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A sociological case study of bilingual education and its effects on the schools and the community

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A sociological case study of bilingual education and its effects on the schools and the community

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Content A SOCIOLOGICAL CASE STUDY OF BILINGUAL EDUCATION
AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE SCHOOLS AND THE COMMUNITY
by
Virginia Parker Collier
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Education)
July 1980
Copyright, Virginia Parker Collier, 19 80
UMI Number: DP24760
All rights reserved
INFORMATION TO ALL USERS
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In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
Dissertation Rubi sh*ng
UMI DP24760
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
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789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES. CALIFORNIA 90007
This dissertation, written by
......V i _r g; in. i a_ _ _P arker _ _ Co 11 i er
under the direction of hQ¥1.. . Dissertation Com -
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairman
kidue ,
Ph.T>.
h
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am deeply indebted to my advisor, Dr* Henry
%
Acland, for his constant support and wise criticism and for
his invaluable knowledge of educational sociology and the
process of change in schools. He continually brought
clarity and insight to the complexity of the topic we were
addressing. My profound gratitude goes to my other
committee members, Dr. Carlos Ovando and Dr. Eugene Briere,
for their constant encouragement and exchange of ideas in
wrestling with the issues in bilingual education.
Les doy las gracias a todos mis colegas del Programa
Bilingue de Washington, D.C., quienes generosamente han dado
de su tiempo y tambien me han permitido observar los .
multiples detalles de la vida diaria de .las escuelas y la
comunidad.
To all my support community of friends in
Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, without whom I never
would have made it, and a special deep thanks to my family
for their enduring patience and support throughout these
two years of research and writing.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ........................................ ii
LIST OF T A B L E S .......................... viii
Chapter
I. INTRODUCTION .................................... 1
II. REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE....................... 12
History of. Bilingual Education
in the United States.................... 13
Models of Bilingual Education ............. 19
Transitional ............................. 20
Maintenance . 22
Two-way enrichment ...................... 23
Immersion . ............................. 24
English as a Second Language ........... 25
An Overview of the Research on
/Bilingual Education . 26
Sociological and Anthropological Research
in Bilingual Education .................. 32
Literature on Educational Innovations
and the Change Process................. 42
Change Literature on Bilingual Education . 4 8
III. METHODOLOGY.................................... 57
Preparation Prior to Beginning Field
Work . . ............................... 59
Establishing a Role in the Setting
To Be Studied.......................... 6 0
Interviewing ............................... 62
Observation............... * 6 7
Data Collection............................. 67
iii
Page
Building Themes and Analysis 6 8
Conclusion................................. 72
IV. THE CASE STUDY: THE EARLY YEARS........... 73
The Inner City Context.................... 74
Hispanics in D.C.: 1965-1970 ............. 82
Teacher Training: 1970-1971 91
Emerging Black Leadership in D.C.
Public Schools: 1960-1970 ............. 98
Emerging Plans for Bilingual Education . . 102
Emergence of Bilingual Education in D.C.:
1971-1972 104
A Closer Look at Actual Implementation . . 114
Bilingual administration ............... ~“ IT6
Bilingual teachers ...................... 119
Students in bilingual classes ......... 122
Parents................................. 124
Emerging Themes ............................. 128
Community............................... 128
Change process within schools ......... 130
V. OPERATIONALIZATION OF THE BILINGUAL
PROGRAM: 1972-1974 ....................... 135
Bilingual Summer Institute ............... 136
Second Year of Bilingual Education
in D.C. : 1972-1973 140
Schools................................. 141
Bilingual Office ........................ 142
Bilingual Training: Summer 1973 150
Evolution of Secondary Bilingual
Services: 1973-1974 .................... 154
Secondary ESL classes . 156
Bilingual counselors .................... 158
Services for all international students. 159
iv
Page
Secondary Hispanic students ...... 160
Higher education campaign ............. 16 3
Parent involvement ............... . . . 163
Secondary staff cohesiveness ........... 165
Continuation of Elementary Bilingual
Education: 1973-1974 166
School B ................................. 166
School A ................................. 170
Growing Status of Bilingual Education
with Local School Officials ........... 173
Growth of Hispanic Community
Agencies: 1970-1974 .................... 177
SED Center . 178
PE I L A .................................... 179
New services for Hispanics............. 180
Analysis of the Change Process Within
Schools: 1971-1974 182
Local acceptance........................ 182
Unresolved tensions ; . . . . 184
VI. GROWING FEDERAL INFLUENCE: 1974-1976 . . . . 188
Fourth Year of Bilingual Education
in D.C. : 1974-1975 188
Federal funding ........................ 189
Relationship to Hispanic community
and parents.......................... 190
Resource Center ........................ 197
Elementary school programs: 1974-1975 . 198
Secondary: 1974-1975 202
Ethnicity of bilingual staff ........... 205
Chinese Component: 1975-1976 ............. 205
Chinese community................... . 206
Chinese school-community coordinator . . 2 08
Other Bilingual Services: 1975-1976 . . . 211
Analysis of the Change Process from
1974 to 1976: Federal Influence .... 217
Continuing Change: Incorporation of
the Bilingual Program .................. 221
v
Page
VII. THE PROCESS OF CHANGE WITHIN SCHOOLS
Continuing Maturation of the D.C.
Hispanic Community ...................... 22 3
Use of the Schools as a Vehicle for
Hispanic Community Development ........ 229
Chinese Community-School Relations .... 238
Bilingual Education as a Change Agent
Within Schools: The Tension Between
Innovation and Institutionalization . . 240
Early y e a r s ................. 241
Federal influence ...................... 242
Professional conferences ............. . 246
Continuing Tension of Innovation and
Institutionalization .................... 249
Bilingual special education services . . 251
Bilingual curriculum development .... 253
Within Schools ............................. 254
Transitional or partial bilingual
services............................. 255
Maintenance, two-way bilingual
education............................. 258
Administrators* Perceptions of Successes
of the Bilingual Program............... 261
A Last Word: The Lack of Closure......... 26 3
REFERENCES 265 ‘
APPENDIXES..................................... 285
A. Chronological Development of the Bilingual
Program: District of Columbia Public Schools,
Washington, D.C............................... . 285
B. Background, Philosophy, and Goals of the
Bilingual Program, Washington, D.C............ 289
C. D.C. Bilingual Program: Chinese Component . . 296
vi
Page
D. D.C. Bilingual Program: Direct Instructional
Services as of September, 1976 ............... 300
E. Language and Cultural Heritage Survey:
1978-1979, D.C. Bilingual Program ...... 302
vii
LIST OF TABLES
Page
TABLE 1 Countries of Birth: Spanish-speaking 162
Population, Elementary and Secondary
Schools involved in the Bilingual
Program
TABLE 2 Birthplaces of Students at School A, 171
January 31, 1974
TABLE 3 Activities of School-Community 193
Coordinators, September 1, 1974 to
April 1, 1975
viii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
The idea of bilingual/bicultural education was
first introduced to me when my daughter was invited to join
a bilingual class in second grade in 1971. Over the past
nine years, I have come to know some of the excitement,
growing pains, the possibilities and limits of bilingual
education in the public schools through experience as a
parent, teacher, and researcher in ,the field.
Bilingual education as it has developed in the
United States in the last two decades is highly political
and complicated to implement. As the most recent educa
tional strategy for students of limited English proficiency,
models of implementation have increased in complexity as
federal and state legislation and court orders have mandated
or encouraged some form of bilingual education. After
projects are begun, refunding decisions become highly poli
ticized as target constituency groups become advocates and
Throughout this study, the shortened term
"bilingual education" will be used to refer to bilingual/
bicultural education. Without going into detail on the
controversy surrounding the relationship between language
and culture, it is assumed in this study that culture is an
integral part of language and is expressed in many ways
through the vehicle of language. Therefore, the term
bilingual education implies that bicultural teaching is an
integral component of any instruction given in two
languages.
1
monolingual, assimilationist opposition groups form. Deep
seated questions are raised in debates in legislatures as to
whether it is the role of federal and state governments to
encourage a culturally pluralistic society or to follow the
pattern of the early twentieth century of assimilation
through immersion into the dominant mainstream.
Yet those committed to bilingual education claim
that it is worth the pains of implementation: it provides
an optimal environment for learning a second language, for
both students of limited English proficiency and English
speakers; it enhances self-concept for students of minority
status in the society; a two-way model including English
speakers provides for learning in an integrated, equal-
status setting; and bilingual education provides an avenue
for closer school-community relations. These affirmations
concerning the effects of bilingual education in the U.S.
are like articles of faith; they have a very small empirical
base. Researchers are just beginning to examine seriously
2
some of the most basic questions. In an emerging new field
with this type of complexity, holistic studies are useful in
shedding light on the nature of an innovation and providing
insight into research questions for future studies.
2
Bilingual education is "new" only for the United -
States in modern decades in the public schools. It has beer
in existence in countries all over the world for centuries.
Within the U.S., instruction in languages other than English
was used in public schools during the nineteenth century,
and there have always been bilingual schools within the
private sector (Fishman 1966, 1976).
2_
To date, a very limited number of studies have exam
ined the total context of a bilingual program. Most of the
studies available at this time are program evaluations.
Federal and state required evaluations tend to place empha
sis on measurement of short-term outcomes, such as student
achievement; yet research on bilingual education in other
countries has concluded that only longitudinal studies of at
least three to four years in a stable program demonstrate
the effectiveness of bilingual education. Equally serious
in the limits of current evaluation practices is the empha
sis on measurement of the effectiveness of the policy
makers’ goals, rather than examination of broader socio
cultural dimensions which look at the total context of the
school environment including its relationship to the commu
nity.
Therefore, the approach to this research is in the
form of a sociological case study of one particular school
innovation, the Bilingual Program of the Washington, D.C.
Public Schools. This study has been carried out to shed
light on the complexities of implementation of bilingual/
bicultural education and its effects on both the community
and the schools. The study was born out of the researcher’s
intimate knowledge of the Washington, D.C. Bilingual Program
as parent and teacher over a five-year period; it grew
through physical separation from the program with two years
of reading and reflection on that experience; and the
research culminated in 16 months of field work through
3
4
re-acquaintance with staff, parents and community members;
observation of school and community activities; data collec
tion from Bilingual Office and community files, the Census
Bureau, administrative offices of the D.C. Public Schools,
and the local media; and 2 04 formal and informal interviews
with randomly selected participants among Hispanic, Chinese
and English-speaking bilingual and regular school staff and
community members.
The research design of this study has been guided
and influenced by anthropological and sociological descrip
tions and analysis of schools such as those by Hargreaves
(1967) , Kleinfeld (1979) , Levy (1970) , Modiano (1973) , Ogbu
(1974) , Peshkin (1978) , Philips (1970) , Rosenfeld (1971) ,
Spindler (1974), and Wolcott (1973, 1977). These studies
attempt to tell a whole story by being inclusive rather than
narrowing focus on individual variables. They try to
capture several levels of reality in all their complexity,
through examination of unintentional as well as conscious
goals and outcomes of schooling. Similarly, this study
describes many levels of reality as perceived by the adults
who participated in or were affected by this school inno
vation, and the analysis examines conscious, changing, and
3
unconscious processes taking place.
3
This study was also influenced by the style of a
very powerful novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Cien anos de
soledad (1969), which demonstrates the complexity of a
description of the fusion of reality and myth as perceived
by many different people at a multitude of conscious and
unconscious levels.
_________________________________________________________________4_
The overall focus of the study centers around how
change occurs in a school system and its impact on the
community. Within this focus, two broad themes are devel
oped: the gradual maturation of the D.C. Hispanic community
and its relationship to the public schools, and the process
of change within schools. The story of bilingual education
in Washington, D.C., beginning in Chapter IV, is written
chronologically for the sake of clarity for the reader. It
begins with background information on the Hispanic community
and the D.C. Public Schools in the mid-196 0s, as they are
perceived by Hispanics and school personnel involved in
public school politics of that time. As the story unfolds,
the reader is introduced to the process through which the
idea of bilingual education evolved, the early stages of
adaptation of bilingual staff to the school system and the
resistance of regular staff, and the gradual evolution of a
complex and expanding innovation. The emerging Hispanic
community is described, along with its close connections
with the D.C. Bilingual Program. Parent and community
participation in schools is analyzed, with focus on the
Hispanic community, although some of the impact on Chinese
and English-speaking parents is also described. A shift
away from innovation and towards institutionalization of the
program is increasingly evident as federal funding adds more
office staff positions, beginning in 1974, and federal
legislation and court decisions influence the course of the
_________________________________________________________________ 5
school reform. The analysis ends with the school year 1979-
1980, with all bilingual positions supported by federal
funds absorbed into the local school budget.
Throughout the case study description, analysis is
woven into the story. One overall theme of the analysis
focuses on the change process within schools. Whereas the
literature on institutional change generally has examined
the goals of federal or centralist planners and measured the
implementation process as fidelity to the original goals
combined with adaptation to the local school system, this
study extends the change literature through focus less on an
original plan and more on a complex view of evolution of a
program in response to multiple changing local and federal
influences. None of the observed changes in schools in this
study can be seen as linear progressions from A to B;
rather, change is seen as the creative use of conflict
between A and B, here labeled unresolved tensions, which
emerge, disappear, reappear, or find new manifestations in
the course of evolution of the Bilingual Program.
The subtheme which best captures this characteristic
of change is the tension between a desire to remain inno
vative, flexible, and charismatic, to prod the local school
system from outside, and the need to institutionalize the
program, which is associated with bureaucratization and
standardization. Other subthemes which exhibit similar
characteristics are the unresolved tension between
6
continuing flexibility in teaching methods and use of
materials and the push for standardization through curri
culum writing and testing; between the reality of constantly
expanding, shifting, never-ending problems, and the desire
to solve one fixed, predefined problem; between informality
and professionalism; between democratic decision making and
authoritarian patterns; between deep concern for and direct
involvement with students in schools and office isolation
from school problems; between pressing for new rules for
international students and accepting the system's rules;
between the desire for cohesion among staff and the develop
ment of professional distance. This study illustrates how
both sides of each tension manifest themselves in a variety
of ways throughout the nine years covered in the research.
These tensions are not seen as problems to be solved but as
sources of constructive and unending, complex change.
The second theme focuses on the maturation of the
Hispanic community and its relationship to the public
schools. Within this theme, the following issues come into
the discussion and analysis: the process of emerging
leadership within a small, new, maturing, urban ethnic
community; use of the schools as one vehicle for community
empowerment and consciousness raising; negotiations between
groups for control of schools in a pluralistic urban
setting; and the process of greater parent participation in
schools and the limits of parental involvement in decision
making.
With this type of study, there can be no true begin
ning, middle, or end. No problems are solved. For the
researcher, each new insight uncovered new areas that raised
additional questions and concerns. In trying to be as
comprehensive as possible in a study of this nature, one
must check and cross-check data through community and school
office files, through interviews with many people at many
different levels, and through participation in day-to-day
activities in the schools and community. This process of
soaking in the total environment is an endless one. There
fore, the analysis does not present tidy answers; rather, it
tries to describe the many layers of reality that are a part
of everyday school life.
The D.C. Bilingual Program serves a relatively small
population in comparison to other large urban school
districts, providing direct instructional services and/or
counseling for approximately 1500 students who speak
languages other than English and 500 English-speaking
students in 11 elementary and 3 secondary schools. The
program has thus served as a manageably researchable
miniature which can be compared with the experience of
others. It is hoped that the detail described here will
yield insights for others implementing bilingual education
around the country. No bilingual program can provide others
with an exportable model, as the social and linguistic
context of each school system with students of limited
8
English proficiency is unique. Therefore, this study is not
meant to serve as a prototype for other bilingual programs
but rather as a guide to the complexity of evolution of this
innovation, along with the hope it provides for a different
kind of school environment for both students of limited
English proficiency and for English speakers.
One characteristic somewhat unique to D.C. is that
the minority Hispanic community (estimated to be roughly
5-10 percent) exists within a Black majority (73 percent),
with Blacks dominating local politics and school admini
stration. The give-and-take at the central administrative
level in local school politics is therefore largely nego
tiated with a minority group already somewhat sensitive to
the need for different school structures for the variety of
school children being served.
Another feature is the great heterogeneity of the
linguistic groups being served by the Bilingual Program.
For the last 15-20 years, the Washington, D.C. area has
hosted an increasing number of immigrants from many
different parts of the world. Within the D.C. Public
Schools, the largest numbers of international students are
Spanish speakers (1,053 in 1979), but this group is very
heterogeneous, with no single dominant group. Central
Americans are a slight majority when the six countries are
counted as one unit, but those wT ho dominate the Hispanic
community power structure are of middle class background
9
and come from a variety of Latin American countries. Like
wise, the second largest linguistic group in public schools,
the Chinese, are greatly varied in background, with 279
students (in 1979) who speak 7 different Chinese dialects
and come from many different parts of China, Taiwan, and
Hong Kong. Because of the heterogeneity of students to be
served and the fact that they are scattered throughout the
schools of the District, the D.C. Bilingual Program has a
variety of models being implemented in each school, ranging
from two-way maintenance bilingual education, to transi
tional bilingual classes, to English as a Second Language
classes with some content area instruction in the native
language, and including Spanish as a Second Language
instruction for English-speaking students in schools
organized around a cluster concept. Therefore, this study
discusses a variety of models of implementation of bilingual
education within a very heterogeneous school setting.
A delimitation of this study is its focus mainly on #
administrative issues, relationships, between school staff,
and community and parent involvement. It is a story of
adults' perceptions of the Bilingual Program and its rela
tionship to the schools and community; the students' story
told from their point of view is left for a future study.
It must also be kept in mind that because this school inno
vation was not begun by a community grassroots movement, a
greater portion of the interviews conducted with Hispanic
10
community members were with leaders of the community.
The remainder of this study consists of three parts.
Chapter II presents background information on bilingual
education, a brief review of the literature with special
focus on sociological and anthropological research related
to bilingual education, and a review of some of the socio
logical literature on change process. Chapter III provides
a deeper look at the methodology used in this study.
Chapters IV-VII are the heart of the case study of bilingual
education in Washington, D.C. As the story unfolds chrono
logically, the reader is introduced to increasing analysis
of the themes as they emerge. The final chapter provides a
summary of the themes and analysis, woven into details of
the last four years of the story, ending with the school
year 1979-1980. Appendix A gives an overview of the
chronological development of the D.C. Bilingual Program.
11
CHAPTER II
REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE
This chapter is written to introduce the reader to
some general background information on bilingual/bicultural
education necessary to understand the full context out of
which bilingual education developed in Washington, D.C. In
addition, it reviews some of the literature on bilingual
education and on educational innovations in general, which
provides a background for the themes to be analyzed in this
case study. The chapter begins with a very brief history of
bilingual education in the United States including infor
mation on federal and state legislation and recent court
decisions. The next section provides an analysis of the
most widely discussed models of bilingual education in the
literature. An understanding of the models is basic to
clarifying apparent contradictions in the field and some of
the politics involved. The third section provides a brief
overview of the literature on bilingual education, with the
fourth section summarizing the paucity of sociological and
anthropological research in bilingual education; this case
study is designed to stimulate the expansion of that liter
ature. The last section examines the literature on change
process in educational innovations which provides a socio
logical perspective, as background to the sociological
12
analysis to follow in Chapters IV-VII.
History of Bilingual Education in the United States
The brief summary of the development of bilingual
education in the United States which follows represents a
compilation of ideas of those authors who have attempted to
analyze the appearance of bilingual education as a strong
educational trend of the 197 0s. Though these accounts seek
roots of a pluralistic trend in this society and attempt to
establish it as a natural process through which we have
come, revisionist historians will probably some day describe
a much more complicated process which actually took place.
Therefore, the reader is advised to keep in mind the general
perspective that while this is a very simplified account
which highlights a few of the trends which produced a
gradual movement towards federal adoption and encouragement
of bilingual education, the process actually involved was
much more complicated than that portrayed here.
During the nineteenth century in the United States,
a period of general tolerance, or co-existence, of multiple
language and cultural groups had allowed some multiple
language instruction to develop in both public and private
schools (Kloss 1977). Towards the end of the nineteenth and
the first part of the twentieth century, a growing movement
towards nationalism in response to a new wave of immigration
from southern and eastern European countries led to legis
lation passed throughout the states to establish
______________________________________________________________ 13
English-only instruction in public schools with accompanying
"Americanization" programs for new immigrants. Public
schools across the country continued instruction solely in
English until the 1960s (Ovando 1978).
Almost by accident, a few schools began to exper
iment with bilingual instruction during the 196 0s. The
first program to institute bilingual classes began in 1963
at Coral Way Elementary School in Miami, Florida, in
response to the special needs of Cuban refugee children.
English-speaking children were included and in the following
years bilingual instruction was gradually extended to almost
all other public schools in Dade County, Florida (Mackey and
Beebe 1977). Other forms of bilingual instruction were
begun in Webb County, Texas, and San Antonio, Texas, in
1964. By 1967, 21 states had at least one experimental
program in bilingual education (Kanoon 1978).
Various factors may have contributed to the climate
which produced the first federal legislation passed by
Congress in 1968 for bilingual education, under Title VII of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. One factor
which is frequently cited is that the scarcity of persons
from the U.S. with- knowledge of foreign languages had been
dramatized during World War II. This eventually resulted in
the National Defense Education Act of 1958 which provided
federal money to expand foreign language teaching, in
addition to math and science. It is commonly assumed that
_____ 14
this step helped to pave the way towards a greater openness
to bilingual education. However, historians may some day
point out that this interest represented an elitist form of
language training, while federally supported bilingual edu
cation grew out of the concern not to teach other languages
but to teach English more effectively. The more pervasive
influence which eventually resulted in bilingual education
legislation was probably the growing concern for raising the
status of minorities. Following the 1954 Supreme Court
decision in Brown v. Board of Education to desegregate
schools, minority groups gradually became more active in
their efforts to demand equal educational opportunity. With
the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and all the legislation passed
for compensatory education during the 196 0s, consciousness
of the existence of special needs of various minority groups
became a growing concern (Schneider 1976:22). The Bilingual
Education Act of 1968 represented the first national acknow
ledgment of special needs of children of limited English
proficiency:
In recognition of the special educational needs of
the large numbers of children of limited English-
speaking ability in the United States, Congress
hereby declares it to be the policy of the United
States to provide financial assistance to local
educational agencies to develop and carry out new
and imaginative elementary and secondary school
programs? designed to meet these special educational
needs /Andersson and Boyer 1978:223/.
