California Multilingual Education Act of 2016

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Table of Contents

Equity
Effectiveness
Efficiency
Political Feasibility
Policy Alternatives
Conclusions and Recommendations
References

California Multilingual Education Act of 2016 (CMEA 2016) also known as Proposition 58 came to replace Proposition 227 that required all teachers in California to attend to English-learning student’s needs in order to provide the latter with a high-quality education only in the English language and no other. The new Proposition allows teachers to run bilingual classes for English learners if the community and schoolteacher board claim it necessary. The prevalence of the problem is high due to a large amount of those to whom English is not a native language. According to the California Department of Education (2017), there are currently 1.3 million of English learners in the state and 83% of them are Spanish natives. Given the high numerical strength of the target population and the controversy about the Proposition 227 represented by legal cases centered on the policy, there is a necessity for studying the Proposition 58, which was issued to fill the gaps created by its predecessor.

Equity

Proposition 58 seems to have restored equity that was undone by Proposition 227. Presently, it enables communities to choose their preferred model of learning English instead of making every schoolchild study in all-English classes. There is a certain controversy about this fact. Proposition 227, in fact, allowed certain individuals to apply for dual language immersion provided they signed a waiver. It seemingly allowed everyone to have same rights on either of the programs and chose the education they wanted for their children. However, practically, such rights were rarely exercised and the schools where children were presented with an opportunity to learn English in their native language were scarce.

Above that, most of the bilingual education programs were closed. In addition, there were legal cases where a group of parents and students advocated for the fact that the Proposition 227 violated Equal Educational Opportunity Act. The latter guaranteed each and every student equal learning possibilities, which a requirement to undergo a one-year English-only training class apparently disregarded. The case was also lost due to the insufficiency of the arguments. Similar cases were initiated claiming the violation of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, but the claim was also rejected by Court due to no evidence of discriminative intent (Taylor & Udang, 2016). CMEA 2016 has simplified the rules for parents or communities in need of bilingual education for their children. Therefore, it has restored the factual equity of people instead of theoretical one.

Another issue of equity concerns teachers who had troubles with the previously adopted proposition. The question revolved around teachers being not able to differentiate between actions that are qualified as a violation of the proposition that guaranteed the provision of proper English instruction and those that did not (Taylor & Udang, 2016). In district court case California Teachers Association v. Davis the teachers argued that the Proposition has an insufficient capacity to strictly define the cases when the teacher is liable for improper English instruction. It was a parent’s decision to sue the teacher for behaviors that to their knowledge or assumption is not qualified for teaching English according to the proposition’s mandates. The teachers lost this case, and all their arguments to the vagueness of the law were overruled. Due to the abundance of such cases, a new proposition was proposed. Proposition 58 was designed to amend these inconsistencies now allowing to provide bilingual teaching services when it is deemed necessary by the authoritative parental, community or school unions. Therefore, the equity of teachers was also restored due to the fact that they were equally protected by the law as the other participants of this process such as schoolchildren, parents, and school officials.

Despite having amended the legal inconsistencies of the previous law, CMEA 2016 possesses some flaws that may disrupt the equity of certain groups of population. For instance, parents opting for their children to enroll in bilingual program retain only the nominal right to do so. The current mechanism of applying for the program leaves it to the school to decide, if such program is available and necessary, which produces a possibility of rejection of bilingual program establishment (Taylor & Udang, 2016). Consequently, the equity of parents to finally have a bilingual English teaching program for their children may be compromised. This situation, however, is possible only for the schools that do not possess the means or resources to adequately device and implement such program should the need for it arise among the population. Otherwise, there seem to be no foreseeable barriers to providing bilingual education.

Effectiveness

The effectiveness of bilingual programs was tested by a number of researchers and overall showed better results. For instance, the research conducted by Umansky and Reardon (2014) based on the 12-year data from over 50,000 school students from California found that Latina students enrolled into dual immersion have greater reclassification rates than those with English-only classes in the long run. New evidence suggests that switching from one language to another in the process of learning enables students to develop new neuro-patterns that allow for swift and effective acquisition of not only of language skills but a whole range of other competencies such as focusing, planning, ignoring distractions and other (Yong, 2016).

