partner, working to develop resources and materials, provide teacher professional development, and support dual language immersion programs for less commonly taught languages such as Chinese, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese. 

The need for cultural sensitivity tied to language is particularly true for Vietnamese programs, given the tensions around using resources published in Vietnam, as well as tensions over vocabulary. Tran notes that since the end of the war in Vietnam, the language has split into two streams, “Pre-1975” Vietnamese (spoken by the majority of those living in Westminster) and “Post-1975” Vietnamese (spoken in Vietnam) — the latter uses certain words that evoke strongly negative emotions in the former. Tran played a key role in communicating these challenges to Bryant and other district leaders and was an essential partner in forming connections between the district and Vietnamese community organizations.  

In addition to working with partners in Southern California, the district has forged relationships with organizations and school districts farther afield, including Highline Public Schools in Burien, Washington, which launched a Vietnamese dual language immersion program a year before Westminster. NRCAL, too, has helped districts share resources, and it plans to publish an implementation guide to help those who are starting new programs. 

Since its implementation, Westminster’s program has seen demand grow quickly. By fall 2017, the program’s third year, DeMille was already running three Vietnamese dual language immersion kindergarten classrooms, serving more than 150 K-2 students. For Vietnamese parents, the program has been a “dream come true” and will provide their children a chance to surpass them in terms of their proficiency in the language. “It’s scary to be a pioneer, but I’m glad we took that leap of faith,” said Nancy Phan (personal communication, April 25, 2017).   

But demand is not coming from just Vietnamese families. Parent Lourdes Maria Pavia, whose son is already fluent in Spanish and English, said participating in the program makes sense given the demographics of Westminster and will provide her son with a rare opportunity to become trilingual. “Speaking three languages will give him an advantage,” she said (personal communication, April 25, 2017).  

Scaling up  

Since 2017, an additional three districts in California have launched Vietnamese dual language immersion programs at the elementary and high school levels, no doubt drawing on some of the lessons learned by Westminster. Others are in the planning stages. 

However, while Westminster has provided a successful model for creating high-quality dual language programs — with careful attention to building local partnerships — there is no guarantee that other districts will have the time and commitment to replicate their process. While research strongly suggests that well-implemented dual language immersion programs are effective, with ELs achieving far better outcomes than they get in English-only classrooms, it is never simple or straightforward to scale up successful educational models.  

As Olsen (2009) notes, the English-only movement of the 1990s was bolstered by the perception that bilingual programs were ineffective and had not improved outcomes for ELs: “Poorly implemented bilingual programs were resulting in poor educational outcomes for English learners in too many places — enough to evoke public skepticism about the model” (p. 834). That history should serve as a cautionary tale for supporters of today’s bilingual programs. To avoid the sort of backlash that met bilingual education a generation ago, school districts will need to be much more careful to ensure successful planning and implementation (Alanís & Rodríguez, 2008; Lindholm-Leary, 2001).  

Districts should also carefully monitor enrollments in dual language programs to make sure ELs have access to the services they need and are not displaced by English-dominant students. Under California law, if the parents of 30 or more students in a school (or 20 or more students in a single grade) request a language acquisition program, such as dual language immersion, the school must offer one, to the extent possible. This provision gives no priority to creating programs for ELs in particular, which means that schools can provide such programs strictly as enrichment for English-speaking students. In theory, that’s worthwhile, but given the state’s severe shortage of bilingual teachers, it could divert scarce resources from ELs who desperately need them.  

California districts face an urgent need to recruit and retain bilingual teachers. In 2017, the state took one positive step by providing $5 million in grant funding to school districts, charter schools, and county offices of education to provide professional development for teachers who have a bilingual authorization but have not been teaching in bilingual settings and for bilingual instructional assistants who are interested in becoming teachers (Hopkinson, 2017b). School districts would also be wise to seek partnerships with local higher education institutions. For example, Chula Vista Elementary School District partners with San Diego State University (SDSU) to staff its dual language immersion programs. As the district’s superintendent Francisco Escobedo noted:  

Unless you pressure your universities, you’re going to have that challenge year after year finding the right teachers. My suggestion for districts who are really serious in sustaining and growing [DLI programs] is you have to influence your higher ed institutions. For us that’s been SDSU. Ninety percent of teachers in our DL programs come from SDSU. That is an extremely important approach for effective [program] implementation. (Garcia, 2017, p. 13) 

The number of bilingual credentials issued is slowly rising across the state, but still, only 35 of California’s educator preparation programs offer a bilingual authorization, and that number will likely need to grow significantly to meet demand (Carver-Thomas & Darling-Hammond, 2017). 