During the 1960s the profession of teaching English
as a Second Language (ESL) had also expanded in response to
15
increasing numbers of immigrant and refugee children who
needed special instruction in English, in addition to
growing numbers of international students coming from other
countries to study in U.S. universities. The professional
organization TESOL (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other
Languages) was born and blossomed in a short time. Develop
ment of ESL textbooks expanded, and courses in linguistics
and ESL methodology were in increasing demand (Paulston
1976). As bilingual projects developed and expanded in
schools, it was assumed that teachers of ESL would join
forces with those involved in bilingual education. At the
national level, leaders spoke of the need for ESL and bilin
gual teachers to work together; ESL was to be one component
of bilingual education. However, at the local level there
have been philosophical clashes as ESL teachers have felt
threatened, especially when some school systems began to
hire teachers who spoke the native language of students as
a higher priority than English teachers. The controversy
is still not resolved (Alatis 1975, 1979; Peha 1975).
Another reason for the professional conflict has
been the pattern of continuing flexibility in designing
models of implementation of bilingual education. Each of
the projects which had been established with local initia
tive during the 196 0s was unique, in response to the local
linguistic, cultural, sociological, demographic variables
of that community. The 1968 Bilingual Education Act did not
16
specify how the money was to be used; rather, it was
expected that school systems would experiment with many
different forms of bilingual instruction, in response to
the unique needs of each community. The guidelines for
soliciting federal money under Title VII defined bilingual
education as:
. . . instruction in two languages and the use of
those two languages as mediums for instruction for
any part or all of the school curriculum. Study of
the history and culture associated with a student's
mother tongue is considered an integral part of
bilingual education /Andersson and Boyer 1978:32-337-
The portion of the 196 8 legislation which later
proved to be most controversial was the requirement that the
money be used only in schools having a high concentration of
students from low-income families. This relegated federally
supported bilingual education to the status of compensatory
education, which was being increasingly criticized as a
separate track for low achievers, which did not help to
integrate students with learning difficulties into the
mainstream. More will be said about this in the discussion
of four models of bilingual education: transitional,
maintenance, two-way enrichment, and immersion.
From a small beginning in 1968, with $7.5 million
appropriated for bilingual education in Fiscal Year (FY)
1969, the Bilingual Education Act was expanded and amended
in 1974 and again in 1978. By FY 1980, $166.9 million had
been appropriated. The Bilingual Education Act will again
be up for renewal in 1983. During the twelve years
___________________ 17
bilingual education has been supported at the federal level,
most of the money has gone to support local projects: from
76 in FY 1969 to 565 in FY 1978. In more recent years,
however, Congress has also appropriated money for training
programs, materials development, and only in FY 19 79 for
research. Lack of research findings has been a major
criticism of the program (National Advisory Council on
Bilingual Education 1979).
While the federal government has played the major
role in the stimulation of implementation of bilingual edu
cation, state governments have also given increasing support
over the last ten years. In 1971, Massachusetts was the
first state to mandate some form of bilingual education for
all non-English speaking students. That same year there
were still 2 0 states which prohibited instruction in any
language other than English in public schools. By 1979,
there are only seven states left with statutes limiting
instruction to solely English, and there are 15 states which
have passed legislation permitting bilingual education and
12 which mandate bilingual education (National Advisory
Council on Bilingual Education 1979:99-102).
In addition to federal and state legislation, the
major stimulus for bilingual education has come through
court orders. The 1974 Lau v. Nichols Supreme Court deci
sion concluded that non-English speaking students in San
Francisco had not been given equal educational opportunity
18
with their English-speaking peers and the schools were man
dated to provide a "meaningful education" for non-English-
speaking children. While the court order was ambiguous as
to the most effective type of school program for these
students, subsequent court orders in various states have
mandated bilingual education (e.g. Serna v. Portales, Aspira
of New York v. the Board of Education; see Teitelbaum and
Hiller 1977). In 1975 the Office for Civil Rights of the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) produced
a memo known as the Lau Remedies which specified that school
systems with at least 2 0 speakers of one language other than
English be provided with some form of bilingual instruction.
If a school system was found not in compliance, federal
funding might be ended to that district (Office for Civil
Rights 19 75). Lau Centers were set up across the country
to aid school districts in planning bilingual programs to
meet compliance requirements. The Lau Remedies memo was
controversial, and new OCR-Lau guidelines are being written
at the present time. The Lau Centers have emphasized their
service function rather than enforcement in an attempt to
bring school districts to see the positive benefits of
bilingual education (Interview with Lau Center represen
tative, January 3, 1980).
Models of Bilingual Education
There are many different ways of implementing bilingual
education but little precise information on which models
________ 19
are the most effective. The literature has widely varying
conceptualizations of models; therefore, this section repre
sents this researcher's synthesis of the literature, with
discussion of the* form of practical implementation which has
i
emerged from all the theories. There are so many variations
on ways to implement bilingual education because each model
seems to carry with it very different social and political
implications which may affect students' performance in
school. The discussion which follows explains some of this
seemingly contradictory nature of bilingual education. This
background information is also essential to understand the
Washington, D.C. Bilingual Program, as a variety of models
have been adopted there.
Transitional. Students of limited English profi
ciency (LEP) receive instruction in their native language in
all subject areas while they are receiving instruction in
ESL. Native language instruction is provided to avoid loss
of grade-level skills while mastery of second language is
taking place. As soon as students are considered proficient
enough in English to work academically in all English
classes, they are moved from the bilingual program into
regular classes with English-speaking students. Usually no
English-speaking students are included in transitional
bilingual classes. The highest priority of a transitional
bilingual program is the teaching of English, with the goal
to mainstream the students as soon as possible.
20
The large majority of federally sponsored bilingual
programs in the U.S. have been transitional, in accordance
with the requirements of the Title VII legislation passed in
1968. However, the 1978 legislation allows up to 40 percent
English-speaking students in bilingual classes, and the
definition of English competence includes all four skills
(understanding, speaking, reading, and writing) rather than
simply spoken skills. Formerly, the phrase used in the
legislation to identify target students was "students of non
or limited English speaking ability" (NES/LES); the term now
employed is "students of limited English proficiency" (LEP),
which expands the definition and allows students to remain
in a bilingual program until they reach a fuller level of
proficiency in all four skills in English (National Advisory
Council on Bilingual Education 1979:B-3). Thus the 1978
legislation provides for more implementation of maintenance
and two-way programs, to be described below.
Many critics of transitional bilingual education
claim that it is another form of compensatory education,
which has had very limited success in raising students'
achievement scores. This model clearly segregates students
into a separate track, and critics (among them vocal minor
ity group members) see it as another means of the society's
perpetuating the status quo, by keeping these students in
separate, low ability groups and thus relegating them to
remain at lower class status (Hernandez-Chclvez 1977;
Kjolseth 1972).
Maintenance. In this model, there is less emphasis
on exiting students from the program as soon as possible.
Students in bilingual classes receive instruction in both
English and their native language throughout their school
career, or at least for as many grades as the school system
can provide. Ideal maintenance bilingual education would
teach both languages in a multicultural curriculum from
kindergarten through twelfth grade.
This model has prompted a controversy over how
federal money should be spent, with some concern being
raised that native language maintenance is not the task of
the federal government (Epstein 1977). However, maintenance
bilingual education has become an issue of great political
and economic significance for local communities that wish to
maintain their ethnic heritage and has created new pride and
achievement in some bilingual Native American schools in the
southwest. In addition to new political awareness and
increased community control of the school, it creates a new
source of income for those teachers and aides being hired by
the school and thus is an economic incentive to upward
mobility for the community. At the same time, it presents
a threat to present personnel in the school system (Read,
Spolsky, and Neundorf 197 6).
Partly because of the socio-political implications
raised by Epstein (1977) and others about maintenance
bilingual education, the federal director of the Office of
22
Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs (OBEMLA),
Josu§ Gonzalez, has stressed that the dichotomy between
transitional and maintenance should be deemphasized. He
states that the more important issue is that students
receive a solid academic curriculum with support for reach
ing full English language proficiency without losing their
first language in the process. Additive rather than
subtractive bilingualism is to be affirmed (Gonzalez 1979,
1980).
Two-way enrichment. Two-way bilingual programs
include students who are speakers of both languages.
Enrichment bilingual education is a term used by Fishman
(1976:35) to refer to bilingual instruction for the linguis
tically dominant group in a society. In this case, two-way
enrichment bilingual education can be seen as an effective
means of teaching a second language to English-dominant
children in the U.S. as well as providing an integrated
class for minority language students. Vazquez (1977:242)
makes a strong plea for the "true goal of bilingual edu
cation" to be achieved by convincing English monolingual
parents that "bilingualism provides unique intellectual,
social, and commercial advantages."
Two-way instruction is difficult to implement, but
the research which has been carried out so far seems to show
that it has the most potential for proficient second
language (L2) acquisition for both language groups. In
__________________ 23
addition, it satisfies integration requirements. Several
bilingual programs which carried out methodologically sound
evaluations included English-speaking children, and both
language groups in the bilingual programs were scoring at or
above the levels of comparison groups schooled monolingually
(Troike 1978).
In response to the growing status of bilingual edu
cation, as one of seven major divisions within the new
federal Department of Education, Secretary Hufstedler has
taken a position on two-way bilingual education. She feels
that bilingual education has failed when children are
labeled inferior, which has happened with many transitional
programs. The most successful Title VII projects have been
two-way programs, and Secretary Hufstedler is encouraging
the implementation of more two-way bilingual programs with
Title VII monies (Biascoechea 1980).
Immersion. An oversimplified but brief definition
of immersion bilingual education is that students are taught
in L2 from the beginning year of school, with perhaps one
class devoted to their native language. This model has been
used successfully and tested extensively in Canada, where
speakers of the dominant language (English) receive all
their schooling in French (Swain 1978). Immersion bilingual
education has also been successfully replicated with
English-speaking children in the Culver City, California,
Spanish-immersion program (Cohen 1975a). Immersion works
_______________________ 24
well for speakers of the dominant language, but the model
cannot be applied in the U.S. to language minority children,
whose home language is threatened. Cohen (1976) has coined
the term "submersion" to refer to the use of English immer
sion with subordinate minority children, which was the U.S.
policy during the first half of this century. Submersion in
all-English classes produces low achievement and high
dropout rates especially among subordinate minority groups
who were colonized or brought to the U.S. against their
will, such as Native Americans, Mexican-Americans, Blacks,
and Puerto Ricans (Lieberson 1961; Ogbu 1978).
English as a Second Language. ESL is an integral
component of transitional, maintenance, and two-way bilin
gual education; however, it is not by itself a form of
bilingual instruction. Ideally, in a team teaching situa
tion in a bilingual classroom, one teacher might be a native
English speaker and the other a native speaker of the second
language. The English teacher should be knowledgeable in
applied linguistics and ESL methodology. As students
acquire increasing amounts of English, activities are added
in content areas in English until students are able to work
academically in both languages.
A variety of pure ESL programs have been developed
in public schools to meet the needs of international
students who have no common language. ESL pullout programs
sometimes have been criticized as being similar to
25
transitional bilingual programs in that they have the stigma
of being compensatory, with students separated from native
English speakers for special classes for a portion of each
day. Some school systems have developed intensive ESL
classes which introduce all content area subjects to inter
national students at their level of ESL. As they increase
mastery of the language, they are moved into regular aca
demic classes with native speakers of English.
An Overview of the Research on Bilingual Education
Partly because bilingual education is a relative
newcomer to U.S. education, the U.S. literature has been
slow to focus on concrete definitions or specific goals in
research. Books and journal articles on bilingual education
have discussed the historical background of bilingual edu
cation, or have raised the sensitive political issues
involved, or they have discussed administrative problems
surrounding state and federal legislation and court deci
sions. Other articles have dealt with the philosophy and
theory of bilingual education, such as discussions of
pluralism vs. assimilation, and have provided brief descrip
tions of various types of bilingual instruction.
This type of literature is full of theories and
hunches, but its sheer volume fools new students of the
field into a false assumption that a great deal of research
has been done. In fact, almost the only issues researched
in any kind of depth are purely linguistic ones, ahd the
26
linguistic research has a great deal yet to uncover. Espe
cially disturbing is an increasing emphasis on measurement
of short-term outcomes of bilingual programs because of the
priorities placed in federal and state legislation. Educa
tional psychology's focus on the individual dominates in the
field of evaluation and measurement of student achievement.
This places the bulk of the burden of research on measuring
the effectiveness of policy makers' goals of the program,
rather than looking at broader socio-cultural dimensions of
learning that examine the whole process taking place in the
total school environment, including its relationship to the
community.
Spolsky (1978, 1979) has called repeatedly for
broader based research in bilingual education. His model
for evaluation of bilingual education which attempts to
grasp the complexity of multitiered layers which must be
carefully examined includes educational, psychological,
sociological, economic, political, religious, cultural,
geographical, demographic, historical, and linguistic
factors (Spolsky 1978:268-269). Fishman (1977:46-47)
bemoans the great gaps in social science inquiry in bilin
gual education, and he feels there may be purpose behind the
lack of funding for research other than short-term psycho-
educational goals:
It is a disturbing thing to say at this late date,
but there is not a single center for social research
on bilingual education in the U.S. today, nor even a
27
single social researcher . . . whose main interest
and activity this is. . . . Coordinated, cumulative,
integrative social research on bilingual education
is nonexistent today. This does not augur well for
the seriousness with which bilingual education is
taken by unmarked /dominant/ funding/evaluating
authorities. The unmarked establishment knows how
to zero-in on an issue with which it is concerned
and with which it identifies its own well-being or
its own values and goals. Bilingual education does
not seem to be that kind of issue and neither the
paltry research funds assigned to it nor the lack of
coordination with which these funds have been and
are being spent are accidental developments. They
speak volumes of "negative interest."
If policy makers are focusing on only certain types
of questions to be addressed by research, that research
which has been carried out, most of which examines mainly
linguistic issues, has reached only very tentative conclu
sions. For example, even the basic premise on which bilin
gual education is built has not yet been extensively tested.
At a historic UNESCO conference in 1951, linguists esta
blished as axiomatic "... that the best medium for
teaching a child is his mother tongue" (UNESCO 1953:69).
Since that time, many linguists have repeatedly affirmed the
importance of native language literacy as a premise to
successful education, but the experimental evidence is still
scanty. In the first extensive literature review on this
issue, Engle (1975) concluded few generalizations could yet
be made, since the studies were inconsistent in their
methodology. Cohen and Laosa (1976) and Lombardo (1980)
also found the results of empirical studies contradictory
and difficult to interpret. "There is no clear evidence
28
"that,one method is significantly better than another for
language (reading) instruction" (Lombardo 1980:18).
However, these literature reviews do not adequately
deal with the question of differences between students who
speak the dominant language of a society and those who speak
minority languages. Cummins (1978) believes that the liter
ature suggests there is a "threshold" level which must be
reached in LI in order to achieve competence in L2. Lambert
(1975) proposed the importance of promoting additive bilin
gualism, which involves no loss of Ll when learning L2.
According to Swain (1979:12), these two theories imply that:
When the home language is different from the school
language and the home language tends to be denigrated
by others and selves, and where the children come
from socio-economically deprived homes, it would
appear appropriate to begin initial instruction in
the child's first language with the second language
being introduced as a subject of instruction. At a
later stage instruction in the second language would
then be introduced. On the other hand, where the
home language is a majority language valued by the
community, and where literacy is encouraged in the
home, then the most efficient means of promoting
an additive form of bilingualism is to provide
initial instruction in the second language.
Reconsideration of the studies on bilingual instruction
indicate that the studies are less contradictory when the
two types of bilingual education are reviewed separately.
The worldwide literature reviewed to date shows that
minority language students perform best in programs where
they begin in Ll; whereas, dominant language students can
begin schooling in L2 with no loss of Ll (Baral 1979;
Tucker 1980).
29
Other literature surveys have studied the effective
ness of bilingual instruction in terms of student academic
performance variables. Dulay and Burt (1976) conducted an
extensive review of 38 research projects and 175 project
evaluations, and found that only 12 studies were methodolog
ically sound according to the criteria they had established.
These 12 studies found that students with bilingual instruc
tion performed as well as or better than a comparison group
or than the district or national norms, on various tests
measuring Ll or L2 language arts, social studies, science
and math achievement, or cognitive function. Another survey
by Troike (1978) revealed an additional 12 studies which
demonstrate the effectiveness of bilingual instruction for
LEP students in the U.S. Troike (1978:15) concludes:
Despite the lack of research and the inadequacy
of evaluation reports, enough evidence has now
accumulated to make it possible to say with confi
dence that quality bilingual programs can meet the
goal of providing equal educational opportunity for
students from non-English speaking backgrounds.
Even though there was virtually no research base on
which to build when bilingual education was first federally
funded in the U.S., no provision for funding of research was
included in the 1968 legislation. Ten years later Congress
finally appropriated the first money to develop a national
research plan for bilingual education. The plan, funded
under Part C of Title VII, is to be implemented from 1979 to
1983. Studies to be funded include a wide variety of
demands of the legislation, from assessment of national
30
needs for bilingual education, to improvement in the effec
tiveness of services for students and improvement in
Title VII program management and operations (U.S. Department
of Health, Education, and Welfare 1979). This particular
research agenda has been set so that Congress can have some
basis for renewal or termination of federal funds in 1983.
These studies will help with program implementation, but
they will still leave many questions open for research.
There is much to be done in the field.
A considerable amount of careful research has been
carried out on bilingual education in other countries. The
studies from Canada on immersion programs are thorough and
methodologically well done. One of the findings which has
been fairly well established from this research is that it
takes from three to four years for students to reach suffi
cient proficiency in both Ll and L2 to show an achievement
level in both languages at or beyond the level of students
who are learning monolingually. Before this time, students
in bilingual instruction frequently score below the norms of
monolingual learners in some tests. Bilingual instruction
seems to have a cumulative effect over several years (Swain
1979). This finding is extremely important in recognizing
the necessity for longitudinal studies to determine the
effects of bilingual instruction on student achievement.
Another finding of linguists which has been increasingly
supported by recent studies shows that being bilingual with
31
full proficiency in both languages is a cognitive asset,
with bilingual children scoring higher than monolingual
children on measures of cognitive flexibility, creativity
and divergent thought (Lambert 1977).
Sociological and Anthropological Research in Bilingual
Education
It is clear that there is an enormous gap in socio
logical and anthropological research in bilingual education;
yet there is much need for this type of study. Geertz
(1973) captured some of the essence of qualitative field
work methods with his term "thick description." When the
knowledge base in a field is extremely weak, "thick descrip
tion" provides an examination of many variables in a given
situation and the complex interrelationship between all
these factors. Narrowing the focus to one issue, such as
raising students' achievement scores, ignores a multitude of
other outcomes which may be even more important than the
program planners' original priorities. Sociological and
anthropological description is meant to uncover hidden
variables which may be operating in a given context. While
experimental researchers begin with specific predictions
which they will test, ethnographers try to enter field work
with fewer specific expectations as to what will be discov
ered. The method tends to generate hypotheses which can
later be further tested (Overholt and Stallings 1976).
Because of the complexity of bilingual education, its
32
cross-cultural context, and its unusual relationship of
community and school, "thick description" seems especially
appropriate for this particular school innovation. The
methodology and its purposes will be examined in more detail
in Chapter III.
Studies with an anthropological or sociological base
which analyze bilingual education in the United States are
scarce. There are many program descriptions which are some
times called case studies, but the term seems to be overused
in the literature, as these studies rarely include detailed
analysis of what actually happens in schools or in the
community. An example is Spolsky and Cooper's Case Studies
in Bilingual Education (197 8), which contains chapters
describing the general development of bilingual education in
several countries and in various regions of the United
States. Most of the information is presented from the point
of view of program planners but not in the form of in-depth
analysis of hidden factors operating in each context.
Another research project entitled Case Studies of Noteworthy
Projects in Bilingual Education carried out by Development
Associates (1977) presents general program descriptions of
15 exemplary programs, told from the administrators' point
of view, with no detailed examination of observed rather
than idealized program characteristics.
The first carefully researched and detailed anthro
pological description of the total context for a bilingual
33
education project was Modiano's Indian Education in the
Chiapas Highlands (1973), based in southern Mexico. This
study poignantly describes the contrast between informal
education which unconsciously and naturally is carried out
between parents and children to pass on the roles of adults
within the society, and the formal education provided by
government schools. While the study showed improvement in
performance among those who attended an experimental reading
program in the native language before being introduced to
reading in Spanish in the second grade, in comparison to
students who attended school with immediate immersion in
Spanish, the more powerful force of education within the
community was that of informal education to maintain commu
nity values and work roles. Even with bilingual instruc
tion, dropout rates were very high after second grade.
Some studies in the U.S. in educational anthropology
have dealt with ethnic groups which have maintained their •
own bilingual/bicultural institutions for education within
their community, such as the Amish and Hutterites,
researched by Hostetler and Huntington (1967, 1971) or
Yiddish schools, described by Parker (1978). These studies
describe the effective use of schools by these groups for
the maintenance of group norms and cultural identity.