Proponents of the benefits of bilingual education programs also suggest that professionals that are fluent in two or more languages are, in fact, more valuable as specialists in any line of duty due to the better trained executive function of their brain (Anderson, 2015). In the realities of global economy, opting for bilingual education on the state level seems like a profitable decision that allows Americans to stay competitive in a job market. Training, politicians, diplomats, and other specialists that may utilize the knowledge of two or more languages (especially if they are both spoken fluently) is an opportunity to gain financial benefit for the economy of the country as a whole (De La Torre, 2014).

In addition, it also produces a good opportunity to tackle the persisting problem of understaffing in schools when it comes to bilingual professionals. Finally, the California labor market analysis demonstrates a pronounced need for specialists that speak more than one language, which makes language-learning policies a today’s agenda. The academic research report produced by Rumbaut (2014) shows that multilinguals earn several thousand dollars more than those who speak only one language. Proposition 58 lets people of diverse communities to whom English is a non-native preserve their mother tongue and learn a second language to become an effective labor force that seeks prosperity and enables themselves to pursue their dreams.

Another argument in favor of the effectiveness of the policy that advocates for multilanguage education opportunities concerns the sphere of control and authority. Under CMEA 2016, local school boards are now eligible to find and develop education policies of their own, taking such authority from the state government. Such measure will allow educational institutions to ban the irresponsible and counterproductive decisions made by officials who occasionally misrepresent the needs of communities due to the lack of adequate knowledge (Taylor & Udang, 2016).

All things considered, the new Proposition seems to be better suited to address the needs of schools in California given its diverse communities and their English language learning needs. By providing legal means to establish a new English-learning system of education, it nurtures the process of raising bilingual professionals that will be competitive and bring financial benefit to the country by operating on its soil. It will also place the authority of creating and managing such programs into the hands of school boards, which will also increase the level of effectiveness due to the adequate decision-making system. The effectiveness might be undermined by the fact that schools may overrule the desire of communities to establish dual language immersion due to their lack of resources.

Efficiency

The key point that advocates for the new Proposition’s efficiency is that the new laws allow most of the steps from planning to implementation to happen without having to rely on higher authorities. It simplifies the whole process and makes it less dependent on the administrative resource. In addition, the efficiency is boosted by the new funding system that was enacted by the Budget Act of 2014. It allows to provide low-income students and pupils having performance troubles with proper funding to address their needs and makes the process of such funding more transparent.

Having invested in the education of such groups of people, the government seizes the opportunity to reduce the use of resources later by decreasing the change of those students becoming ineffective and dependent on poverty relief programs. Instead, the policy prepares the ground for tackling the problem of low-income families that are driven below the poverty line due to the lack of education and skills needed for a higher-paying job. Such economic advantage makes the policy more efficient in juxtaposition to the Proposition 227 that majorly undermined the formation of the effective bilingual labor force and overcomplicated the process of creating conditions for such.

Political Feasibility

Political feasibility is drawn from the fact that the Proposition 58 is mostly non-binding and advisory in nature (Dreifus, 2016). Essentially, the document establishes the ‘theoretical framework’ for the educational institutions and communities in California to establish the bilingual English learning classes should the need for them arise. It relieves the higher authorities from overcontrolling the local processes and unburdens the former from the excessive duties (Taylor, 2015). The political climate for decentralizing and simplifying implementation of various initiatives provides a solid ground for accomplishing such change. Letting the community decide on the questions of their English learning strategies seems to be widely supported by the California population. To that speaks the fact that the voting on the Proposition 58 revealed a 73.5% approval rate. The support for integration of poorly represented language minorities in the country is increasing annually, and the sheer adoption of such Proposition is the live example of such support (Rumbaut, 2014).

