WMNS 1103 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Bilingual Education

• School: Northeastern University
• Department: Women's/Gender/Sexualty Stdies
• Course: WMNS 1103
• Professor: Moya Bailey

Document Summary

A new civil rights agenda for american education. Lau v nichols, 1974: held that offering language-minority children only instruction in a language they could not understand violated the civil rights act. The law, however, created severe obstacles for future immigrants, and policy turned negative afterward. Bilingual education was under attack, state laws were abandoned, and the federal government"s civil rights officials accepted changes, such as the california initiative proposition 227, that prohibited most bilingual education. 1/5th of students in public education come from homes speaking another language, which causes significant educational problems and unequal schooling. With many states using high-stakes tests that ignore the language issue, there are civil rights problems since students and teachers are sanctioned on the basis of tests that can seriously underestimate what a student actually knows about a subject. Horne v. flores case (2009), we see the divided supreme court approving arizona"s segregated.