Many studies in educational anthropology and socio
logy describe the antagonistic aspect of monolingual/mono-
cultural formal education for various minority groups in
______________ 34
the U.S. For example, Levy (1970), McDermott (1974), Rist
(1970), and Rosenfeld (1971) describe the difficulty some
Black children have in - the inner city in establishing commu
nication with their teachers. McDermott (1974:82) states a
theme which is repeated often in the literature:
The mixture of intelligent, socially competent
children from a low status minority or pariah commu
nity and hard working, well-intentioned teachers from
a host or dominant community can bring about the same
disastrous school records achieved by either neuro-
logically disabled children or socially disabled,
prejudiced teachers. . . . The difficulty is
usually neither "dumb kids" nor "racist teachers,"
but cultural conflict.
King (1967); Wax, Diamond, and Gearing (1971); and Wolcott
(1967) describe cultural conflict between teachers and
students in schools within Native American communities, and
Philips (1970) presents a classic sociolinguistic study
which shows the contrast between structures for teaching and
learning within the community compared with those of the
formal school. Along similar lines, Ogbu (1974) found that
school failure among Mexican-American and Black subordinate
minorities in a California school district was maintained
through minorities' adaptation to perceived limited work
opportunities when they finished schooling and maintenance
of patron-client relationships between school staff and
parents.
One recent ethnographic study presents more positive
findings of an Alaskan school which has been able to provide
a context for effective cross-cultural learning.
___________________________________________ 35
Kleinfeld (197 9:vii-viii) found that graduates from one
Eskimo boarding school were unusually successful in college
and yet were able to re-adapt to village life upon returning
home:
The model of bicultural education at St. Mary's
is very different from the bilingual-bicultural
programs at the public schools. St. Mary's does not
bring Eskimo culture into the school by presenting
it as a special subject. Nor does it limit bicul
tural education to the areas of language and
curriculum and ignore cultural discontinuities in
the social structures and values of schooling, far
more fundamental areas of conflict. St. Mary's
fuses elements from the local Eskimo culture and
the majority culture into new educational structures
in harmony with both cultures. This fusion occurs
in three critical dimensions of education: the
curriculum, the structure of social relationships,
and the core values of the school. St. Mary's
strengthens students' primary identity framework
and extends the values learned in a village child
hood to the changing context of Eskimo adult life.
Kleinfeld (1979:136-137) concludes that:
Children from a local minority culture are more
likely to develop a comfortable bicultural identity
that enables them to function effectively in both
minority and majority culture settings where:
1. significant reference groups in the majority
culture (such as teachers, majority-group classmates,
media) hold the minority culture in esteem and sig
nificant reference groups in the local minority
culture (such as parents, peers, older youth who are '
trend setters) hold the majority culture in esteem,
and
2. central socialization settings (home, school,
religious groups, ethnic organizations) fuse elements
from both cultures rather than separate them.
Kleinfeld1s study seems to be the one exception to
a rather gloomy picture portrayed by educational anthropol
ogists for formal schools within a bicultural setting. To
date this researcher is not aware of any studies which have
36
examined public bilingual/bicultural schools in the U.S.
from an anthropological perspective. Ogbu (1974) makes
reference to a bilingual program which was started in the
California school district in which he carried out two years
of field work. He saw the program as a compensatory one
which he labels part of the "Education Rehabilitation
Movement," planned by the school personnel as a top-down
reform, rather than coming from the community. At the same
time, the program brought an increase in pride in ethnic
identity in the community, and Ogbu felt the hiring of many
new minority school personnel had the potential of altering
the structure of the school system (Ogbu 1974:213-228).
A few studies on bilingual education provide fairly
thorough descriptions of various aspects of implementation.
Some are historical case studies and some provide portions
of sociological analysis. One thorough descriptive study
is Schneider's (1976) policy analysis of the legislative
process which led to the 1974 Bilingual Education Act. One
of the most thorough evaluations of a bilingual project was
carried out in Redwood City, California, by Cohen (1975b),
who immersed himself in the community and collected socio
logical data and interviewed many people in the community as
well as school personnel. His findings look at school
achievement and attitudes, as well as some sociolinguistic
analysis of language use in the community.
37
Cohen (19 75b:26 4) summarized his study:
It is still too early to assess the ultimate
effects of bilingual schooling in Redwood City.
Yet the early indications were that bilingual edu
cation in this Mexican American community in Cali
fornia was a viable, significant innovation. Mexican
American youngsters were becoming literate in both
Spanish and English; they were using their Spanish
without shame; their performance in the academic
subjects was as good as or better than that of
comparison youngsters in an English-only program,
and they felt better about being Mexican American
and about their school experience. Furthermore,
the successful experiences of the children appeared
to have a positive spin-off effect upon the parents.
These parents gained greater conviction themselves
that there was an important place for the knowledge
of Spanish in an increasingly multilingual society.
Another very thorough description is Mackey and
Beebe's (1977) historical documentation of bilingual educa
tion as it was implemented in Dade County, Florida. This
study provides sociological data on the Cuban community but
little sociological analysis of the implementation process
itself within schools. It provides much information on the
how-to for program planners.
Five other studies have examined implementation of
bilingual education in specific sites in the U.S. using
observation and interviewing techniques. These five studies
looked at widely varying issues. The first three studies
which follow are dissertations. Guzman (1978) found that
the value conflict between community supporters of pluralism
vs. those in favor of assimilation was a hidden factor which
had not been addressed by the bilingual program in Indepen
dence, Oregon, resulting in bilingual education having
________________________________________________________________ 38_
little influence either on district school policy or on
changing values within the community. Grove (1977) examined
a Portuguese-English transitional secondary bilingual pro
gram in Massachusetts and concluded that Portuguese students
were over-protected in the program. Teachers, parents, and
students interviewed gave the overall impression that the
problems faced by new immigrants might best be dealt with at
secondary level through ESL instruction rather than bilin
gual education.
A third dissertation examined changes in decision
making and participation of the Puerto Rican community in
New York City as a result of implementation of bilingual
education (Steinberg 1978). This study theorized that the
most effective integration model involves a vertical network
which links the new group with sources of power and
resources in the host society coupled with a horizontal
linkage within the grassroots ethnic community, which had
been partially but not totally achieved by Puerto Ricans in
New York as one side-effect of bilingual education. A
fourth study investigated patterns of classroom teaching and
organization in a Spanish-English bilingual program in the
southwest and concluded that bilingual education as a change
process did not significantly alter traditional roles of
teaching and behavioral norms (Ortiz 1977).
A fifth study, Waserstein (1975), comes the closest
to the type of analysis and focus on the Hispanic community
_____________________________________________________________ 39
to be examined in this case study of bilingual education in
Washington, D.C. Waserstein describes the political process
of negotiation for establishment of a bilingual program in
Wilmington, Delaware. The Hispanic community leaders who
began to address the problem in schools found that school
personnel justified their lack of support services for
Spanish-speaking students because of their "invisibility."
Thus the Lau Remedies' requirement that school districts
count the number of students with language backgrounds other
than English can be a first step in recognition of special
needs within a school system. The leaders, who persisted in
what were eventually successful negotiations with the school
system for a bilingual program, felt that the Hispanic
community matured some through the process:
These extensive efforts were successful in help
ing facilitate continuing contact with the community
and in encouraging participation by as many people
as possible. Our negotiating team for any particular
session, for example, usually included a minimum of
ten people who were associated with community groups
and social agencies in the city. Furthermore, the
meetings also served as a mechanism whereby the
community and agency people could further develop
their own skills in planning strategy, in exercising
effective leadership and in coordinating a common
effort. As a result of this joint endeavor the
Spanish-speaking community is now better able to act
on its own behalf than it was in the fall of_197 3.
/Waserstein 1975:25/
Finally, the leaders themselves became accepted by the
system over time, having begun as a force coming from out
side the system but later perceived as the "experts" in
bilingual education.
40
Our group acted as a catalyst and as a continuing
source of pressure to make the problem visible and
to force the school system to do its job of educa
ting Spanish-speaking students.
The three main elements of the negotiation
process were: identification and effective use of
available resources, continuing direct contact with
personnel within the school system, and persistence.
In order to benefit from available resources, we
visited established programs in other cities and used
them as models. We learned how those programs worked,
how they were set up, what materials they used, and
other relevant information. These visits helped us
to understand what exists in the area of bilingual
education. We became the local "experts" on
bilingual education and the school system began to
rely on us for help in deciding important policy
questions. This gave us access to the system's
decision-making process and__influence-over its
outcome /Waserstein 1975:2£/.
Waserstein believes that this process for establishment of
bilingual education, if negotiated carefully, is more effec
tive for both school system and community support, than to
force bilingual education through litigation.
In summary, there is a great lack of basic research
in bilingual•education. When a new field is just beginning,
it is frequently helpful to examine qualitative studies
which explore multiple dimensions of the field. Case study
research with careful sociological or anthropological anal
ysis can examine the experience of one community and dis
cover many hypotheses for future research. It is a method
of discovery of some of the hidden or unintentional as well
as conscious processes taking place within one setting.
This study of implementation of bilingual education in
Washington, D.C., has been carried out to discover variables
and issues which have not yet been addressed in considering
41
effective implementation of bilingual education for students
from different cultural and linguistic backgrounds, as well
as for English-speaking students, in the United States.
Literature on Educational Innovations and the Change Process
To understand the sociological analysis presented in
this study, in addition to background information on bilin
gual education just presented, it is important to take a
brief look at some of the literature on change process.
This literature is difficult to summarize. While several
reviews have surveyed various aspects of the literature
extensively (Gross, Giacquinta, and Bernstein 1971; Rogers
and Shoemaker 1971), each author presents a different point
of view, depending on his or'her initial assumptions. This
survey will not attempt to present all aspects of the change
literature but will focus on those portions which direct the
reader to a clearer understanding of the analysis to be
presented in the following chapters which detail the case
study of bilingual education in Washington, D.C.
The literature analyzing educational innovations
grew during the 196 0s in response to the increasing role of
the federal government in stimulating educational change.
Many of these earlier studies and evaluations concentrated
their analysis of success or failure of these change pro
jects based on improvement of student achievement. A sum
mary of all the large-scale evaluations of programs such as
Head Start or ESEA Title I concludes that "Variations in
"student outcomes have not been consistently related to
variations in treatments, once nonschool factors are held
constant" (Berman and McLaughlin 1974:5).
This pessimistic conclusion prompted a second series
of studies which began to examine the process of implemen
tation to attempt to discover the match between original
federal plans and actual local implementation, in hopes that
this would help explain lack of cognitive gains of students
in innovative programs, when compared with traditional
schooling. The underlying assumption of this research was
that there were problems between the match of federal plans
and that actually implemented at the local level which when
analyzed would yield information on more effective means of
implementation. These studies began to uncover data which
indicated that implementation of change projects was much
more complicated than first assumed (Baldridge and Deal
1975; Lukas 1975).
By the end of the 196 0s, studies on implementation
were beginning to address issues such as the reasonableness
of federal expectations, in the face of local realities.
Studies by McLaughlin (1975) and Murphy (1974) emphasized
the complexity of the organization of local education agen
cies, the outside factors such as political and economic
constraints which influenced the process of implementation,
and the irrational character of decision-making at all
levels (Farrar, DeSanctis, and Cohen 1979:8). Other case
43
studies such as Corwin (1973) and Wolcott (1977) found that
local school personnel accommodated reforms to existing
practices, with local priorities the major concern, rather
than implementation of the original idea (Acland 1979). The
Rand Change Agent study (1974-1977) extended this process
towards a different view of implementation. The authors
emphasized the importance of the local contribution to the
eventual outcome of a change project in schools. They did
not address the issue of success based on cognitive gains of
students but examined success in terms of institutionaliza
tion of a change project at the local level, following
termination of federal funding. The idea of local and
federal planners being co-equal creators of policy was
coined in the phrase "mutual adaptation" as a key to suc
cessful implementation. Berman and McLaughlin (1976:349)
explain this term:
The initial design of an innovative project must be
adapted to the particular organizational setting of
the school, classroom, or other institutional hosts,
and, at the same time, the organization and its
members must adapt to the demands of the project.
This new way of looking at change was an important
step in several ways. It began to focus attention away from
the simpler views of implementation which narrowed variables
to be considered. For example, adoption studies prepared
for educational administrators tend to focus on prescribing
characteristics at the beginning stages which would result
in successful implementation (e.g. Havelock 1973). Berman
44
and McLaughlin (1974) criticized these studies as represent
ing a rational, optimistic, almost naive model of bureau
cratic behavior, which is not consistent with the reality of
decision making as it actually occurs in schools. Second, a
more simplistic view had focused federal evaluations on
measuring the goals as set by the original planners of an
innovation. The Rand study included the seeds for sugges
ting that successful implementation involved a constant
negotiation of goals between federal and local planners and
re-designing in response to the local situation. One recom
mendation of the study was that federal policy might
encourage formative rather than summative evaluation, which
would provide ongoing feedback to the local implementors and
foster mutual adaptation. Yet Farrar et al. (1979:11) fault
the Rand study for being ambiguous in its message:
The RAND authors seemed to think that mutual adapta
tion was a better way of achieving federal goals,
rather than a way of changing federal goals as to
local initiatives. Attention to local views and
preferences, the RAND authors seemed to suggest,
could install federal goals and blueprints more
effectively. Thus, while implementation was no
longer viewed as a linear engineering process, the
central perspective dominated: program goals and
blueprints were still the criteria for implementation.
Farrar et al. (1979) have suggested a third way of
viewing change which places fuller emphasis on the impor
tance of local influences as the major overriding force in
implementation of any educational innovation. They believe
that policy for an innovation is conceived only in very
vague general terms by program planners at the outset, and
_______________ 45
policy evolves as the project is implemented, in response to
local factors.
This perspective on federal programs helps to
explain why the study of their implementation has
seemed so problematic, and the results so discour
aging. The differences between federal hopes and'
local action are not simply or necessarily the result
of federal mismanagement or local obstinacy. In
large part, the differences reflect divergent and
often contradictory local perceptions of a program
and its purpose, which produce_different local
approaches to implementation /Farrar et al. 1979:227-
Taking this more recent view of the change process
as a base for this study, the importance of viewing imple
mentation in all its complexity can be seen. What
researchers have learned is that we can no longer be sim
plistic in our evaluations of the functions and purposes of
schooling. Research and evaluation must look at many other
factors besides cognitive gains of students to measure the
success of a program. The goals to be examined must reflect
not only those originally conceived but those which evolve
through the process of implementation; they must reflect not
only those of the power-holders--the school personnel and
federal policymakers— but those of the broader school commu
nity. Examination of a school program in all its complexity
should also provide some analysis of unconscious as well as
conscious goals and outcomes. For this reason, sociological
field work was chosen in this study as one means of describ
ing the complex reality of the implementation of one
bilingual program.
Sarason (1971) points to the importance of
_____________ 46
recognizing this complexity of school organization and the
broader school community when dealing with change. He
faults change projects for emphasizing the changing of indi
viduals and ignoring the "culture of the school." He also
feels that top down change, or pressure from the federal
government, tends to ignore assessments of local school
needs and priorities. Another warning comes from Wise
(1979), who argues that state and federal legislation
designed to improve education may actually be making it
worse, in relying so heavily on a relationship between edu
cational treatment and learning outcomes. Wise points out
that we lack understanding of the process by which students
learn and we cannot adequately measure outcomes; therefore,
in choosing goals in education which can be measured, many
other aspects of education which may be equally important
are ignored. Likewise, the school is a complex organization
which defies rationalization, and federal legislation and
evaluation oversimplifies that process.
Another concept which reinforces a more complex view
of the change process which has been increasingly demon
strated in recent case studies is that of looking at schools
as "loosely-coupled organizations," a term expanded by
Weick (1976, 1980). One study of educational innovation
(Deal, Meyer, and Scott 1975) found that the relationship
between district, school, and classroom can be seen as auto
nomous units with loose connections with each other. This
________________________________________________________________ 47_
type of organization requires a much more sophisticated
concept of implementation than that suggested in the early
change literature. Weick (1980:6) explains that "to under
stand more about a loosely coupled system is to understand
more clearly why predictions about that system will fail."
Loose coupling is not to be looked on as something to be
changed, for it serves a very important function in many
organizations, but as a concept to be recognized and dealt
with in studying changes in schools.
Herriott and Gross (1979) have published a volume of
case studies and analysis of some planned educational change
projects which presents the complex nature of educational
change efforts. They affirm (1979:378):
. . . the importance of adopting a holistic perspec
tive in searching for factors that may influence the
introduction and implementation of innovations. . . .
Successful change efforts must be based on a recog
nition of the importance of contextual factors and
of the need to tailor educational innovations to
local situations.
This more complex view of the change process is reflected in
this holistic case study of a locally-evolved innovation in
schools.
Change Literature on Bilingual Education
As a part of the Rand study, Sumner and Zellman
(1977) summarized the findings from extensive interviews
with personnel involved with bilingual education at federal,
state, and local levels, and from 11 case studies of
Title VII project sites. This analysis of the change
48,
process in bilingual education is the only one known to
date; therefore, the findings will be presented in greater
detail than that of other studies mentioned previously.
The Rand authors identify three basic stages in all
change projects: support (later called initiation),
implementation, and incorporation (Berman and McLaughlin
1974:16). Title VII projects were characterized as going
through similar stages, which were expanded into four
phases:
Initiation: when decisions are made whether to have
a project, and if so, its level of funding, model,
and the population to be served.
Design: when decisions are made about the educa
tional and other design aspects of the project and
an implementation strategy may be developed.
Operationalization: when the project must adapt to
the realities of its institutional setting and project
plans must be translated into practice.
Continuation: when the project achieves a stable
funding state /Sumner and Zellman 19 77:vi7.
The one characteristic which the Rand authors found to dis
tinguish bilingual education from most other educational
innovations is the pervasive nature of many internal and
external political influences, which are especially dominant
in the initiation and continuation phases but also influence
and change the implementation of a project. Sumner and
Zellman (1977:8).label as "political": internal administra
tive influences such as decisions on budget and staffing
priorities; local constituency influences, which include
community advocacy and opposition groups as well as
___________________________________________________________ 49
advocacy from bilingual teachers and opposition from mono
lingual teachers; and outside agency influences such as
legal decisions and federal agencies encouraging, changing
and enforcing Title VII regulations.
During the initiation phase, most decisions made in
bilingual programs are more dominated by political rather
than educational issues. Sumner and Zellman's (1977:13-14)
description of politicization of target constituencies (the
minority language community) is very similar to the
experience of the Washington, D.C. Hispanic community:
In most districts we visited, the levels of target
community awareness and politicization were gener
ally low at the time initiation decisions were being
made (in the late 1960s and early 1970s). Bilingual
education was a relatively new educational idea and
had not become the focus of community concern. Per
haps of equal importance, target constituencies were
very divided on the issue of bilingual education,
even if they were aware and politicized. In regions
where target groups formed a substantial part of the
population, long-standing policies had often existed
that prohibited the use of Spanish in particular and
of other non-English languages more generally in
public schools. Many Hispanic adults had grown up
believing that it was "bad" to speak Spanish, and
they were therefore ambivalent at best toward the
idea of bilingual education. Another set of target
community members had more practical objections.
They felt that time spent learning and reinforcing
Spanish would necessarily reduce the amount of time
spent learning English. The result might be fluent
Spanish speakers who could not function effectively
in an English-dominant country.
As the level of politicization has increased in
target communities and programs have been initiated,
the concerns of those who were reluctant to speak
Spanish have been reduced, and most are supporters.
However, the objections of those who fear that
bilingual education will produce children who are
deficient in English have generally not been stilled.
50
The growing emphasis on the affective value of
bilingual education has reduced the number and
vociferousness of target community opponents.
Further, the political benefits of bilingual educa
tion programs are increasingly being recognized.
In addition to all the decisions which must be made
in the initiation phase such as the target community to be
served, resources available, the model to be implemented;
the selection of a project director is considered critical
to successful implementation. Since the director serves as
an advocate for the program, issues of the director's ethni
city and degree of politicization are important to the
community. Demands are frequently made by the community
that the director must be bilingual and a member of the
target group, while the school district usually demands that
the project director have the appropriate educational
credentials (Sumner and Zellman 1977:19-20).
Design and operationalization phases were found to
vary widely from project to project, as needs, resources,
and politics are unique to each location. The Rand authors
observed that there was a general tendency to develop
"homegrown" models in response to specific needs of each
local program. Most projects engaged in extensive local
materials development and provided a significant amount of
staff development. Secondary bilingual programs seem to be
much harder to operationalize than elementary programs.
Sumner and Zellman (1977:29) explain that:
________________________________________________________________ 51.
Instruction in the secondary grades is typically
departmentalized rather than provided in self-
contained classrooms; unless the project is large
relative to the size of the school, there may not
be enough resources to provide for flexible sched
uling. The situation is aggravated by the fact that
students in these age groups typically do not v/ant
to be identified with a special program that marks
them as being different or in need of remedial
instruction.
In the design phase, a more traditional concept of
education was usually planned; however, the Rand observers
found the level of innovative adaptation to be high in
actual implementation of the projects, in response to needs
as they occurred. Overall, there was less experimentation
with, for example, learning centers, open classrooms, or
diagnostic-prescriptive methods. The educational innova
tions most commonly adopted in bilingual projects involved
team teaching, plus obviously, the use of two languages, and
the introduction of multicultural curriculum elements
(Sumner and Zellman 1977:32-33, 44). This finding is
similar to that of Ortiz (1977).
The last phase, continuation, is so named by Sumner
and Zellman (1977) because many bilingual projects receive
continuing external money from federal and state sources
upon termination of the original Title VII proposal. The
last stage of other innovative projects is labeled "incor
poration" by the Rand authors because it usually represents
the absorption of the project into local school funds and
structures. The most overwhelming characteristic of the
__________________________________________________________________________52_
continuation phase for bilingual education is again that of
politics:
We found that the decision to continue a bilin
gual program at the end of the period of Title VII
funding (even if follow-on external fuhding was
available) was more politicized and generally more
contentious than the original decision to initiate.