Nevertheless, there are some opponents of such policy, which drops a shade on the political feasibility of the initiative. They claim that English-only immersion has a greater impact and contributes to a faster assimilation of the non-English-speaking communities. The counter arguments also include the advisory character, which cannot dramatically change the situation with the availability of dual immersion. In addition, the unaddressed shortage of bilingual teachers could hinder the capacity of the Proposition to invoke change in the sphere of school education for non-native English speakers (Podolsky & Sutcher, 2016). The analysis of 211 school districts in California revealed a 75% rate of reporting understaffing in schools (Podolsky & Sutcher, 2016). Most of the responders located the problem in the area of special education, which directly relates to the feasibility of Proposition 58. It basically creates the solid ground for school officials to turn down the proposals of communities to create bilingual language learning programs because there is no personnel qualified personnel up for the task.

Additionally, the opponents argue that the design of the Proposition 58 that entails making a decision by the majority of votes produces the possibility of local legislative organs to decline almost any initiative. A majority of votes negates the possibility of a minority to represent themselves properly as compared to the current political practice of “two thirds” that is adopted across the US. On the other hand, should the changes take effect, legislators would face another challenge of overly broad and massive changes that can become hard to manage (Taylor & Udang, 2016).

Policy Alternatives

The alternative for the policy in question is the Proposition 227. It represents the opposite direction of reforms and advocates for single language immersion. The difference being that a pronounced term of study is planned for the English language class. According to the initiative design, the English-only class is mandatory only for one year, after which a student may enroll into the ordinary class where they are free to use their own language. The arguments for this alternative include the better results that an all-around English environment helps develop language proficiency faster. Consequently, it contributes to saving resources for further specific language-learning classes and allows to allocate the schools’ resources elsewhere to address other learning needs (Taylor & Udang, 2016).

Conclusions and Recommendations

In the equity domain, the new policy equally enables parents, students, and teachers to exercise their rights. Parents are now eligible to draw school boards’ attention to their children learning needs while students may have the opportunity to receive a better-suited education. Teachers are now less prone to misconduct as their duties have been thoroughly established. The effectiveness of the policy is expected as the chosen direction for development is claimed to be the best in realities of the globalized economy and today’s job market in California. Efficiency is assured by the implicit orientation towards localization of the issues, which saves the administrative resource. Political feasibility is ensured due to the overwhelming support for the initiative and current labor market trends in California and the US. The policy alternatives include returning to the previously used Proposition 227 that gained certain support due to faster rates of acculturation.

As for the recommendations, the problems of funding and staffing need to be properly addressed as they reach beyond local level and cannot be resolved by the local schools themselves, which undermines the effectiveness of the initiative. Wider policies that tackle bilingual teacher availability in California need to be effected in order to the Proposition 56 to take yield sizable profit for the US economy as it now claims.

References

Anderson, M. (2015). The economic imperative of bilingual education. The Atlantic. Web.

California Department of Education. (2017). Facts about English learners in California. Web.

De La Torre, X. (2014). Educating for global competence: The value of multilingualism. Web.

Dreifus, C. (2016). The bilingual advantage. The New York Times. Web.

Podolsky, A., & Sutcher, L. (2016). California teacher shortages: A persistent problem. Web.

Rumbaut, R. G. (2014). English plus: Exploring the socioeconomic benefits of bilingualism in southern California. The bilingual advantage: Language, literacy, and the US labor market. Web.

Taylor, M. (2015). Review of school districts’ 2014-15 local control and accountability plans. Web.

Taylor, J., & Udang, L. (2016). Proposition 58: English proficiency. Multilingual Education. California education for a global economy initiative. California Initiative Review (CIR), 2016(9), 1-24.

Umansky, I. M., & Reardon, S. F. (2014). Reclassification patterns among Latino English learner students in bilingual, dual immersion, and English immersion classrooms. American Educational Research Journal, 51(5), 879-912.

Yong, E. (2016). The bitter fight over the benefits of bilingualism. The Atlantic. Web.

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