California has made great strides since the days of Proposition 227. Beyond the resurgence of bilingual education, the state also developed an EL Road Map that sets a common vision and mission for educating ELs, and it has updated its school funding formula to include additional funding for ELs. It remains to be seen, though, how these initiatives will affect student outcomes and to what extent they will influence policies and practices in other states.  

References 

Alanís, I. & Rodríguez, M.A. (2008). Sustaining a dual language immersion program: Features of success. Journal of Latinos and Education, 7, 305-319. 

Alvear, S.A. (2019). The additive advantage and bilingual programs in a large urban school district. American Educational Research Journal, 56, 477-513. 

Bailey, E. (1996, February). Countywide: State board oks English-only teaching in Westminster. Los Angeles Times.  

Carver-Thomas, D. & Darling-Hammond, L. (2017). Addressing California’s growing teacher shortage: 2017 update. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute. 

Chan, A. (2015, August). Little Saigon school to provide instruction in English and Vietnamese. Los Angeles Times.  

Donato, R. & Hanson, J. (2019). Mexican-American resistance to school segregation. Phi Delta Kappan, 100 (5), 39-42 

Garcia, A. (2017). Educating California’s English learners: Chula Vista’s expansion of dual language programs in an era of English-only policies. Washington, DC: New America. 

Haire, C. (2015, April). Westminster school district pulls Vietnamese textbook amid criticism that it’s pro-Communist. Orange County Register.  

Hopkinson, A. (2017a, January). A new era for bilingual education: explaining California’s Proposition 58. EdSource.  

Hopkinson, A. (2017b, July). New funds available to train bilingual teachers in California. EdSource.  

Lindholm-Leary, K.J. (2001). Dual language education. Avon, England: Multilingual Matters. 

Olsen, L. (2009). The role of advocacy in shaping immigrant education: A California case study. Teachers College Record, 111, 817-850 

Parrish, T.B., Merickel, A., Pérez, M., Linquanti, R., Socias, M., Spain, A., . . . Delancey, D. (2006). Effects of the implementation of Proposition 227 on the education of English learners: K-12 findings from a five-year evaluation. Washington, DC: American Institutes for Research.  

Snyder, T.D., de Brey, C., & Dillow, S.A. (2019). Table 204.20. English language learner (EL) students enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools, by state: Selected years, fall 2000 through fall 2015. Digest of education statistics 2017 (NCES 2018-070). Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics. 

Steele, J.L, Slater, R.O., Zamarro, G., Miller, T., Li, J., Burkhauser, S., & Bacon, M. (2017). Effects of dual-language immersion programs on student achievement: Evidence from lottery data. American Educational Research Journal, 54, 282S-306S. 

Takanishi, R. & LeMenestrel, S. (2017). Promoting the educational success of children and youth learning English: Promising futures. Washington, DC: National Academies Press.  

Umansky, I. & Reardon, S.F. (2014). Reclassification patterns among Latino English learner students in bilingual, dual language immersion, and English immersion classrooms. American Educational Research Journal, 51, 879-912.  

Valentino, R.A. & Reardon, S.F. (2015). Effectiveness of four instructional programs designed to serve English learners: Variation by ethnicity and initial English proficiency. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 37, 612-663. 

Valencia, R.R. (2005). The Mexican-American struggle for equal educational opportunity in Mendez v. Westminster: Helping to pave the way for Brown v. Board of Education. Teachers College Record, 107, 389-423. 

Wiese, A.M. & García, E.E. (1998). The Bilingual Education Act: Language minority students and equal educational opportunity. Bilingual Research Journal, 22, 1-18. 

Wollenberg, C. (1974). Mendez v. Westminster: Race, nationality and segregation in California schools. California Historical Quarterly, Winter, 317-332. 

Note: This article was adapted from Garcia, A. (2017). Educating California’s English learners: Westminster brings students’ home languages into the mainstream. Washington, DC: New America.