Part of this, of course, is because continuation may
involve a greater financial commitment on the part
of a district, and plunges the decision into issues
of priorities, long-term staffing, and hierarchical
placement. But it also reflects a different environ
ment for bilingual education, one in which bilingual
education has been recognized as a right by some and
an excess by others, and in which proponents and
opponents have developed political acumen and deter
mination. Bilingual education is better known now
than in the earlier years of the program, and the
various constituency groups have had time to develop
and become politicized. Macro-pressures have
increased. Recent court decisions and administrative
actions have created a climate in which bilingual
education i£ both more legitimate and politically
necessary /Sumner and Zellman 1977:377.
The Rand study concludes with implications for
federal policy. The federal planners are naturally the
focus of their message because they were hired to assess the
government's role in Title VII projects. They summarize
with the now familiar theme of mutual adaptation as the key
to successful implementation:
With respect to its direct interaction with
district bilingual projects, there are two areas
that need particular focus by the OBE /Office of
Bilingual Education/: accomodation of the varying
needs of different localities, and realistic plan
ning for local project continuation /Sumner and
Zellman 1977:47/.
As Farrar et al. (1979) have pointed out, the
problem with the Rand study is that it still places the
central focus of attention on the importance of the federal
53
policy makers and planners. In contrast, this case study of
bilingual education in Washington, D.C., examines a project
which was initiated at the local level by Hispanic leaders
with immediate incorporation into local funding. Federal
money was used only for staff training and later for expan
sion of the project. Therefore, this study extends the
literature by examining implementation of a community-
evolved innovation through adaptation to a local school
setting, with federal influence occurring in later stages.
In this case, the word implementation may be a misnomer; for
the word implies that there is an original plan to be imple
mented. The process which will be described here is one of
evolution of an innovation, developed on the scene, in
response to the problems discovered as bilingual staff
entered and became a part of schools.
The change theory to be developed and expanded in
this case study centers the focus of attention not on the
centralist planners, nor on the process of mutual adaptation
between local and federal efforts, both of which imply
eventual resolution of problems. Instead, the focus is on
inherent tensions which never get fully resolved but create
an ongoing process of change. The characteristic which best
summarizes the pattern in the D.C. Bilingual Program is an
unresolved tension between the desire to keep a detached,
charismatic, somewhat anti-establishment character in the
locally initiated innovation and the need to become
_________ ' 54
professionally accepted by school system personnel and later
by federal standards, which pulls the innovation in the
direction of increasing bureaucratization and professional
ization of roles. Both sides of this tension manifest them
selves in many ways throughout the course of the Bilingual
Program's existence.
This kind of unresolved tension may especially charac
terize the nature of bilingual education because of the many
inherent conflicts the innovation is intended to address.
For example, schools frequently move towards establishing
more homogeneous groupings for easier teaching, but two-way
bilingual education attempts to provide some kind of balance
between homogeneity and heterogeneity. This same tension is
inherent within bilingual education itself, as will be shown
in this case study through one of the tensions, briefly
described here. The informal knowledge among bilingual
staff exists that the full, two-way maintenance bilingual
school has been highly successful in student achievement and
attitudes, with full equal-status integration of both
Hispanics and English speakers, while the reality of small
numbers of Spanish speakers in other schools necessitates
providing only transitional bilingual and ESL services,
which are regarded by staff and students as a lower-status,
compensatory program with very limited success. The same
tension exists in bilingual education at the federal level.
Goals of bilingual programs are frequently broadly stated
_____ 55
and unspecific because they reflect the value conflicts
inherent in the legislation and program guidelines, which
in turn reflect legitimate differences and conflicts within
the broader society itself (Marsh, Cassidy, and Mora
1980:22).
This view of creative change, seen as a constantly
evolving, never fully resolved, process of school adaptation
to a multitude of factors, will be described and expanded in
the context of the story of bilingual education in
Washington, D.C., in Chapters IV-VII.
56
CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
There is always a tension between narrowly focused
research studies which aim at isolating the impact of a
single variable on an outcome, and studies which attempt to
capture the rich complexities of schools. The literature
seems to carry an ongoing debate about the advantages and
disadvantages of quantitative and qualitative research. The
following discussion takes a look at the usefulness of
qualitative research and some of its limitations.
In the research and evaluation literature on
schools, various terms used in describing anthropological
and sociological field work are participant-observation, the
case study approach, ethnographic research, or holistic
study. All of these involve some form of study of a whole
human system in its natural setting (Diesing 1971:137).
This holistic study attempts to capture and express the
complexity of human beings and our organizations. Ethno
graphic observation of schools allows a researcher to
experience a program in depth, to become a part of the
community, and the students' and staff's daily lives, and
to observe behavior as it occurs naturally. Through the
attempt to capture and describe as comprehensive a picture
as possible of the inner workings of a school setting, one
57
can achieve a richness of detail and analysis that provides
more input from multiple sources than that provided by a
single testing instrument or questionnaire.
In-depth observation of a school setting is parti
cularly useful in analysis of school innovations. When a
change is introduced in a school setting, multiple factors
interact in ways which cannot easily be assessed and
analyzed in goal-oriented evaluation, which measures only
the predetermined goals and objectives of a program. Socio
logical and anthropological analysis looks at hidden goals
and outcomes as well as those anticipated by the school
system. Participant-observation can be a very useful form
of in-house process evaluation when the goal of a program is
constructive, ongoing change (Center for New Schools 1972).
In very recent years, anthropologists have been increasingly
used by school systems to add an ethnographic component to
school evaluations (Wolcott 1971:109). Whereas goal- .
oriented approaches to evaluation of schools assume that
human beings can reach a consensus about goals and appro
priate ways to measure them which are statistically
reliable, ethnographic evaluation makes no assumptions but
seeks to explore the underlying realities and complex
dynamics of a school program (Wilson 19 77). An anthropolo
gist analyzes the systems people set up for coping with the
multiple discrepancies one must face and their means of
adaptation to the structures given (Erickson 197 8).
_________ 58
Ethnographic study of schools thus is a method for describ
ing a cultural process of adaptation to relationships with
all the various people and community and school structures
one must deal with in the school setting (Carroll 1978).
Rather than to continue discussion of this method in the
abstract, the following section will focus on the way this
particular study was carried out, with reference to appro
priate literature which clarifies the strengths and
weaknesses of the method.
Preparation Prior to Beginning Field Work
The first step a field worker must take is to become
acquainted with the setting to be studied. My involvement
in the Washington, D.C. Bilingual Program from the very
first years gave me an insider's look at parent partici
pation, bilingual teaching, and some aspects of admini
stration. I was excited about the program and I wanted it
to succeed. This kind of intimacy with a project has
tremendous advantages in the wealth of inside sources of
information which are available to the researcher, but it
introduces the serious problem of observer bias. While
researcher bias is an inherent limitation in all types of
studies, it becomes acute when one has a clear preference
for the focus of the study. Yet there are ways to overcome
some of the inherent bias in a study of this type. This
issue will be further discussed towards the end of this
chapter.
The first means of providing some professional
distance came when I left the Bilingual Program in 1976 to
pursue a PhD. Classwork, reading and reflection on my
experience started an ongoing process of literature review
and an attempt to clarify some of the issues that had seemed
muddled when I was physically involved in the Bilingual
Program. Skeptics, cynics, enthusiasts, and moderates on
bilingual education provided an ongoing stimulus for new
ideas and for comparison with other change projects in
schools. After two years of separation and reflection, I
returned to Washington, D.C., to carry out the formal study.
Establishing a Role in the Setting To Be Studied
Many writings by anthropologists and sociologists
who have carried out field studies stress the importance of
taking a natural role in the setting to be studied, which is
called participant-observation. Through participation in
the day-to-day events of a given community within a given
role, such as teacher within a school, a researcher can
establish rapport with the subjects to be studied and can
thus have access to more information without disturbing the
natural context (King 1974). Some disadvantages of taking
on a task to perform within the setting are the obvious time
the task itself takes away from observation time, the
possibility of role conflict, the limitation on the groups
that are available to the observer in a given role, and the
60
possibility of biased interpretation of the findings because
of one's deeper involvement in the setting (Hargreaves 1967:
Appendix II; Warren 1974:431).
In my case, I had already established good rapport
with many of the bilingual staff, having access to schools
from previous contacts. In discussions with the admini
strators of the Bilingual Program, it was decided that I
could best carry out an intensive study of the schools and
the Hispanic community through an open role as researcher-
observer rather than taking a position such as resource
teacher or substitute. Therefore, this study is not based
on classic participant-observation but on previous direct
experience, followed by pure observation during the 16
months of field work.
In order to carry out the research/ I had to receive
permission from both the bilingual administrators and the
downtown school administration. I found that permission was
not easily granted because of the many sensitive issues
involved in research of minority students for a school
system which is 99 percent minority. As an Anglo with
experience living in Latin America, I had established credi
bility through previous work with the Bilingual Program.
Through the help of the bilingual administrators, eventually
I received permission from the Division of Research and
Evaluation of the D.C. Public Schools to carry out the
study.
61
Interviewing
The next task was to immerse myself into the daily
activities of all those involved with the Bilingual Program.
At this point, I had formed a series of research questions
which gave focus to the fairly ambitious idea of observing
and describing all aspects of the Bilingual Program and its
impact on the Hispanic community. The research questions
did not define the boundaries of the study but they provided
some means of initial focus as I began interviews. The two
basic questions formed in the early stages have remained the
central themes throughout the study: examining the process
of a school innovation and its impact on schools, and the
relationship between schools and the Hispanic community.
My first contacts were with some of the Bilingual
Office staff and visits to some bilingual staff in schools.
These were informal meetings, to let staff members know that
I was back in town, to become re-acquainted, to get an
informal idea of their perceptions of how things had changed
since I had been gone, and to describe to them my plans for
the study. Most staff members were warm and accepting and
willing to participate in the study. I asked that people
inform me of meetings within the Hispanic community which
I might attend.
The first structured interviews I planned were
extensive and time-consuming. I soon found that I needed
to focus on one particular aspect of the evidence to be
62
collected rather than to cover all points with each inter
view. Once I was able to recognize that I could come back
to each person in later interviews, the sessions were more
productive and focused. Marsh and Acland (19 79) refer to
this strategy for avoiding information overload as "rounds"
of interviewing.
Another part of the learning process in conducting
interviews was the decision of whether or not to tape, when
people felt comfortable with a tape recorder. After several
sessions of taping and transcribing, I concluded that for
a single researcher, transcription is such a time-consuming
process that it is not worth the time it takes away from
other tasks. There are several potential dangers one must be
aware of, however, when relying solely on note-taking.
Obviously, one cannot record every word on paper as the
interview is conducted; therefore, the interviewer must be
very conscious of one's own selection process and attempt to
record as fully as possible. It is very important to
re-experience the interview or event as soon as possible and
add commentary on the field notes, especially before going
to bed at night. Sleep seems to disturb the recall process.
Almost all field workers refer to the importance of this
point (Diesing 1971; Gearing, Hughes, Carroll, Precourt,
and Smith 1975). In the post-session notes on the inter
view, one should also record the context in which the
interview took place, nonverbal behavior, and any other
________ 6 3
details which seem important to the total experience.
Another problem with not taping interviews is that the
narrative will not contain as many direct quotes, which add
a great deal of down-to-earth readability to ethnographic
analysis. This is a weakness of this particular study.
Through experience, one becomes increasingly skilled
in interviewing techniques. With staff members who did not
know me, it was always important to allow a period of time
for getting acquainted before attempting a formal interview.
I found that the more I let an interview flow naturally, the
more people relaxed and shared a lot of their perceptions.
Informal interviews were helpful in contexts such as a
professional conference, as staff members were frequently
more relaxed in this setting, away from the work context,
and willing to share more confidential information. Inter
views varied greatly in length, depending on time and
circumstances. Some were 10-15 minutes and others where the
person seemed to feel the need to talk and share experiences
lasted as long as 3-4 hours. Sometimes people requested
that I not take notes. "This is off the record." In
contexts where no note-taking was allowed, I could only
attempt to absorb the total process taking place and write
my perceptions of the event as soon as possible after it
occurred. It was important to force myself to keep records
of everything observed.
In addition to structured and informal interviews
64
in many different contexts such as work, home, on the tele
phone, in community meetings, and at professional confer
ences, another very useful technique was the group interview
(Clark 1978). I gained many insights from discussions where
there was interaction between staff members, such as when I
invited a few teachers to my home for lunch, or focused the
discussion on one or two issues during a luncheon conversa
tion with several staff members, or talked with teachers on
the picket line during a strike. Another means of helpful
information to discover staff interrelationships was to
follow a "crisis1 1 when it occurred through several layers of
interpretation. In this case, I sometimes served as a means
of staff communication between schools. For example, it was
interesting to follow a rumor about one incident from school
to school to see how it became exaggerated or changed.
Every staff member had a different story to tell about the
incident. This illustrates the importance of understanding
that no single story is fact or reality. All interviews are
individual persons' perceptions of a reality which can never
be fully known or exact. All together, they give some
awareness of events as they happened, but that which is
described is always a subject reality with many different
levels of perception by all the participants in that
reality.
From January, 1979, through April, 198 0, I conducted
204 interviews with 113 different people. Of these,
65
29 interviews were with bilingual administrators, 28 with
bilingual office staff, 39 with bilingual teachers, 12 with
bilingual counselors, 9 with bilingual teacher aides, 19
with former bilingual staff, 21 with regular school staff,
19 with members of the broader D.C. community, 17 with
Hispanic, Chinese, and English-speaking parents, and 11 with
students in the Bilingual Program. I was not able to inter
view all 62 bilingual staff members. Because more time was
spent interviewing bilingual staff than community members,
the analysis provides a more thorough description of admin
istrative issues, and there is less representation of
individual parents' points of view. However, there were
many documents obtained on Hispanic community development,
parents' meetings, questionnaires for parents, and other
such data which helped to fill in some of the information on
the community. Missing from the story is the students'
point of view. There simply was not enough time to collect
data from students, and this should be done in a future
study. Sindell (1969:601) points out that
There seems to be a bias toward studying reality
only as adults see it. . . . Consequently when
studying schools, anthropologists rarely interview
students in depth about their feelings, attitudes
and values. Nor do they usually do participant
observation with children outside the classroom.
One difficulty in this area is the difference between
researchers and children in age and status.
This study has the same limitation: it does not include a
picture of school as students perceive it, other than the
data recorded in evaluations on students' attitudes.
66
Observation
A second important component of soaking in the total
context was observation and occasional participation in
events in the community and schools. This included such
activities as Hispanic community meetings, parent advisory
councils, PTA meetings, bilingual classes, parent demonstra
tions, bilingual staff meetings, cultural presentations at
schools, local and national conferences, and bilingual staff
parties. I was invited to attend most events, but was never
included in meetings of the Hispanic community leaders.
Since the focus of this study was not on classroom issues,
I spent very little time actually observing classes. I was
also given a desk in the resource center and while working
on files was able to observe general patterns among staff
within the Bilingual Office.
Data Collection
Most of the data for the study came from files
within the Bilingual Office. In addition, other sources
were made available to me from community office files and
from documents saved by former staff members. During the
period of the study there were numerous useful newspaper
articles and a few television programs on the D.C. Public
Schools and on the Hispanic community. Sociological and
population data were obtained from the Division of Research
and Evaluation of the D.C. Public Schools and the Census
Bureau. Within Bilingual Office files, numerous pamphlets,
________________________________________________________________ 67j
staff reports, questionnaires, testing, year-end evalua
tions, language and cultural heritage surveys, proposals,
and interim and final reports for federal funds were made
available to me. Several student papers, a Master's thesis,
and a doctoral dissertation on aspects of the Bilingual
Program also were useful.
Building Themes and Analysis
Through observation and interviewing, the two broad
themes came to have increasing focus as time went on. A
number of subthemes began to emerge. Reconstructing the
early years was one of the most difficult tasks, as indivi
dual people's accounts varied more, since we were attempting
to remember what happened 10-15 years ago. However, pieces
of the puzzle began to fit together as several sources
confirmed each aspect described in the study. "Contextual
validity" can thus be established through cross-checking
multiple sources of data, which reinforce each discovered
theme (Diesing 1971:147-149). "Like the psychologist, the
field worker has repeated measures of behavior and separate
measures of the same behavior to assure validity and relia
bility of the data" (Lutz and Ramsey 1974:8). At the same
time, as themes emerge and are re-checked and modified with
each new source of data, there is no sense of closure or a
feeling that a topic has been fully covered. There are
always more people to interview, more data to check,
questions unanswered.
68
Diesing (1971:165) describes the lack of closure in quali
tative research:
A pattern is rarely if ever finished completely.
The model-builder always has loose ends to work on,
points that do not fit in, connections that are
puzzling. . . . There are always themes whose meaning
remains unclear or ambiguous and alternative interpre
tations and patterns that cannot be conclusively
rejected. The researcher gradually becomes more
active and tries to fill in the gaps, but he never
quite finishes.
The nature of human subject matter also produces
incompleteness of pattern. Human systems are always
developing and always unfinished; they always retain
inconsistencies, ambiguities, and absurdities. . . .
Consequently a faithful model of a particular system
at a particular time will itself include inconsis
tencies, ambiguities, and exceptions.
Yet the complexity described does provide considerable
insight into the school system and its relationship to the
community.
One of the major differences between ethnographic
and experimental research is that experimental researchers
begin with specific predictions which are to be tested,
while ethnographic study has no specific expectations.
Instead, hypotheses, or themes, are generated in the process
of observation. The anthropologist or sociologist doing
field work expects to be surprised with new phenomena which
generate new interpretations (Overholt and Stallings
1976:13) .
The most difficult part of this study was to pull
together the material>analyze patterns taking place, and
build theories. One ends with much more data collected than
that which can actually be used in the description
69
(Becker 1958). Every paragraph of the story combines infor
mation from several interviews and documents; yet sources
cannot be documented because interviews must be kept confi
dential. No schools or individuals are named in this study,
in keeping with requirements of the D.C. Public Schools.
The selection and integration of all the data constitute the
most difficult part of the research act. No firm rules
guide decisions about what to include and exclude. Natu
rally, every effort has been made to present as complete and
accurate a picture of events as they occurred, and as
thorough a balance of the many different points of view on
each issue.
This brings us back to the problem of subjective
bias of the researcher in studies of this type. Diesing
(1971:280) discusses this issue:
The experimenter tries to solve the problem of
objectivity by detaching himself from his experiment
and his subject matter as fully as possible, emo
tionally and physically. In this way he hopes that
experimenter bias will have a minimal effect on the
results. It might be argued that this is also the
proper solution for the participant observer. . . .
However, this solution will not do because it
takes the heart out of the method. Participant
observation depends essentially on the creative use
of bias to discover things that would otherwise not
be observable, so the minimizing of bias and involve
ment would destroy the method. An observer who is
not emotionally involved will be unable to empathize,
to see things from the perspective of his subject,
and therefore will miss much of the meaning of what
he sees.
Several aspects of this study help to mediate the problem
of objectivity. One is the collection of many kinds of
70
----------------------------------------------------------
evidence. In my writing, I established a rule that every
statement I made was confirmed by at least two to three
sources. Because of the confidentiality of data from inter
views and multiple cross-documentation from many sources,
many points cannot be fully referenced in the text. The
reader is informed when statements represent only one
person's point of view, or perceptions of only certain
groups.
Another factor which aided in establishing greater
objectivity was my distance from the Bilingual Program over
a two-year period before beginning the formal study. While
working as a teacher, I wanted to see the program succeed,
and was deeply involved in commitment to that process.
However, getting away for a time allowed me to take a more
balanced perspective on both strengths and weaknesses of the
school setting. Upon re-involvement, it was helpful to take
only the role of researcher to continue some balance of
objectivity.
There is also the possibility of introduction of
bias caused by change brought through the observer's
physical presence in the setting (Diesing 1971:283; Sanday
1976:175). In this study, my observation was usually in
meetings where I blended in with the group. I was fairly
well accepted in most contexts without special attention
given to me, except for initial hesitance among new staff
who had not known me before. I tried not to overidentify
71
with staff members but to listen and be sensitive to their
concerns and to record as accurately as possible each one's
perceptions of events.
Conclusion
This type of study is exciting, stimulating,
exhausting, and time-consuming. There are times when one
experiences a feeling of being lost in all the data, and
other times when a discovery produces real surprises, as
themes emerge and are reassessed. Like all studies of this
kind, the ultimate purpose is not to quantify relationships
or to compel the reader to narrow conclusions about the
rights and wrongs of educational practice. Holistic
research can best be described as illumination. The object
of this study is to convey a sense of the whole, a feeling
for the complex of events that constitutes bilingual educa
tion in the Washington, D.C. Public Schools. The story can
never be told in its entirety and each story teller must
face the realization that his or her account will illuminate
only a part of the whole.
72
CHAPTER IV
THE CASE STUDY: THE EARLY YEARS
The four chapters which follow provide the "thick
description" of this case study. This chapter focuses on
background information on Washington, D.C., the Hispanic
community, and the public school system, examining the
broader context surrounding the Bilingual Program. It then
describes the progression towards the decision to implement
bilingual education, the first year of training of bilingual
teachers, and the first year of operationalization of the
program, 1971-1972.
As the story unfolds, two broad themes are being
developed: one focuses on the gradual maturation of the
Hispanic community and its relationship to the public
schools, and the other examines the process of change within
schools. The reader should keep in mind that the purpose of
this detailed examination is to get away from the focus of
narrow evaluations which rely largely on student outcomes as
a measurement of success or failure of a school program.
This account provides another way of looking at schools in
their complexity. For example, it takes into account other
important issues to consider such as how people feel about
what they are doing in schools, or the importance of the
evolution of a sense of belonging to a community. A second
73
aspect of the complexity involves a different way of
addressing planned change in schools, through examining a
change project which evolved locally, rather than being
planned and molded by federal or local educational
"experts." These themes and others will be developed and
expanded towards the end of this chapter and in subsequent
chapters.
The Inner City Context
The inner city to be described in this research is
typical in some ways of many large metropolitan areas in the
United States and unique in others. As the nation's
capital, it attracts highly energetic and culturally
flexible young professionals, as well as poverty level
families on welfare looking for opportunities for survival
or upward mobility. Washington, D.C., also serves as a port
of entry for immigrants from countries all over the world.
Ten years ago the city received constant criticism
in almost all sectors, from the way it handled local
politics, education, housing, to welfare services. Today
the mood is upbeat. The media extol the city's significant
reduction of crime (Feld 1976) , the emergence of the capital
as a blossoming center of the arts (Roosevelt 1980), its
new image as an international world capital (Dickey and
Nunes 1980a), and a new, confident brand of politics:
No city has come of age politically more dramati- .
cally. . . . Anyone who doubts that the city has
changed and is changing should converse with visitors
_________________________________________________________________ 74
who are in the city after being away from the nation's
capital for ten years or more. They talk excitedly
about the strong vitality of the city, the expanding
range of activities— educational, athletic and
cultural.
Moreover, they talk sincerely about the easing
of tensions between the races, the ethnic unity, the
rising tide of pride in the city and the increasing
spirit of civic interests that has overcome a once
inactive and politically stagnant population
/Editorial, Washington Afro-American 1979^7-
Some observers feel that the present mood of new
vitality stems partially from an attempt by Congress to
begin a move toward District home rule. One of the unique
problems of the city has been continued federal control of
city budgets and legislation, with a mostly white Congress
making the decisions for a predominantly Black city. Murray
(1980) explains recent developments on home rule:
Supervision of the city's affairs by Congress is
but a vestige of the minute-by-minute control Capitol
Hill exercised in the days before limited home rule.
Still, it grates on local nerves.
But even this limited supervision of the District
by Congress may be on its way out. District govern
ment officials and their friends in Congress say that
1980 is the year for the final big push toward full
local control over local affairs.
Bills are being drafted for the new session of
Congress that would let the District plan its budget
and spend its money as it likes— ending line-by-line
congressional review of the city's plan— and set the
amount of the federal government's annual payment to
the city by a formula, rather than by congressional
whim.
Other bills would end the power of Congress to
veto laws passed by the D.C. City Council, except
for those few laws clearly affecting the "federal
interest," and give the city its own district
attorney, local judges appointed by the mayor and
control over its prisoners. . . .
75
/The mayor/ is scheduled to send his legislative
message to Congress later this month. The city hopes
to begin phasing in judicial autonomy in 1981 and to
start fiscal autonomy in 1982.
Only in the last twelve years have any city officials been
elected rather than appointed. The first election of the
School Board was permitted by Congress in 1968. The mayor
was not elected until 1974. Since elections have been held,
there has been an upsurge in neighborhood and community
action with involvement of many different people in varied
forms of community participation, in housing, in social
services, in the schools.
Multiple ethnic and class groups alternately compete
and struggle together for the services to be provided and
for the power to influence or control local city institu
tions. Blacks constitute a 73 percent majority (493,760 in
1978; Ahuja 1979) within the District of Columbia, predomi
nating in almost all sections east of Rock Creek Park.
There is a sizeable upper middle class community of older
established Black families who are descendants of well-to-do
professionals from the nineteenth century. Large numbers
of well-educated middle class Blacks live in the outer areas
of the District and many are moving to the suburbs of the
wider metropolitan area in Maryland. However, the majority
of Blacks in the central city are families with lower
income, and housing problems are serious, with overcrowded,
substandard facilities, and loss of low-income housing
76
through condominium conversions and rehabilitation (Camp
1980; Simons 1979).
The pattern of white flight to suburban Maryland and
Virginia during the 1950s and 1960s ended during the past
decade (Feinberg 1979), with a small but fairly stable white
middle and upper middle class population (173,800, or 25
percent, in 1978; Ahuja 1979) concentrated in Georgetown and
upper northwest D.C. west of Rock Creek Park. In these
areas, whites continue to serve a very active role in neigh
borhood politics and schools. In housing within this sector
single-family residences predominate.
There is a sizeable international population settled
in the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area, with Spanish
speakers, Indochinese, and Koreans being the largest in
numbers. Personnel of embassies and international organi
zations make up a small percentage of the international
population, but most international residents are recent
immigrants to the United States. It is difficult to deter
mine accurate numbers of immigrants. Dickey and Nunes
(1980a) explain:
The precise number of new immigrants here is
hard to pinpoint. Estimates of the foreign-born
population now living in the metropolitan area who
are not American citizens range upwards from 100,000,
but it is a population that is so mobile, so new and
in some cases so hidden from the government that
accurate figures do not yet exist.
In the District of Columbia, for instance, nearly
20,000 foreign residents, visitors, students and
refugees from 122 different nations filed annual
registration cards with the U.S. Immigration and
77
Naturalization Service in 1979. That was up about
5.00 0 from the year before. In all of Maryland,
57.000 registered, with 55,000 in the state of
Virginia.
Uncounted thousands more— naturalized U.S. citi
zens, illegal aliens, and people who simply forget
to send in the INS registration cards— do not show
up in statistics.
The demographic breakdowns that do exist show
the international population of Washington as an
amazingly variegated mixture. No single nationality
or class predominate among the new immigrants here,
though some are more visible than others.
The Korean and Vietnamese communities have settled largely
in suburban areas of Maryland and Virginia; the Chinese
community has a small commercial center in downtown D.C. and
Chinese people are located throughout the metropolitan area.
Most immigrants to D.C. live in the predominantly white
areas west of Rock Creek Park, or in a borderline area on
the east side immediately adjacent to the park. The major
ity of immigrants who settle in the inner city are low
income families, with a strong desire for upward mobility.
Like Blacks, they face problems in the shortage of lower-
income housing in the city.
While it is a fairly well established fact that
Spanish speakers constitute the largest minority group
within the District of Columbia, as well as in the broader
metropolitan area, no one knows for certain precise numbers
of Hispanics living within the inner city. Estimates in
newspaper articles vary widely, ranging from 20,000 to
100,0 00. The D.C. city government makes annual counts in
only two categories, whites and nonwhites, stating that
____________________ 78
other minority groups constitute only 1.7 percent (8,826 in
1978) of the nonwhite population. This figure would seem to
represent a clear underestimate, since a rough count by the
U.S. Census Bureau in 1976 found 13,390 persons of Spanish
language origin alone, and there are other minority groups
besides Hispanics in the District. The 1970 census counted
15,671 Spanish speakers, but the number of legal and illegal
immigrants at that time was frequently estimated at anywhere
from 20,000 to 50,000. The 1980 census takers hope to be
more successful in reaching all residents. Much larger
middle class Hispanic communities are settled in suburban
Maryland and Virginia, estimates ranging from 60,000 to
100,000.
Spanish speakers were few in number in this area in
the early 1960s; they were diplomats, international busi
nessmen, successful middle class professionals, and a few
immigrants employed in short-term jobs or as domestics. In
1965, immigration laws were changed from a quota system to
a policy by which permission to enter the U.S. was granted,
based on evidence that the immigrant had gainful employment
awaiting him or her. Soon a pattern emerged in which
Washington, D.C., became a port of entry for increasing
numbers of immigrants from many different Latin American
countries (D.C. Manpower Administration, 1971). As the
Hispanic influx has continued throughout the 19 70s, the
trend has been attributed to problems in Latin American
_________________________________________________________________79
countries with war or political instability or overpopula
tion or areas where natural disasters such as earthquakes or
hurricanes have recently occurred. The tendency to locate
initially in D.C. is so strong because diplomatic personnel
and Latin American organizations are located in the city.
In addition, in Latin America the capital city in each
country is usually the major area offering employment and
educational opportunities; thus an initial assumption for
some is that the capital of the United States offers the
greatest opportunities. Those who initially settle in the
D.C. area encourage family members and friends to join them,
and thus the pattern becomes established.
In contrast to Puerto Rican New York or Cuban Miami,
no single nationality predominates in the broader metro
politan area, but within the inner city there is a slight
majority of Central Americans when the six Central American
countries are combined as one. Since Central America itself
represents a diverse mixture of classes and races and
cultural contexts, and there are many other immigrants from
all parts of the Caribbean, South America, Mexico, Spain,
and Portugal, the Hispanic population of the D.C. metro
politan area is broadly diverse in cultural and social class
background.
Hispanic families new to the area generally locate
first in the areas of Adams-Morgan and Mt. Pleasant, just
east of Rock Creek Park. The ethnically diverse commercial
80
center along Columbia Road and 18th Street has a large
number of Hispanic-owned small businesses and restaurants,
and as local Hispanic agencies have been established, they
have located in this area. Large numbers of Spanish
speaking families also live in apartment buildings along
Connecticut Avenue west of the park from Calvert Street
northward. Most families live in fairly tight quarters when
they first arrive and as soon as they make sufficient money
they move on to better housing. The goal for many is a more
middle class home in Maryland or Virginia. Less expensive
housing in the inner city has become extremely scarce as
extensive renovation has taken place in Adams-Morgan and
Mt. Pleasant, and increasing numbers of apartments along
Connecticut Avenue are being converted to condominiums,
which low-income residents cannot afford.
This city, with its richly diverse population, its
problems, and its potential as the nation's capital, has
provided a context for the growth and increasing maturity
of various ethnic groups. Within this larger context, this
study concentrates on the maturation of the Hispanic commu
nity of Washington, D.C., and its relationship to the public
schools from 1970 to 1980. The origins of this development
can be captured through the reflections of several Hispanics
as they re-created through interviews the mood of the middle
1960s in D.C.
81
Hispanics in D.C.: 1965-1970
Middle class Hispanics who have lived in D.C. for
at least the last fifteen years characterize the middle
1960s in Washington as being a time of social unrest and
uncertainty for all groups. The city was the center of
increasingly large demonstrations against the war in
Vietnam, and local residents were aware of protesters' daily
presence. Blacks were escalating their demands for civil
rights, and the capital city again was host for large num
bers of people expressing their concerns for establishing a
more equitable system for all people. The mood was focused
on problems and the need for change. Within the Black
community, events such as Kennedy's and Malcolm X's assassi
nations and the Watts riots in Los Angeles stirred feelings
of anger and increasing dissatisfaction. Pent up feelings
exploded with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King,
and riots, fires, and looting were widespread in the central
city, the worst occurring around the 14th Street corridor
in the spring and summer of 1968.
All of this had an impact on the small but growing
Hispanic community. The term "community" is used for lack
of another single word, but it does not adequately describe
what existed in the latter 1960s for Spanish speakers in
D.C. There was really no sense of community or together
ness. Instead, it was:
82
. . . a relatively disorganized group on a social
and political level with persons tending to identify
with their families or immediate neighborhoods as
opposed to the community as a whole /D.C. Manpower
Administration 1971:6/.
This was a natural product of the heterogeneity of national
ities, races, cultures, and social classes represented by
those Spanish speakers who had emigrated to the area. Cuban
refugees tended to be a more closely knit group; however,
in the early years they did not aid the process of community
development very much within the inner city as they were
mostly middle class and settled outside of D.C. They also
received more federal assistance because of their special
refugee status.
While there was little homogeneity among Spanish
speaking residents of D.C., when questioned as to their
identity, Hispanics usually identified with Spanish speakers
to the exclusion of other groups and individuals. There was
a general lack of trust of city agencies and institutions,
with the feeling expressed by Hispanics that the city's
institutions were completely unresponsive to Spanish
speakers. Hispanics felt isolated because of their general
lack of knowledge of English and their few contacts with
people who knew and understood the system. It was a common
complaint among Hispanics that while there was a crying need
for many social services to be provided for the newly
arriving immigrants, few city agencies were involved in
helping these people. The city agencies which attempted to
83
get involved, such as the D.C. Manpower Administration, were
frequently hampered by a lack of contact with community
spokespeople. No clear leaders of "the community" had
emerged (D.C. Manpower Administration 1971:23-25).
One of the first Hispanic agencies to be established
was the Spanish Catholic Center (El Centro Catolico
Hispano), founded by an Italian priest in the Roman Catholic
Archdiocese. It began classes for adults in English, and
the Spanish-speaking priests who worked there provided coun
seling and referral services for newly arriving Hispanic
families. These men began to articulate the needs of the
evolving community and to serve as spokespeople for these
concerns. A Hispanic Ward organizer, active in precinct
politics, attempted initial communication with city politi
cians. Many people came to him for help, and he seemed to
serve a function similar to that of a patr6n: tradition
ally, in some areas of Latin America, it was customary for
a personal friend or relative in the government to cut the
red tape to get services needed. However, at that time no
Spanish speaker had much influence within the city govern
ment. A handful of other middle class Spanish speakers who
had made their way into small jobs within the city bureau
cratic structures also were concerned about the growing
needs of Hispanic residents of the city, and thus a very
small group of Hispanic spokespeople began to emerge,
towards the end of the 196 0s. Some Hispanics interviewed
_______________________________________________________ 84
labeled this group the "first generation" of leaders.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 had stimulated the hope
that federal assistance would eventually solve many problems
with which minorities were confronted. While the politi
cally oriented spokespeople were seeking ways to place the
Hispanic community as an entity on the political map of
local structures and services, a few others looked for
people who could help them seek federal money for education
projects. Rhetoric about the Great Society during the 1960s
had emphasized the importance of education, and one of the
biggest complaints among Hispanics was lack of education and
lack of English skills. Those Hispanic immigrants arriving
with a relatively good educational background generally
found their way to the suburbs in a short time. Thus the
pattern began and continues to the present of the largest
number of adult Spanish speakers in the inner city consis
ting of people with a very poor educational background and
few saleable work skills. The first easily visible need for
these adults was to teach them English, so churches and
small social service agencies in the area talked of setting
up English programs.
The first federally funded program was initiated in
June, 1969, by the D.C. Manpower Administration. Called
Project Adelante, the classes were designed to provide
intensive English language training for unemployed and
underemployed Spanish-speaking professionals and
_________________________________________________________________85
semiprofessionals who had already had some training or on-
the-job experience within their own countries (D.C. Manpower
Administration 1971:93-94). Though there were many com
plaints about various aspects of the program, it served an
important function of gathering together several recently
arrived immigrants trained as educators who were concerned
about educational needs among Spanish speakers in D.C. In
small meetings and informal conversations among the project
participants and that small group of "first generation
leaders," possible ways to organize for more funds for
community assistance were discussed. No one knew exactly
the direction to go; they only knew that something needed to
be done.
One of the concerns discussed was schools. Spanish
speaking children were arriving in increasing numbers each
year, it seemed. No one knew how many there were, but
walking the streets of the neighborhood, it was evident that
many kids were not in school. Some neighborhood workers at
that time estimated Spanish-speaking dropouts and truants
to be around 30 0 in the Mt. Pleasant and Adams-Morgan area
(D.C. Manpower Administration 1971:49). Newly arriving
teenagers frequently did not last long in public school
because of racial tension, exposure to drugs, academic
problems due to poor school preparation and lack of English,
and the necessity to work to help support their families.
Some of those interviewed characterized the mood at
86
one junior high school which housed many of the new immi
grants as almost a civil war between Blacks and Hispanics.
The school building itself was new, having been opened in
1967 as part of the Model School Division of the D.C. Public
Schools, a partially federally funded project (to be dis
cussed later). However, because it was located on 16th
Street at a crucial dividing point between Black and
Hispanic housing, it became a center of racial tension for
the young people there. Students were constantly being
suspended for getting involved in fights in which serious
injuries were inflicted or for extortion or racially based
taunting. Hispanic parents often kept their children home
to avoid the "security problem." In this and other schools
there was a complete lack of communication between staff and
Spanish-speaking students and virtually no contact with
home s.
Immigrant parents were desperate for their children
to learn English quickly to serve as translators for the
parents, who received little exposure to English in their
jobs. At the same time, they needed older children to stay
home and take care of the younger children, as parents
frequently worked two jobs, which meant no time for night
courses in English or for normal family life. To add to the
cycle of frustration, when parents felt the public schools
were unsafe, they sometimes used some of the hard-earned
money to send children to parochial schools. It was
87
estimated that in 1970, approximately half of the Hispanic
children in D.C. were attending parochial schools (D.C.
Manpower Administration 1971:48). Another strategy was for
Hispanic families to send their children to suburban public
schools, where they would live with relatives or friends and
visit their families in D.C. on weekends. Thus, for Spanish
speakers, D.C. public schools were not providing the suppor
tive educational context which parents so desperately
wanted.
Following some outbreaks of violence in 196 8 at the
new troubled junior high school, the director of a federally
funded project within the Model School Division was called
in to conduct a community workshop. As she met with the
Hispanic spokespeople who had been struggling with these
issues, the director was exposed for the first time to the
existence of a growing Hispanic "community" and to the
expressed need for a different form of education for
Spanish-speaking children in D.C.
As director of the pilot community program of the
Education Development Center (EDC) in Boston, which was one
of the regional educational laboratories of the U.S. Office
of Education designed to explore the improvement of schools,
this school innovator had access to and contact with sources
of potential funding. The projects she supervised in
various cities were designed to provide a stimulus for
change coming from outside the school systems. Within D.C.,
88
her project had supported a new science curriculum, imple
mented in 1965 within the Model School Division. In 1967,
EDC received funding from Title I and Title IV of the Ele
mentary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) to initiate the
Innovation Team, a group of 2 0 relatively young, mostly
Black teachers from the D.C. school system who were then
re-trained in discovery and open classroom methods of teach
ing and other innovative practices. The team conducted
workshops on teaching in all subject areas and were on call
for introduction of many innovations to the Model School
Division and later to other areas of the D.C. school system
(Cort, Henderson, Justison, O'Keefe, and Potter 1969). In
196 8, the EDC director set up a private organization in
D.C., Associates for Renewal in Education (ARE), to continue
these change projects when federal funding was taken away,
which President Nixon chose to do not long after. ARE esta
blished the Advisory and Learning Exchange, which still
exists as a source for teachers in the D.C. metropolitan
area to develop local materials, attend workshops and
exchange information on teaching methods.
In pondering the plight of Spanish-speaking students
in public schools, one small incident triggered the EDC
director's accelerated interest in funding some kind of
project for Spanish speakers in the District. She was
called to help the staff at one elementary school solve a
problem with a Spanish-speaking child who could not stop
89
crying. The police and staff members tried to help, but no
one spoke Spanish. She went to the school and spoke to the
child and found out that he had been raped by some other
students. The emotional impact of this incident set the
wheels in motion for proposal writing.
In January, 1970, one of the EDC pilot community
projects in Boston had begun some transitional bilingual
classes for Spanish speakers. The director followed the
progress of that experiment and began to consider the possi
bility of some form of bilingual education for Hispanic
children in D.C. In making a case for Boston, the following
statement was prepared by the Education Development Center
as justification for use of the native language in teaching
Spanish-speaking children in the U.S.:
Linguists now accept certain principles in the train
ing of children who are learning a second language in
an unnatural situation. These are:
1. The best medium for teaching a second language
is the mother tongue.
2. Reading and writing in the first language
should precede literacy in the second language.
3. The younger the child is taught to be bilin
gual, the better for mastery of both.
4. The home language should be used for teaching
as a whole or a part of the curriculum.
5. A continuity of academic advancement in the
native tongue should be provided.
6. The history and culture of the country of
origin should be included in the training
for its own value and for the understanding
of_ the language in its full context
. . . . . . . /Kelley 1971:4/.
As the idea of some form of bilingual schooling for D.C.
developed, the EDC director became convinced that some
aspects of the impetus for this innovation had to come from
90
outside the school system, especially bilingual staff. She
watched the bilingual project in Boston flounder, as it
wrestled with endless political and administrative problems.
It was being run by school system personnel, using teachers
already within the system (Cline and Joyce 1971). It was
the EDC director's opinion that the situation in D.C. needed
to be handled differently.
The school system of the District has distinct pro
blems that reflect the complex government of the
city itself. Both administration and faculty of the
schools enjoy an independence that makes central
administration difficult. Lately the main priority
of the system has been the education of black children;
efforts to help the non-English speaking minorities
are left to individual teachers or reading special
ists. Incentive for programs must_come from persons
and groups outside of the system /Kelley 1971:22/.
Whereas Boston had used some teachers in the system who had
studied Spanish to teach the bilingual classes, the EDC
director decided that it was crucial to have native Spanish
speakers coming from outside the system, so that they would
be in a position where they could mediate between the system
and students, as active cultural representatives for
students. This later became one significant aspect of the
Bilingual Program in D.C.
Teacher Training: 1970-1971
In the spring of 1970, the planning group in
Washington, D.C., prepared and submitted a proposal soli
citing funding through the Education Professions Development
Act (EPDA), which was authorized through Title V of the
91
Higher Education Act of 1965. The EDC director spearheaded
the committee, with the Hispanic spokespeople of the "commu
nity" and one or two heads of foundations serving as
advisors. The plan was to recruit and train sixteen native
Spanish-speaking teachers in a one-year program that would
qualify them to teach in the D.C. Public Schools. EPDA
awarded the project $100,000, and the D.C. school system
agreed to supplement the grant with an additional $48,000
(Bilingual Office 1970; Kelley 1971).
This initial federal funding could be seen as a
potentially significant source for federal influence and
planning in the early stages, but it was a relatively small
grant with few strings attached. As EPDA grants continued
through the next four years, the money was used only for
training and materials development. Proposals and evalua
tions for EPDA were miniscule in comparison to later
requirements for Title VII grants. Therefore, the early
planning years of the Bilingual Program were not subject to
the rigorous scrutiny of federal requirements and evalua
tions of later years.
The teachers chosen to participate in the training
were selected by a committee of the same Hispanic leaders
who had worked to get the proposal funded. The main
criteria for selection were that the candidates should:
be bilingual; have teacher certification credentials from
their countries of origin; have some experience in
________ 92
education; and be a permanent resident of this country
(Somoza 1975:74). However, in searching for qualified
candidates who had had some teaching experience, the
recruiters found that the requirement of being bilingual had
to be waived. Most of those chosen were recently arrived
immigrants, not yet at all fluent in English. Another
important aspect of the selection process was that candi
dates were chosen to represent a wide range of Spanish
speaking countries (11 total), since the population to be
served was equally multinational in background. Some of
those chosen had been participants in Project Adelante dur
ing the previous year.
Also in the spring of 1970, a new non-profit private
Hispanic agency, the Spanish Education Development Center
(SED Center), had been organized and funded by EDC and other
foundations. The new director, originally from Colombia,
was given the task of coordinating the 16 Spanish-speaking
teachers' training. She had had experience teaching in a
private bilingual school in the city, and she was committed
to working hard for the evolving Hispanic community. In
addition, the connection with SED Center was made in the
hope that an agency outside the school system would provide
a greater stimulus to new ideas and more creative thinking
about solutions to the Schools' problems. This was another
part of the strategy to bring change to the schools from
persons and groups outside of the school system. The main
_________________________________________________________________93
goals of the SED Center were to serve as a liaison for
Spanish speakers between home and school, to provide tuto-'
rial and ESL services after school hours, to establish a
bilingual preschool, and to work with the community to help
parents overcome problems they faced because of language
barriers and a lack of knowledge of how the U.S. system
works. Informally, the teachers being trained shared these
goals and wanted to do something to bring change to the
public school system. That "something" was still unclear,
but the commitment to change was there.
A local teacher training institution agreed, after
much negotiation, to provide the coursework necessary for
these teachers' certification. Even though the majority of
the trainees were experienced teachers in their original
countries, they had to be re-certified to receive teaching
credentials here. Little information was available on how
to evaluate transcripts from institutions abroad, and many
extra courses were required to receive merely a bachelors
in education. Some students were struggling with their
English, having arrived recently. Those in the program also
complained that few of the courses provided new insights,
but rather repeated old, traditional methods of teaching
science, math, social studies, and language arts with which
they were already familiar. The teachers understood that
they would be carrying out some form of teaching in two
languages, but no one had any knowledge within the teacher
94
training institution of how that might be done. The issue
was not dealt with in classes. EDC and the Innovation Team
tried to provide some workshops and materials to get the
teachers started in conceptualizing how they might carry out
some form of bilingual teaching in the classroom.
The portion of the training which was cited as more
meaningful by the participants consisted of half-day intern
ships in seven public schools where there were thought to
be larger numbers of Spanish-speaking students. This expe
rience provided a practical look at the realities with which
they would have to deal. There was wide variation from
school to school in acceptance of these Spanish-speaking
teacher aides. Some school personnel were fairly receptive.
Other principals and regular teachers felt the program was
being forced onto the schools with little consultation with
existing school staff. In some cases open hostility was
expressed. An EDC evaluator who interviewed regular staff
in several of the participating schools at the end of the
year found that some staff members referred to Spanish
speaking people with words such as "dumb," "sex-fiends,"
"social deviants." Interns were sometimes labeled "inferior
teachers," and they were criticized for their lack of
English (Kelley 1971:24). A few of the interns felt more
welcome as they showed their ability to handle some of the
more difficult problems with Hispanic students. Very few
of the Hispanic teachers were actually used to full
95
advantage by regular teachers; thus, they received little
practice in preparing lessons and working with a whole
class. The trainees spent most of their time in the schools
tutoring individual students in Spanish, making contacts
with Hispanic parents, and counting numbers of Spanish
speaking students in their schools.
The Hispanic advisory group which was formed to plan
and carry out the next stages of education for Spanish'
speakers in D.C. was not pleased with the schools' initial
response to their efforts:
In its dealings with the school system the planning
council has not found it truly supportive. The
first priority of the school system is the black
community, and it reflects the black community's
resentment of any diversion of resources from its
own problems. No pressure is felt from the wider
community of the District, for it has not awakened
to the problems of any other ethnic groups /Kelley
1971:28-29/.
The small white community, active as parents in some of the
schools involved, was not yet aware of the project's
existence.
In the spring of 1971, while a new proposal for some
funding for the following year was being written, a Hispanic
community campaign began to take shape. Not only did the
project participants have to deal with a negative response
from the school system, but they also had to fight resis
tance within the Hispanic neighborhoods. This strategy was
retold by all participants interviewed with enthusiasm and
excitement. Those Hispanic leaders who had worked so hard
96
to get this proposal funded plus the teachers in training
now took to the streets to campaign for their cause. The
plan had taken shape in that they knew they wanted some form
of bilingual education, and they had to convince Spanish
speaking parents that it would work. One staff member
described it as a campana de concientizacidn, a Paulo Freire
term which implies a raising of peoples' consciousness to
understand their own needs and come to terms with the solu
tions to those problems (Freire 1970). They began talking
to Hispanics on the streets, at the supermarket, in home
visits. They made telephone calls to Spanish-surnamed
people listed in the telephone book; they advertised in
local papers and on the local news on radio and television.
The message was: we want bilingual education for our
children. It will get them back in school; Spanish-speak
ing staff will help provide more security and appropriate
communication; students will be motivated to learn* they
can keep up academic learning in Spanish while they are
learning English; they can continue to learn their own
language and be proud of their own heritage.
While the community campaign was going on, a few
Hispanics and the director of the EDC project were working
on the downtown administrative staff of the school system,
to convince them of the importance of creating some kind of
effective program for Spanish-speaking students. The poli
tical campaign to get recognition of the existence of a
97
Hispanic community had been successful in achieving one
small step: in 197 0 the mayor created a D.C. Spanish Commu
nity Advisory Committee as part of the D.C. Department of
Human Resources. Now they had to convince the D.C. school
administration that they should use the 16 Spanish-speaking
teachers in some effective program. Here it is important to
understand some of the parallel developments within the
total school system, so it is relevant to examine the 1960s
for signs of change and events that seriously affected the
public education system in D.C.
Emerging Black Leadership in D.C. Public Schools: 1960-1970
When in 1954 the city schools were ordered by the
U.S. Supreme Court in Bolling v. Sharpe to convert from two
separate systems, one for Blacks and one for whites, to one
integrated system, many whites left for private schools or
the suburbs during the following decade. Those whites who
remained were concentrated largely in schools west of Rock
Creek Park. The same pattern remains today, with most white
parents who have remained in the District placing their
children in private schools by the time they reach secon
dary level, if not before. The one integrated high school,
out of a total of 11 senior high schools in the city, is
only 21 percent white. The total city school population
(113,858 students in 1979) has changed from 60.8 percent
Black in 1954 to 94.6 percent Black, 3.8 percent white,
1 percent Hispanic, and .6 percent Asian-American in 1979.
_________________________________________________________________98
In addition, almost 50 percent of all students in the school
system receive free or reduced breakfast or lunch, which is
a program for low income families (Data Resource Book 1979).
Thus, the schools serve a racially isolated population,
5 0 percent of whom are from low income families. D.C. has
the highest proportion of Black students of any large school
system in the United States. East of Rock Creek Park, 14 0
public schools are at least 99 percent Black (Feinberg
1979).
When the desegregation order was first carried out
in 1954, the school system was administered by a white
superintendent who remained in that position until 1967.
Gradually Black teachers and administrators made their way
into the previously all-white schools until by 1967,
77 percent of the teachers in the total school system were
Black and 60 percent of the administrators were Black.
During the 1960s some of the top supervisory school posi
tions were still held by whites, and those Blacks among the
higher-ranking positions were said to have been members of
the old-line Black families, as was the appointed mayor of
the District. New more militant Black arrivals to the city
played with this issue politically and demanded a change in
leadership in the late 1960s and early 1970s.
In 1960, a plan for schools conceived by the super
intendent and known as the Amidon concept was implemented
in one school and soon after, the general idea was expanded
__________________________________________________________________________
to the whole school system. The basic philosophy was to
follow a standardized program of teaching basics in reading,
writing, spelling, and computing through direct and sequen
tial instruction, with the teacher in center stage, and
emphasis on tight discipline and scheduling. The superin
tendent was not fond of progressivist, child-centered educa
tion (Hansen 1968:190-191, 208-209).
At the same time, federal officials were interested
in developing some kind of experimental model inner-city
schools. They chose one high school and its 16 feeder
schools in the heart of the District and set it up as the
Model School Division in 196 3, sponsored by federal funds.
Initially, a new hands-on science curriculum was implemented
in these schools, and teachers asked for more changes. The
Innovation Team, added in 1967, expanded new methods of
teaching into all other areas of the curriculum and
attempted to serve as change agents for the whole school
system. They were most concerned to get away from the
Amidon concept of teaching and back to discovery and open
classroom methods of education.
A large study of the D.C. school system was carried
out in 1966-1967,
. . . a year of significant educational, social and
political upheaval. As professional educators,
study personnel were impressed with the way various
segments of the community and the school system were
responding to the need for educational change
/Passow 196 7:1/.
The study found many problems in the D.C. Public Schools,
• 100
such as: low levels of scholastic achievement (as measured
by performance on standardized tests), a tracking system
which separated students by achievement, a curriculum not
adapted to urban needs, a high dropout rate, de facto
segregation, and poor communication between schools and
the communities they serve.
Even more than most large city school systems, the
Public Schools of the District of Columbia are in
crisis. Despite examples of good quality education,
of dedicated and creative professionals at all levels,
of a pattern of increasing financial support, of
numerous efforts to initiate new programs, the
District schools as a whole appear to be in deep,
and probably worsening, trouble. Unless drastic
and dramatic action is taken in the immediate future,
it is highly unlikely that the present trends can be
reversed /Passow 1967:39/.
The report included extensive recommendations for change.
Before the study was completed, a court order
exploded upon the scene. In 1967, District Court Judge J.
Skelly Wright in Hobson v. Hansen issued a decree which
stated that because of de facto segregation, Black and poor
children in the District were deprived of their constitu
tional right to equal educational opportunity. Schools were
ordered to abolish the tracking system, to equalize per
capita costs in schools, to transport volunteering children
in overcrowded schools east of the park to underpopulated
schools west of the park, to provide more compensatory edu
cation, and to integrate more fully the faculty of each
school (Hansen 1968:91-105). Later, in 1971, the Waddy
decree forced equalization of spending per pupil between
101
schools to further attempt to remediate the differences in
schooling east of the park and west of the park. Following
the 1967 Wright decision, the white superintendent resigned
and a Black administrator from the "in-group" of the esta
blished Black community became acting superintendent. In
1970, the first new Black superintendent was hired from
outside the school system.
Congress loosened the reigns on D.C. a little by
allowing the first Board of Education to be elected in 196 8.
This School Board gained a Black majority. Education soon
became a political battleground, since it was the only
avenue through which hopeful politicians could move into
prominence in D.C. This did not help the schools much, but
it did provide some forum for community concerns.
Whatever the effects of these changes and court-
ordered mandates, they served as a powerful sign of social,
political, and racial upheaval, which had become focused on
the schools. Many people wanted changes in leadership, in
the schools, in the political structure of the city, and
some of these changes had begun to take place, for better
or for worse.
Emerging Plans for Bilingual Education
In the spring of 1971, it was the new Black super
intendent who had come from outside the school system that
the Hispanic leaders and the EDC project director had to
convince that it was important to begin some kind of special
1_02_
schooling for Spanish-speaking children. Through much nego
tiation, they found receptive ears both with the new super
intendent and with a deputy superintendent who had been head
of the Model School Division. One of the important stra
tegies carried out by the Hispanic planners was to push for
implementation of the project with local funds, even though
most of the initial staff were coming from outside the
school system. They knew that federal money was increa
singly more available, but they wanted to get the program
established in the local school budget so that it would not
end when the federal money ended. The proposal was com
pleted, requesting a second year of EPDA money, to be used
for additional training and materials for the staff. EPDA
funded their part of the project for $72,000 (Bilingual
Office 1971a).
It was finally decided to establish an elementary-
level bilingual school which would serve both English and
Spanish-speaking students and would be used as a model and
training center for teachers interested in bilingual edu
cation. The director of the EDC project pushed hard for
the concept of integrated two-way bilingual education,
involving both English and Spanish speakers, after her
experience with the transitional program in Boston. She
felt that transitional bilingual education had isolated the
Hispanic students, which created the necessity of moving
the students out of the program (mainstreaming) as soon as
_______________________________________________________________ 103
possible to increase their exposure to English. In D.C. the
philosophy placed emphasis on maintenance of native language
and culture, and an equal exchange of ideas, languages, and
learning experiences through the intermixing of both
cultural groups.
Following a strong recommendation from the D.C.
school superintendent, the new School Board agreed to bear
the costs of operating the school (faculty, administration,
clerical and maintenance staff salaries; building rent,
upkeep, and utilities; English language instructional
materials and supplies), while the EPDA funds were to
support training and staff development of teachers and
aides, materials development, Spanish language instruction,
and evaluation (Bilingual Office 1971a). The new Black
leadership seemed more receptive to change efforts. The
EDC project director summed up her efforts during these
early stages in this way:
Minorities and the disadvantaged need an advocate,
someone to speak for them and to fight for them in
situations that might be incomprehensible to them
and in which they would have no stature. In the
Washington, D.C. school system the Spanish-speaking
had no other advocate. In this instance, EDC served
its purpose well. The school will begin in September,
1971, and the community is^ more conscious of its
rights /Kelley 1971:29-30/.
Emergence of Bilingual Education in D.C.: 19 71-19 72
In June, 1971, a director of the Bilingual Program
was chosen from among those Spanish-speakers active in the
community. His appointment had the approval of both the
______________________________ ; _________________________________104
Hispanic advisory committee and the downtown public school
officials. He was chosen most of all for his knowledge of
city and school politics, his assertiveness, and his
involvement in the schools. As a middle-class Cuban refugee
with a background in social sciences, economics and inter
national law, upon arrival in the city, he had pursued a
second Master's degree at a local institution and then in
1967 had joined the staff of a local public high school, to
teach Spanish. The principal soon realized what an asset
his new staff member was in solving problems with the
Spanish-speaking students, and informally he was assigned to
do half-time counseling and half-time teaching. From this
position,in 1970 he was moved to direct a new federally
funded project in adult education within the D.C. Public
Schools called Program of English Instruction for Latin
Americans (PEILA). The following year he was chosen to
direct the Bilingual Program. The new director and most of
the other Spanish-speaking teachers knew very little about
bilingual education, but they had the commitment, energy,
and enthusiasm to try hard to get something going which they
hoped would help Spanish speakers in the city schools.
First a location had to be chosen. School admini
stration officials downtown had selected a school site near
a local university. It was a small school building which
had been closed down. Hispanic community leaders turned
down the proposal for several reasons: the location was
105
not considered to be close enough to the Spanish-speaking
community, thus a special busing program would have to be
provided; the precise number of Hispanic students was not
yet known, but the size of the school was thought to be
inadequate to house all students; Spanish-speaking students
would be too isolated from English-speaking students; and
it would take a major community campaign to convince parents
to transfer their children to a school far away from their
homes, especially when they were not yet that convinced that
bilingual education would be an effective way for their
children to learn.
What the Hispanic planners said they really wanted
was to take the natural environment in which the Spanish
speaking children were already placed in schools and create ,
a bilingual program where they would learn from their
English-speaking peers and their peers would learn from
them. From the information the interns had collected over
the past year, they could state with certainty that School A
had the largest number of Spanish-speaking children, with
Schools B and C in second and third place at the elementary
level. It took considerable negotiation, but eventually
the School Board and downtown officials gave their blessing
to assign the Spanish-speaking staff to the three existing
schools: A, B, and C.
Once the directors of the program decided that
School A would be the main bilingual demonstration school
106
with some bilingual classes offered at Schools B and C, a
five week summer institute was planned and carried out to
prepare for the fall. Fourteen of the 16 native Spanish
speaking teachers trained the previous year participated,las
well as seven native English-speaking bilingual teachers who
joined the group. They were trained by two teachers from
Coral Way Elementary School in Miami, Florida, where the
first bilingual program in the U.S. of modern decades had
been established in 1963. They worked on bilingual teaching
methodology and wrote curricula that they hoped to use.
However, there was a general mood of uncertainty among those
being trained about how well they would be accepted in the
schools they were about to enter and how permanent the
positions would be.
Meanwhile, the principal of School A was building up
her own resistance effort. An older, white * principal,
she was committed to the philosophy of strict academic
learning similar to the Amidon concept with only English
instruction for immigrant children. While the school is
located in a high-income, Embassy area, following integra
tion it tended to attract a majority of Black and Hispanic
lower income children from across Rock Creek Park. General
information passed along by white middle-class parents at
that time was that the school suffered from overcrowded
conditions, lowered academic standards, and all-too-often
eruptions of racial incidents and other disciplinary
107
problems. The principal saw the Bilingual Program as ano
ther threat to her conception of good schooling, as a
complete takeover by the Hispanic community. She tried to
deter Spanish and English-speaking parents by convincing
them that the new program would be taught totally in
Spanish. She succeeded in pitting several of the regular
staff members against the Spanish-speaking teachers. When ,
the program started, resistance among those staff members
created a continuing tension, and made many parents uncer
tain as to whether the experiment was worth the effort.
All year, parents and regular staff members were
divided as to their commitment to the innovation. The
conflict in ideas created many tensions among participants.
However, the director of the Bilingual Program kept a close
eye on the progress of the experiment and provided many
support structures for the bilingual teachers, as well as
for regular staff who wished to participate. The resistance
of the principal was wearing down, as she was reaching
retirement age. At the end of that first school year with
bilingual instruction, the principal of School A and several
of the regular staff members resigned or moved to other
schools.
The administrative office for the Bilingual Program
was set up within School A in the summer of 1971. In addi
tion to the director, there was an assistant director in
charge of school-community relations and an office
, 108
assistant. The new school-community coordinator had been
one of the 16 interns trained during the previous year.
Cuban born, he had studied extensively in Europe as a priest
and was impressed there with many different forms of suc
cessful bilingual schooling. After settling in D.C., he
committed himself to working full-time, seven days a week,
16 hours a day, serving the Hispanic community as both a
priest and educator. His Spanish-speaking parish became an
important community meeting place, where many decisions
about ways to improve the community took shape. Because of
his unique position as a counselor-priest and therefore
natural leader of the community, he was able to establish an
unusual system of contact between school and home. It is
a tradition in Latin America that Catholic priests are
afforded a great deal of authority in the community and are
highly respected. Because church life has a profound
influence on people, it was a natural extension of this
pattern that the church in D.C. would be one focal point
for dealing with social problems of the Hispanic community.
As word of existence of the Bilingual Program spread
through the community, newly arriving Spanish-speaking
families were referred to the school-community coordinator.
He then provided social service counseling and took care of
placement in schools for every family member. Each year
a few additional services were provided as Hispanic agencies
began to spring up along the Columbia Road area. This
_______________________________________________________________ 109
service for new families began a network of contacts which
later served the function of uniting the community to
petition for increased services.
While the two bilingual administrators carried out
political battles with downtown school officials and worked
with the community, the bilingual teachers at the three
schools struggled with many problems during that first year.
As mentioned before, the teachers at School A wanted to be
accepted by the regular school staff but faced a fair amount
of resistance. In addition, now they were not just tutors
but actual classroom teachers. The director of Associates
for Renewal in Education (ARE), hired as a consultant for
in-service training, described how rapidly the bilingual
teachers' major concerns changed from administrative issues,
such as lack of understanding of the program on the part of
community people, rejection of the Spanish-speaking teachers
by regular school staff, and lack of cooperation from the
schools involved; to other more basic needs as teachers,
such as more training in bilingual methodology, different
bilingual curricula, and a clearer understanding of what
bilingualism is (Bilingual Office 1971b). As one teacher
reflecting back on that time put it, "We didn't know what
in the world we were doing then in comparison to now."
At School A, the 11 bilingual teachers had to
wrestle with how to carry out the fullest possible implemen
tation of two-way maintenance and enrichment bilingual
110
education. According to the plan, the whole school was to
be involved in the process. Spanish speakers increased in
number during the year to 4 5 percent of the school's popu
lation (out of a total of 280 students); thus the plan to
have half English speakers and half Spanish speakers in each
classroom was fairly close to a reality. For all classes
from kindergarten through third grade, teachers were paired
in teams, one Spanish-speaking teacher with one English-
speaking teacher. Students in these classes were to receive
approximately half their daily instruction in Spanish and
half in English. To prepare for junior high school, fourth
through sixth grades received much more English instruction,
with only Spanish tutorial work for Hispanic students work
ing below grade level and intensive English as a Second
Language (ESL). It was planned to add one grade each year
to the full bilingual component of the school, until all
grades received full bilingual instruction. The first year
of implementation was full of problems, with little support
from the principal or regular school staff, and the
insecurity of the bilingual teachers.
The experience at School B was very different. The
previous year an older white principal had decided to
resign. As a 50 percent white school with a history of
active parent involvement, the community had made an
extensive search for a new and different principal, even
going to the extent of advertising in the New York Times.
Parents active in the search were influenced by the popu
larized critiques of schools such as those by Herndon
(1968), Holt (1964), Kohl (1967), Silberman (1970). The
young Black woman chosen to be the new principal turned out
to be someone already within the local school system, an
energetic member of the Innovation Team. She was actively
committed to building a strong staff that would be willing
to try out new ideas in the classroom. She wanted her
teachers to be flexible and creative as well as to have a
clear understanding of exactly what students needed to
master at each grade level. She knew that some bilingual
teachers had been assigned to her school, and she was
pleased to try to develop different learning options within
the school.
Since School B had a smaller number of Spanish
speakers than School A, students were given the option of
attending either a bilingual or a monolingual class. Three
bilingual classes were set up with mixed grade levels:
1-2, 3-4, and 5-6. As at School A, the six bilingual
teachers taught in teams: one English-speaking teacher and
one Spanish-speaking teacher for each class. Twenty-five
percent of the total student body were involved in the
bilingual classes and approximately one-third of the ,
students who participated were English speakers. Therefore,
at both School A and School B, the bilingual model was an
integrated one.
. 112
School C had only 30 Spanish-speaking students;
therefore, the four bilingual teachers assigned there
organized only one bilingual class for first-second grade,
team taught by two of the bilingual teachers. The other two
teachers taught Spanish as a Second Language (SSL) for 121
English-speaking students, plus ESL and Spanish tutorial
work for upper grade level Spanish-speaking students. At
School C, the mostly Black staff were reasonably accepting *
of the bilingual teachers, in contrast to the experience at
School A. The regular staff at Schools B and C seemed to
feel less threatened by the new teachers because they were
few in number; whereas regular staff at School A saw the
innovation as a takeover by Spanish speakers. In December,
a fourth school was added to the list of those serviced by
the Bilingual Program, with one bilingual teacher assigned
to School D to handle ESL and Spanish tutorial services for
Hispanic children. The principal there was open to and
eager for innovation, and thus very supportive of the
bilingual teacher. Schools C and D were predominantly Black
schools located just east of Rock Creek Park.
By the end of that first school year, there were
518 students being taught by 22 bilingual staff for at least
a portion of each day at four schools. Over half of those
served, or 3 03 students, were English-speaking, and 215 were
native Spanish-speaking students (Bilingual Office 1972a).
During the year Spanish speakers’ enrollment increased
113
12 percent at the schools being serviced by bilingual staff,
with School A receiving the largest number of students.
A Closer Look at Actual Implementation
In the design phase, an idealized version of
bilingual education for the D.C. Public Schools was prepared
by the planning committee and written into the EPDA propo
sal. Seven objectives for the bilingual demonstration
school were listed:
1. To provide an environment in which non-English
speaking children can learn to speak and do school
work in English and at the same time reinforce
their mother tongue and original heritage. Skill
and literacy in both English and his native lan
guage will be a vital asset for the child and the
community of the future. In the bilingual school
these children will be expected to achieve at the
level of their English monolingual peers in all
areas of the regular school curriculum.
2. To offer an equal opportunity for English-speaking
children to receive a genuinely bicultural and
bilingual education. They will be able to develop
skill and reinforcement in their native language
(English) and at the same time acquire a high
level of literacy in a second language by the end
of grade six. It is assumed that children who
speak different languages working together will
become peer teachers and learners. In the bilin
gual school these children will, in addition to
the competence they acquire in Spanish, achieve
at the level of their English monolingual peers
in all areas of the school curriculum.
3. To initiate a training center for schools of edu
cation in the District of Columbia wishing to give
academic training and internship in bilingual
education for teachers, paraprofessionals, and
parents.
4. To build demonstration programs and conduct
research in activities and curriculum for multi
cultural education and for the constructive
114
reduction of racial conflict. Support for such
activities will be sought from sources other than
EPDA or the school system.
5. To reduce the pressure on teachers and principals
who cannot adequately deal with bilingual children
through the regular programs in which they are
now dispersed. The proposed school will be a
center of bilingual expertise and offer support
to other schools whenever it is needed and
requested. This means, first of all, that non-
English-speaking children who are experiencing
particular difficulty with English can receive
help.
6. To establish appropriate learning and competency
goals for bilingual education at all stages of
development. Objectives of what the children
will be expected to accomplish while in the school
will be stated, based upon the fundamental assump
tion that children will leave the school in the
sixth grade and enter the larger school system
competent in their own native language and able
to function at peer level in the English language.
7. To design and provide intensive tutorial work in
conversational and written English for the junior
high school candidates who have difficulties with
that language. The transition from elementary
to junior high school is considered the most
difficult faced by non-English speakers in the
District's schools. Testing procedures are now
being designed for Spanish-speaking children, and
testing procedures for speakers of other languages
will be sought /Bilingual Office 1971a:4-5/.
From a philosophical point of view, these objectives
represent a very strong stance in favor of two-way main
tenance and enrichment bilingual education. They try to
give equal weight to the importance of learning both lan
guages well, as well as to maintaining native cultural
heritage and becoming bicultural. In contrast to the large
majority of bilingual programs around the country, this one
gives high priority to including English speakers, both for
115
the sake of their own development and for providing a fully
integrated school setting for the Spanish speakers. It
recognizes the importance of peer modeling in a bilingual/
bicultural context.
Objectives 3, 4, and 6 describe an extremely ambi
tious plan for providing teacher training and curriculum
development through the school, goals which were not reached
in that first year. Objectives 5 and 7 hint at a very
important function of bilingual staff: that of providing
people in the schools who could help solve the many problems
of Spanish speakers, because of lack of communication or
racial conflict with other students.
Bilingual administration. In actual implementation,
bilingual administrators had to deal with many obstacles
which they could not have easily foreseen. First, the
decision to switch from a single bilingual demonstration
school to a bilingual program in three existing schools
added the dimension of convincing existing school staff in
already established, functioning schools that this experi
ment was worth the efforjbr"^ The administrators also had to
boost the confidence of the bilingual staff so that they
felt professionally competent to handle the problems with
which they were confronted in the classroom and the negative
attitudes of their peers.
In September, 1971, two events forced the postpone
ment of preparation for a smooth opening of school. The
_________________________: _________________________________________ lie
downtown school bureaucracy did not give the bilingual
administrators the authority to spend the monies appro
priated for the 1971 budget until very late in that year.
This delayed the actual hiring of the bilingual teachers
until school was almost ready to open, which created a
tenuousness and uncertainty about the real possibilities of
the program among staff members. The teachers were finally
hired by special action of the superintendent under Impact
Aid monies.
Second was the equalization order decreed by Judge
Waddy. According to the order, any school which spent more
money per pupil (including teacher salaries) than 5 percent
over the mean for the city schools was subject to loss of
teachers to other schools which underspent their allotted
amount, to equalize the differences. There was thus anxiety
among both regular and bilingual staff as to whether they
would be transferred to another school, especially since
School A with a team teaching situation had a better-than-
average teacher-pupil ratio. After a long period of uncer
tainty, while negotiations were carried out by the bilingual
administrators with the judge and other school administra
tors, the bilingual teachers were classified as exempt from
those counted. Equalization procedures delayed the normal
operation of schools for three weeks (Bilingual Office
1971b). This was just one of many complicated political
battles which had to be negotiated with downtown school
117
officials.
Another element of uncertainty was the fluctuating
Spanish-speaking school population. As the Hispanic
teachers increased their home contacts with individual
families, they began to recognize that most families did not
stay in the District very long, or there was a great deal of
movement and changing of addresses. Housing is difficult to
find in the inner city, and rents are high, so many people
live in crowded conditions when they first arrive and move
on to other places as soon as they can afford a change or
find a more convenient place to live. Turnover among
Spanish speakers in the schools that first year was around
40 percent. This factor created many problems which made
implementation more difficult. First, it was difficult to
choose the schools which should have bilingual staff because
of the changing student population. Second, it made devel
opment of a stable bilingual program, where students could
begin in kindergarten and by second grade be functioning
academically well in both languages, very difficult to carry
out. Third, constant new arrivals throughout the school
year meant that classes could not easily be developed which
were functioning on approximately the same level; for
teachers somehow had to include within each class all the
new arrivals, who had many different needs and levels of
skill development.
118
Bilingual teachers. After one month in their real
classrooms, the bilingual teachers assessed their experience
up to this point and summarized needs that had emerged.
First, they had encountered a wide range in the abilities
and backgrounds of the children they were teaching.
Spanish-speaking students came from 17 different countries,
with widely varying social class background, some from rural
and some from urban environments, some with excellent school
background and others with little or no school experience.
Tests confirmed this extremely wide range of abilities of
Hispanic students, difficult to categorize easily by grade
or age descriptions (Teitel 1971).. For this reason,
teachers expressed the need for more successful ways to meet
individual differences in language and conceptual abilities,
new ways to organize their classrooms, and a curriculum more
relevant to the needs of the unique city population. For
in-service workshops, bilingual teachers requested help in
the following areas: introduction to hands-on curriculum
materials, such as attribute blocks, cuisenaire rods,
science materials, carpentry, photography; knowledge of
experience of other bilingual teachers in other sites;
curricula developed to meet the special needs of children
in D.C., with descriptions of skills important to be mas
tered for each grade level in each language; appropriate
testing materials; human relations and multicultural work
shops, to be shared with regular school staff; and workshops
119
for parents, to help them understand the concept of bilin
gualism and thus give support to the program (Bilingual
Office 1971b).
Most of the Spanish-speaking teachers were aware
during the training period the previous year that they
needed to be introduced to new methods of teaching, and they
were frustrated in their efforts to make their university
classes more worthwhile. The 1971 summer institute intro
duced the concept of team teaching, and they instituted this
innovation in the fall and were very pleased with the flexi
bility it provided in organizing their classrooms for
optimum use of the two languages. However, in other ways
the teachers felt that the Coral Way experience they had
been taught in the summer institute was not so applicable
to the situation here. Bilingual teaching at Coral Way was
designed for a relatively homogeneous Cuban middle class
population, and the curriculum materials seemed particularly
inappropriate in this multicultural, multi-class Hispanic
setting.
Bilingual staff members varied a great deal in their
own previous experience with innovations in education. Some
Spanish-speaking teachers came from Latin American countries
with a long history of excellence in teaching. One of these
teachers already knew a lot about individualizing classroom
instruction to meet varied needs of individual children
within the classroom. She spoke in depth of Piaget and
120
teachers such as Gabriela Mistral. She seemed to have
infinite patience with the children. Others insisted on
extreme discipline and mostly total class activities in the
classroom, saying that children from Latin American coun
tries were not used to the "chaos" of multi-group activities
of an open classroom. Two teachers had had experience in
other bilingual classrooms, and they had some sense of how
to schedule for flexibility which they attempted to explain
and help the other teachers carry out.
Through team teaching, everyone learned from each
other. It was in this way that three of the regular staff
of School A began to be won over to the bilingual staff's
side. Several bilingual staff members tried to implement
open classroom atmosphere, with a variety of projects going
on in the classroom at the same time, with mixed ages and
varied groupings of students. Everyone recognized how
terribly complicated was this new way of teaching they were
trying to introduce, and teachers worried whether they were
covering all the skills necessary for each grade level in
each language, since there was no clear guide to tell them
what those skills should be. In summary, while the year's
experience gave the bilingual teachers a clearer idea of
what they were trying to accomplish, the many problems they
encountered made teaching a difficult task. No single
teaching style was imposed upon them; rather, they were
given the freedom to develop what they considered to be the
121
most appropriate response to the children who entered their
classroom. At the end of the year, the bilingual teachers
still felt they had a long way to go to feel confident about
what they were doing in the classroom.
Students in bilingual classes. In trying to recon
struct students' experience that first year, the 12 percent
increase in Spanish-speaking enrollment at the four schools
with bilingual staff, in spite of a high turnover rate due
to mobility of the D.C. Hispanic population, indicates that
having bilingual staff in the schools represented a signifi
cant change for Hispanic families. The one thing everyone—
parents, students, administrators, evaluators, and even
regular staff— agreed upon was that the four schools had
greatly improved discipline and safety as a result of the
Hispanic teachers' presence. Students seemed to enjoy
school more, according to their teachers; Spanish-speaking
students found more acceptance among English speakers when
they both were placed in the same position of having to
learn each others' languages; and intergroup hostility was
more successfully mediated by the bilingual staff, because
there was now a more complete means of communication to talk
out problems. Spanish-speaking students began to feel that
School A, especially, was developing into a pro-Hispanic
place, and they felt good about it.
Three current tenth grade English-speaking students,
122
who were members of those first bilingual classes nine years
ago when they were in second grade, shared their reminis
cences of those first years in interviews. They found it
exciting to learn Spanish by hearing it daily and gradually
beginning to think in the language rather than to learn
through formal classroom methods. They described a typical
school day as being organized into a wide variety of acti
vities with different groupings in the classroom, frequently
mixed Spanish and English speakers. There were also sche
duled times for separate learning when working on native
language arts. One of the students at School B mentioned
that there was a sense of separation between the bilingual
and monolingual classes, with those in all-English classes
sometimes feeling that they were the -smarter students and
that Spanish-speakers were less intelligent. Overall, the
English speakers said their bilingual classes were warm,
friendly, interesting, and challenging, although they felt
themselves behind in certain subject areas at times in the
earlier years while they were learning Spanish. They said
that bilingual learning had had a profound influence on
their lives and they would recommend it to everyone. All
three now consider themselves fluent in Spanish, having
continued to work academically in both languages throughout
their schooling, and they hope to use their language faci
lity in future professions.
123
Parents. Having discussed some experiences of
bilingual administrators, bilingual teachers, and students
during that first year, let us turn to parents' attitudes
toward the project. This innovation brought to the D.C.
schools was somewhat unusual in that it was not planned by
the professional educators who were a part of the school
system but rather by community leaders. At the same time,
it did not develop as a typical grassroots movement, with
many people in the community clamoring for a change.
Rather, it grew out of a frustration and determination among
a small emerging leadership within the Hispanic community.
After the idea was born, it had to be sold to the community.
It was not instantly popular. Thus Spanish-speaking parents
began to express many concerns as the year went on. Many
bilingual personnel have observed that most new immigrants
want their children to be placed in all-English classes, for
instant immersion, when they first arrive. It takes some
persuasion to convince them that their children will actu
ally learn English faster and better if they are allowed to
work in both languages academically, affirming both lan
guages and cultures. In contrast, parents who have been in
the U.S. for several years bemoan their childrens' loss of
their native language and they are more receptive to the
idea of bilingual education.
Despite the fact that parents had not been included
in the initial stages of planning, as early as January,
124
1972, reports written by the bilingual administrators began
to talk of the increasing role of parental input (Associates
for Renewal in Education 1972). Informally, parents began
to meet in groups and discuss concerns. At Schools A and B,
Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) meetings were dominated by
white middle class parents, who were most concerned that
their children continue to receive strong academics and not
fall behind grade level while they were learning their
second language. Some of the native English-speaking bilin
gual teachers had been chosen first for their knowledge of
methodology in teaching ESL and their bilingualism, but they
were weaker in knowledge of teaching native students in
English language arts, math, science, and social studies.
Therefore, English-speaking parents were always putting
pressure on these teachers to keep up in all fields. Some
times the bilingual teachers felt overwhelmed by these high
expectations. Aspects of white parents' attitudes are
illustrated in these comments from one of the end-of-year
evaluators:
It would seem that the task of promoting academic
excellence, as well as healthy emotional attitudes,
on the part of teachers and students in the Bilingual
Program would be sufficient to occupy everyone full
time. This is not the case, however, since constant
political overtones add to the above preoccupations
and frequently make decisions difficult or impossible.
The principle problems center around the goals for
the Anglo child and his place in the Bilingual Program.
First, there is the relatively simple question of the
Anglo parent whose desire that his child participate
in the program is not shared by the child. Second,
125
there are Anglo parents and other foreign parents
who do not want any program and who feel that they
and their children are being coerced. And third,
there are some parents and administrators who would
be happy to have the additional teachers and resources
made possible by the program but who do not welcome
the Spanish children. There are also parents who
feel that there is too much emphasis on Spanish, since,
e.g. /School A/ is multi-ethnic, and who would like
more individualized programming. There are those
who feel that too strong an emphasis on the bilingual
dimension will hinder the acquisition of subject
matter. Finally, there are those who feel that the
bilingual experience is not necessarily good for
everybody. And intimately connected to the above
considerations is the realization that the Bilingual
Program cannot be effective without the sincere
cooperation of the principal involved. These factors
constitute a reality which must be faced and handled
with great tact and patience in an effort to recon
cile different goals, explain the advantages of
multi-cultural exposure, and make the__Bilingual _
Program viable as well as effective /Sachs 1972:16/.
Spanish-speaking parents had other concerns as well.
They wanted regular evening conferences with teachers to try
to understand what their children were doing in school.
They complained about Spanish language textbooks, which came
from a variety of Spanish-speaking countries, but none of
which seemed quite appropriate or satisfied everyone’s needs
in vocabulary or grade level. They wanted improvements in
the physical facilities, a bilingual preschool, and after
school programs in art and music. They wanted to be more
involved in the decision-making process for the Bilingual
Program.
At School B the Hispanic parents were organized by
one of the English-speaking bilingual parents whose task on
the PTA was to be bilingual liaison with the Hispanic
126
community. Following many home visits by this volunteer
parent and the bilingual teachers, Hispanic parents began to
come to special monthly meetings in increasing numbers.
Eventually, this group became a task force of the PTA, to
serve as an advisory body to the Bilingual Office. Some of
the suggestions from this group and from the parents at
Oyster were incorporated in the proposal written for the
following year for continuation of the EPDA funds for
training (Bilingual Office 1972b).
Significantly, this was the first time in either
school that Spanish-speaking parents had attended PTA
meetings or become involved in the process of negotiation
of school and community concerns. Traditional Hispanic
patterns of respect for authority invested in school offi
cials had made it more difficult for some Spanish-speaking
parents to accept a more active role in their children's
schools. A few of the Spanish-speaking teachers were not
initially pleased with encouragement of parental input, but
bilingual administrators took the position that it was
important for the growth of the community. It was consi
dered . another step in the process of raising community
consciousness, to make Hispanics aware of the importance of
fighting for their own needs and concerns.
127
Emerging Themes
As the complexity of this school innovation unfolds,
the reader should keep in mind a focus on the key themes
which have been developed and will be expanded throughout
this study. First, briefly summarizing the broader context,
this school innovation has taken place in a large metro
politan area, with the inner city (D.C.) dominated by a
large Black community but influenced by a small, assertive,
white community and controlled, economically, by the
Congress of the United States. In both the city and the
public school system, the focus in the last decade has been
on change. Within this context, in the early 1970s, the
beginning of the development of a small Hispanic community
began to take shape.
Community. To review the community theme as it has
emerged thus far, in the early and middle 196 0s there was
no real community identity among Spanish speakers who lived
in the District. As increasing numbers of Hispanics began
to settle in the inner city, an early leadership emerged,
composed mostly of a few Spanish-speaking Catholic priests
and a few Hispanics who had made their way into local
bureaucratic positions. These people worked hard, talking
with the people of the Spanish-speaking neighborhoods to
find out their needs and trying to look for sources of
128
social services. These few might be described as the "first
generation" of leaders. Those Spanish speakers who were
hired to run some of the first programs set up by the early
community leaders describe themselves as the "second genera
tion" of leaders within the Hispanic community. They came
with energy, enthusiasm, and commitment to fight for federal
and local money for as many services as possible for
Hispanics. The initial agencies and programs established
by Hispanic leaders, such as the Spanish Catholic Center,
PEILA, SED Center, and the Bilingual Program, were all
somewhat inter-related. They had several common goals:
to teach English, to help Hispanics understand how the U.S.
system works, and to learn how to fight for their rights as
a minority community. Both leaders and students were learn
ing this process together. The initial push to establish
these programs was thus not a grassroots movement but came
from a group of semi-professionals within the community.
The Bilingual Program played an important role in
the gradual development of Hispanics towards identity as a
community. Bilingual administrators were learning how to
manipulate both the local school system and federal grants
to provide for their vision of the needs of this ethnic
community. They also, along with the teachers, were begin
ning to develop an extensive system of contact with many
Hispanic families, which helped to pull the community
together to express common concerns. The Spanish-speaking
129
teachers were going through quite a process of change. They
had to learn and develop self-confidence in their English
ability and in their new profession as bilingual teachers in
a pioneering field. Spanish-speaking students had an
improved school situation, with at least better security,
teachers with whom they could communicate, and the potential
for change in their academic performance. Spanish-speaking
parents changed from a non-involvement stance to more direct
contact with their childrens' teachers, and some Hispanic
parents began to express an interest in being involved in
decision-making for the Bilingual Program.
Change process within schools. The second major
theme, with its focus on the change process in schools, can
be analyzed first by comparison with the change literature.
Several characteristics of the D.C. Bilingual Program seem
to echo the experience of the bilingual projects analyzed
in the Rand study (1974-1977). For example, the D.C.
director was chosen based on a combination of his ethnicity,
knowledge of politics, and experience in education. Poli
tical issues dominated decisions in the initiation phase.
Program planners needed to adapt repeatedly to internal
and external influences. There was extensive teacher
adaptation to the local environment through local materials
development and ongoing staff exchange of ideas and
training. A few hints of the development of community
130
interest and politicization from English and Spanish
speaking constituencies could be seen. D.C. teachers seemed
to experiment more with innovative methods of teaching in
this first year than that found by Sumner and Zellman (1977)
or Ortiz (1977), but they were not at all satisfied with
their performance or the results. Once the bilingual
teachers actually entered their own classes, their most
pressing problems were similar to those of teachers any
where: how to handle a diverse group of students with an
inadequate repertoire of materials and devices for engaging
them.
When the analysis moves away from the Rand authors'
focus on federally-inspired reform to a vision of change as
locally evolved, several developments in the initial plan
ning stages and first year of operationalization of the
program illustrate the beginnings of some of the unresolved
tensions which have continued throughout the nine years of
bilingual education in Washington, D.C. One is the tension
between the desire to create an innovation coming from
outside the system which at the same time struggles to be
a part of the school system, to gain internal respecta
bility. The EDC director's assistance in the early planning
stages, the connection with SED Center, and the decision to
hire Spanish-speaking teachers from outside the system were
all strategies of external prodding. However, the director
chosen was acceptable to local school administrators and
______________________________________ 131
his careful negotiation with downtown school officials and
immediate local school funding of the project allowed the
Bilingual Program to move back and forth in this tension
between local institutionalization while remaining a change
force when decisions were made concerning international
students. Depending on one's point of view, this can be
seen as a conflict, or as a creative, successful negotiation
of an unresolvable tension which in itself stimulates the
process of change.
A second tension, or shifting focus, illustrated in
this chapter is the desire to deal with single problems
until they are solved, while the reality in schools is that
single problems become expanded, or shifting, problems which
never quite go away. For example, bilingual teachers wanted
training in methods in bilingual education. Their degree
did not satisfy them, so the Coral Way teachers were called
in to solve the problem. While a very clear methodology was
presented, teachers found later that it was still not that
applicable to their classrooms. They received much staff
development during the year, but each new skill learned
exposed new problems with their students, which they saw
more fully as they became more "expert." Another shifting
problem was the population being served. No one could have
easily predicted the extremely high mobility rates of
Hispanics, or the variety of previous school preparation of
students, and the consequent problems in planning that these
132
factors would create. Another example is the seemingly
simple decision to have one bilingual school. The first
idea was to use an unoccupied building. Following community
rejection of that idea, local school administrators were
convinced to set up in existing schools, but the resistance
generated among regular school staff, the court order on
equalization, and many other factors entered in to change
and complicate decisions to be made. Before one problem
could be solved, others appeared which continually had to be
dealt with.
In this early stage of the innovation, there was a
great deal of experimentation. Loose coupling allowed
teachers to implement some form of bilingual instruction in
the best way they could. They were given many structures
for support, but they were on their own in their classrooms.
It must be kept in mind that the new bilingual staff members
hired were not "experts." Everyone, administrators and
teachers, were learning together. That first year they did
not have great self-confidence; however, they tackled the
project with energy and hard work, aware that they were
innovators. They were trying out new teaching methods.
They had to serve as cultural mediators. For the D.C.
context, there was no clear-cut "way" to carry out bilingual
education. It was not a school innovation with tidy boun
daries such as an established curriculum, or a clear
philosophy or methodology. The one clear decision which
_______________ 133
had been made was that they had chosen to implement two-way,
integrated, maintenance bilingual education wherever it was
feasible.
134
CHAPTER V
OPERATIONALIZATION OF THE BILINGUAL PROGRAM: 1972-1974
This chapter chronicles the next two years of
bilingual education in Washington, D.C., from 1972 to 1974.
During this time, the biggest programmatic change was the
addition of some bilingual services at secondary level. To
follow the progress of the innovation, it is helpful to keep
in mind the expanding themes concerning change in schools,
reviewed briefly here. Because this reform effort was
locally produced rather than top-down initiated change, it
must be examined in categories other than those which
measure the original blueprint of a program and compare the
implementation process actually occurring to that central
plan. The metaphor used here to describe this reform is the
local evolution of a program in response to a multitude of
internal and external influences which change the adaptation
process. This evolution can best be described as charac
terized by unresolved tensions which emerge, disappear,
reappear, or find new manifestations in the course of evolu
tion of the Bilingual Program.
Two unresolved tensions were introduced in the
previous chapter. The first is the tension between detach
ment and institutionalization. The second is a shifting
focus between single problems and expanding problems not
_________ 135
easily solved. In this chapter, new manifestations of other
tensions emerge: between family-like cohesion among bilin
gual staff and authoritarian decision-making; between
flexibility in teaching methods and materials and a few
attempts at standardization; and between pressing for new
rules for international students and accepting the system's
rules. Other themes discussed are the move towards recog
nition of the program both in the Hispanic community and the
broader metropolitan area, the increasing support of local
school officials, and the continuing development of the
Hispanic community.
Bilingual Summer Institute: 1972
Following that first year of experimentation and
uncertainty, the bilingual administrators and contracted
training organization (Associates for Renewal in Education)
had planned a second summer institute for training the
bilingual teachers, using the EPDA funds. Working on needs
that emerged during the year, they decided to make an
extensive effort to provide a summer experience which would
pull together both English and Spanish-speaking staff in a
clearer consensus of goals, use of materials, and teaching
methods. The purpose was to gain some sense of cohesion
and identity as a group.
The institute took place June 26 - August 11. All
bilingual staff and regular staff of the four schools
136
serviced by the Bilingual Program were invited to partici
pate if they were committed to working for the Bilingual
Program the following year. The 25 teachers who elected to
participate were 11 native Spanish speakers, 6 U.S.-born
bilinguals, and 8 English-dominant teachers. During the
first week, teachers were instructed to come to some mutual
understanding of the goals they wanted to reach in the
institute. Consultants in sensitivity training and group
process helped teachers work through initial conflicts and
inhibitions, to establish means of reasonable communication
and to clarify objectives for the summer. The result was a
well-organized effort, executed by the participating
teachers themselves, with the assistance of outside consul
tants whose help they requested.
The site for the institute was a private residential
school with extensive and pleasant grounds and well-equipped
facilities, in contrast to the drab, overcrowded public
school buildings bilingual staff and students had used
during the school year. In the mornings during the month of
July, 64 children, 6-12 years old, half English-dominant,
half Spanish-dominant, participated in experimental classes
designed to give teachers a variety of experiences in teach
ing. The students were eager participants, as they were
treated royally, with a small teacher-pupil ratio and many
opportunities for active learning outdoors as well as in.
Eleven high school volunteers provided assistance in the
137
smooth operation of activities. In the mornings, all teach
ers were free at various times to observe active classes,
exchange ideas, experiment with new methods of teaching, and
to teach classes in all subject areas: ESL, SSL, English
language arts, Spanish language arts, and math, science, and
social studies in both languages. Many hands-on materials
were provided by ARE; the children cared for small live
animals; in science, students observed and experimented with
living things on the school campus; there were special art,
music, and gym activities each day. The atmosphere was warm
and contagiously exciting.
Teachers received one hour of language training each
morning before students arrived. For this hour, the teach
ers were divided into separate English and Spanish classes,
♦
with the emphasis on acquisition rather than on formal
learning (Krashen 1978) . Teachers discussed:,, in their
second language, various.' issues in education, classroom
management, grammar, vocabulary, and U.S. and Latin American
culture. In the afternoons, teachers worked in small com
mittees to develop general curriculum guidelines for native
Spanish language teaching in all the content areas; to
select books in Spanish; and to accumulate a file of local
teacher-made instructional materials prepared by individual
bilingual teachers during the past year and at the
institute.
During the last two weeks of the Institute,
138
teachers summarized what they had accomplished and wrote a
lengthy description of the summer's experience. Overall,
they had come to feel much closer as a group and indivi
dually more competent as bilingual teachers. The institute
provided the first opportunity for Spanish and English-
speaking teachers to collaborate as a group on curriculum
development and objectives of the Bilingual Program. In
this context, they reaffirmed the importance of their
commitment to integrated, two-way bilingual teaching:
The goal of the program is to develop bilingual
competency in the students enrolled in the program.
These students represent both English-speaking
children and native Spanish speakers. The curri
culum is directed toward developing competency in
two languages for both groups and not merely in the
acquisition of a second language for the Spanish
speakers /Bilingual Office 1972c:2/.
Many of those interviewed described the summer institute as
pivotal in cementing closer staff relationships between
Black, Anglo, and Hispanic bilingual teachers who partici
pated, and giving everyone the encouragement that they each
had something professionally worthwhile and unique to con
tribute to the schools.
Another important summer task was to choose a new
principal for School A. In order to gain more credibility
with the community, parents were invited to take an active
part in selection of the principal. Interviews were held
in parents' homes rather than in formal downtown school
offices. Spanish-speaking parents were
139
still very hesitant to be active spokespeople; thus white,
English-speaking parents, who were the minority in numbers
but among the most outspoken, dominated the selection
process. During the previous year, however, there had been
a gradual shift in community attitudes towards a greater
openness to the possibilities of bilingual education. The
man eventually chosen and approved by the school community,
the Bilingual Office, and downtown school officials was very
pro-bilingual education. He was strongly community-
oriented, having been raised in an ethnically mixed urban
area, Italian-American in background, fluent in Spanish and
English, and accustomed to and enthusiastic about culturally
pluralistic settings. He came, ready and eager to implement
full Spanish-English bilingual instruction for all students
at School A.
Second Year of Bilingual Education in D.C.: 1972-1973
With the success of the summer institute, an enthu
siastic new principal for School A, growing cohesion of
regular and bilingual staff, and an increasing file of
bilingual materials to use in classrooms, things looked
promising for a second year. However, unpredictable events
can always undermine the best laid plans. A teacher strike
was called by the teachers' union, as negotiations were
not yet completed for a new teachers' contract. Bilingual
teachers were quite troubled in trying to decide whether
140
to join the strike or not. They felt torn between their
desire to be accepted as an integral part of regular school
staff and Hispanic parents' concerns that their children be
taken care of properly. Most bilingual teachers chose not
to cross the picket lines thus identifying with regular
teachers, but there were not many bilingual teachers at that
time who participated actively in union activities. The
strike was over in two and one-half weeks, and normal school
operations resumed.
Schools. During this year, the 22 bilingual teacher
positions, all paid by D.C. Public School funds, were
shifted slightly to provide services in the schools with the
most Spanish speakers for the mobile Hispanic population.
School A had nine bilingual teachers with the rest of the
regular staff committed to the concept of bilingual educa
tion. Hispanic teachers team taught, some with regular
staff, and some with American bilingual teachers, for
grades K-4. School A was now operating over capacity with
308 students, with 41 percent: home language English;
52 percent: home language Spanish; and 7 percent: students
from other countries whose home language was neither English
nor Spanish (Bilingual Office 1973c). The parents of inter
national students from non-Spanish-speaking countries were
given the option of moving their children to monolingual
English classes in other schools; those who stayed were
committed to their children's learning a third language and
141
participating in the bilingual classes.
School B continued with the same organizational plan
as the previous year, with six bilingual teachers teaming in
three bilingual classes with mixed grade levels. Approxi
mately one-fourth of the student body was enrolled in the
bilingual classes, 7 6 percent of whom were Spanish speakers.
Because of the continued low enrollment of Hispanic students
at School C, only one bilingual teacher remained to provide
tutoring in Spanish in subject areas and ESL classes for
Hispanic students. Classes in Spanish for English speakers
were dropped. Two bilingual staff members were placed in
another school with 51 Spanish-speaking students, School E.
One ESL teacher was assigned to three other elementary
schools with a total of 88 Hispanic students. Increasingly,
Spanish speakers seemed to be moving away from Black
dominant schools to those which had a higher percentage of
whites, west of Rock Creek Park. In addition, during second
semester three "bilingual specialists" were assigned to
three junior high schools and two senior high schools, to
/
count numbers of Hispanic students, assess needs, and
provide counseling and tutoring services (Bilingual Office
1973c).
Bilingual Office. In the Bilingual Office, one
year's experience had brought a continuity to the roles each
staff member carried out. The director was a politician
with a keen sense of knowing how to make the right moves at
142
the right time to provide the services they wanted for the
Hispanic community in the public schools. From the first
weeks, he established many lines of contact with downtown
school officials, which proved to be a significant factor
for action when the bureaucratic structure needed to be
prodded to get teachers hired, activate budgets, or procure
materials and services. He was also responsible for general
organization and planning for use of the bilingual staff and
was available for "trouble shooting," when principals of
schools would call him to help in a crisis with Hispanic
students. For example, it was the number of calls received
from secondary schools related to fights between Blacks and
Hispanics, drugs, police arrests, or truancy, that convinced
the office staff that they should expand their services to
secondary level.
Another important structure implemented by the
director was the cohesiveness encouraged and reinforced in
meetings of all bilingual staff and teachers, across
schools. From the very first days, weekly or biweekly meet
ings of bilingual teachers and staff were held to discuss
problems, concerns, and together to negotiate agreement on
goals and objectives and how their services were to be
carried out. This does not mean that there was great
clarity or singleness of purpose, for the bilingual staff
came from many different backgrounds and had divergent
points of view. At times, the director was stronghanded and
143
dictatorial. However, in the early years, there was a
genuine effort to work together as a group, and to provide
each other reinforcement and support, even though the staff
were scattered in many different schools. The director
developed a paternalistic style with staff, frequently
referring to the staff as one large family. In this
context, the Bilingual Office served as an extra structure
of support for teachers, beyond that which their individual
schools provided, as a mediator for services needed such as
textbooks, supplies, certification problems, in-service
training, organization of field trips, or paperwork required
by the schools.
The school-community coordinator continued to build
and expand his contact with the Hispanic community. That
year he reported an average of 15 calls received per day
from Hispanic families and 10-15 home visits made per week.
He sent a letter to all Hispanic parents known by the
Bilingual Office, stressing the importance of education and
regular attendance, with an attached translation of D.C.
rules governing compulsory attendance. He placed regular
announcements in Spanish on radio and television, asking for
Hispanic parents' cooperation in placing all Hispanic
children in school and telling of the services of the
Bilingual Office. He helped families secure medical, dental
and psychiatric services when needed.
The school-community coordinator also carried out
144
the first systematically executed survey of numbers of
Hispanic students in D.C. Public Schools in the Fall, 1972.
He found 5 36 Spanish speakers attending elementary schools,
the largest numbers concentrated in School A (166) and
School B (76), with five other schools ranging from 51
Hispanic students to 20. As a result of the survey, bilin
gual teachers were moved to serve the schools with largest
numbers of Hispanic students, as previously mentioned. In
January, secondary schools were added to the count, with
335 additional Spanish speakers, for a total of 871 Hispanic
students, almost all concentrated in schools west of Rock
Creek Park. High mobility among Hispanics still persisted.
When class lists between first and second years of the
Bilingual Program were compared, there had been a 5 3 percent
turnover at School C, 3 7 percent turnover at School A, and
3 3 percent turnover at School B. Yet new arrivals quickly
took the place of those who had moved (Bilingual Office
1973c:Tables 5 and 6).
Another vital member of the office team was the
program assistant, who had started the previous year as
office assistant. She organized the implementation of
administrative tasks, responded to needs as they arose, and
carried out the homework to write federal proposals and
technical reports, including keeping in touch with other
Hispanic agencies in the community, as they were organized
and funded. A clerk-typist was also added to the office
___________________________________________ 145
staff to provide secretarial assistance.
A fifth office staff member, coordinator of bilin
gual instructional services, was hired to work directly with
bilingual teachers and coordinate efforts toward establish
ing a sequenced bilingual curriculum. This position was
created in response to the first evaluation and testing
which had been carried out in the winter and spring of 1972.
The testing did not reveal any significant findings other
than the difficulty of testing and classifying the children
being served because of the wide range of their ages, abili
ties, and school backgrounds (Teitel 1971, 1972). However,
classroom observation by the evaluator provided material for
recommendation of a number of strategies for improvement of
the bilingual classes. It was the task of the instructional
coordinator and the contracted teacher training firm, ARE
(still funded by continuing EPDA money), to help bilingual
teachers implement some of the recommendations from the
evaluation. The specific recommendations included: indivi
dualization of instruction when there was a wide range of
student abilities, on a particular task; re-grouping to
include more integration of English and Spanish speakers in
all activities; emphasis on specific decoding skills in
reading and on reading comprehension; more training of
teachers in social studies and science (not in methodology,
but in subject matter); diagnostic testing for skill level
assessment; help in management of classrooms; inclusion of
146
more art and music in the curriculum; and developing a
sequenced curriculum (Sachs 1972) .
The new instructional coordinator assisted teachers
in implementing new grouping policies, choosing the amount
of instructional time devoted to each language, improvement
in methodology, and choosing curricular materials. The
decision was made to use one series, the Miami Linguistic
Reader, to teach reading in both Spanish and English, so
that there would be continuity for students moving within
the system and from grade to grade (Bilingual Office 1973c).
This was the first attempt at some form of standardization
within bilingual classes.
Beginning in February, 1973, a master teacher was
available half-time from ARE. She responded to specific
requests from bilingual teachers, visiting and sometimes
conducting demonstration lessons in classrooms or on-the-
spot training in classroom organization and management
techniques. Another part of the contract with ARE was to
continue workshops for training of the bilingual teachers.
The Advisory and Learning Exchange, run by ARE, had con-'
ducted many workshops during the past year, and they con
tinued to provide additional training, specifically geared
towards needs expressed by the bilingual teachers, such as
bilingual literacy skills, science in the bilingual class
room, math games, cuisenaire rods, puppets, social studies
K-3, and many more. The workshops were open to school
______________________ 147
teachers from the whole metropolitan area, usually one or
two scheduled daily, after school and in the evenings, and
many bilingual teachers participated, as stipends were
provided (Associates for Renewal in Education 1973). As the
bilingual teachers became more confident about their
English, some began to give workshops themselves. In addi
tion, several celebrations of holidays in various Latin
American countries were planned and carried out by bilingual
and Advisory staff, with special invitations to parents of
children in bilingual classes, featuring songs and dances
by students and professional music groups, historical and
cultural information, and food prepared by parents and
teachers. These were very popular and well attended.
As word of existence of the Bilingual Program
spread, increasing numbers of visitors came to observe
classes at Schools A and B. Local universities began to
send student volunteers to help teachers, with course credit
sometimes given for their participation. The director was
increasingly asked to speak about the promotion of bilin
gualism and biculturalism on radio and television, to
various community groups, and to local universities.
Teachers at School A were asked to participate in testing
new bilingual materials developed through the Materials
Acquisition Center in San Diego, California (Bilingual
Office 197 3c).
In these early stages, a process evaluator was used
148
rather than to have an extensive summative study carried out
as sometimes required by federal projects. The outside
evaluator-consultant continued to work as advisor during the
1972-1973 year and she served as a change agent in providing
feedback, support, and encouragement through institution of
her recommended changes. Her role was similar to the role
of an in-house, process evaluator as described in other
change projects (Berman and McLaughlin 1976; Center for New
Schools 1972). Extensive testing was not used because, for
the purpose of judging a bilingual program's merits, summa
tive testing is inappropriate in the first years of evalua
tion, as it takes from three to four years for students in
bilingual classes to master their second language and
function equally well in both languages in all subject areas
(Lambert and Tucker 1972; Swain 1979) . However, in later
years, evaluators were to continue to have difficulty with
testing because of the high mobility of Hispanic students.
As the end of this second year of bilingual instruc
tion in D.C. approached, two proposals were written and
funded for the coming year. One was a request for a final
year of funds from EPDA to be used for all bilingual teach
ers to.attend courses towards a masters degree in bilingual
education from a local university. The strategy was to
provide teachers with the necessary courses for certifica
tion to move them from temporary (a category for beginning
teachers) to probationary status, a step in the direction
149
of becoming permanent teachers in the system, and thus to
institutionalize the Bilingual Program. The second proposal
requested funds from the Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) to
extend services of the Bilingual Program to five secondary
schools with the largest numbers of Spanish-speaking
students. Funding was granted at $109,000. Step by step,
this school innovation was moving towards becoming an edu
cational institution.
Bilingual Training: Summer 1973
Bilingual teachers once again committed themselves
to summer training, with the masters degree scheduled to run
from June, 1973, through August, 1974. Regular teachers
valued their summers off; thus there was an in-group social
pressure among the bilingual staff valuing commitment and
dedication over and above that expected of regular teachers,
in the early years. Part of this "dedication" stemmed from
the knowledge that their status in the system was still
temporary and they had no assurance that they would not be
fired if positions in the school system had to be cut.
Thus, the insecurity led everyone to agree to more
schooling.
A total of 25 bilingual staff members chose to
pursue the masters in bilingual education, which was con
tracted to be carried out at American University (Somoza
1975:80). Courses were arranged to meet the needs of
certification as specified by the D.C. Board of Examiners,
the requirements of the university for a graduate degree,
and particular requests of teachers and staff members in the
Bilingual Program to meet needs as they saw them. The
courses included: Teaching of Bilingual Reading, Bilingual
Classroom Teaching Techniques, Teaching ESL, Sociology of
Urban Youth, Teaching of Mathematics, Developmental Educa
tional Psychology, In-service Training Practicum, Educa-‘
tional Research in Bilingualism, Cross-Cultural Communica
tion, Advanced Elementary Methods, Evaluation of Student
Progress, and Spanish for English Speakers or English for
Spanish Speakers (Bilingual Office 1973b). A few courses
were taught in both Spanish and English; however, most were
taught in English.
While summer classes were in session, the Bilingual
Office staff were gearing up for the addition of more
bilingual staff to secondary schools. This time regular
school administrative personnel were ready and eager for
help from this innovation. Secondary principals considered
Hispanic students a big headache. They did not know what
to do with them nor how to handle them when problems
occurred. As one principal put it, "They were climbing the
walls and driving us crazy." The first obvious problem was
lack of communication. Many Hispanic students at secondary
level were new arrivals with very limited English ability.
Few ESL classes were offered at the schools, and most
_____________________________________________________________ 151
Spanish-speaking students separated themselves from the rest
of the student body, cut classes, and sometimes became
involved in racial or drug-related incidents or fights.
The ESAA funds were to be used to add two more
bilingual counselors to the three who had been assigned to
secondary level the past spring for a total of five coun
selors, to provide two ESL teachers, and to add two more
Bilingual Office staff members. These staff were to service
three junior high schools and two senior high schools, where
almost all the Spanish-speakers were concentrated at secon
dary level. There was a wide range of applicants for the
six new positions; thus the bilingual administrators could
be reasonably selective in choosing the new staff. The
selection was based on each candidate's fluency in both
Spanish and English, familiarity with the D.C. Spanish
speaking community, experience with secondary students, and
(for the teachers) knowledge of second language teaching
methods (Bilingual Office 1973d). In addition, staff
members were chosen from a variety of national and cultural
backgrounds, to represent the multinational/multicultural
backgrounds of students.
As soon as staff members were hired, a month-long
summer workshop took place in August to orient the new
secondary staff. By now, from previous institutes and
workshops, office staff members knew the value of group
process to socialize their staff into an effective team, and
________________________________________________________________152
these methods were implemented effectively in the workshop.
The first week the secondary team spent reading the
proposal and defining goals, roles, responsibilities,
personal ambitions and priorities in an effort to get to
know each other and come to some consensus of group direc
tion, within the context of the goals defined by the
proposal. Following this, there were sessions on sensiti
vity training, drug abuse (presentation by the Metropolitan
Police Department), visits to Hispanic agencies and inten
sive sessions with Hispanic leaders, discussions of required
readings on Spanish-speaking immigrants to the U.S., visits
to the schools, and meetings with the principals of the
schools and with other bilingual staff. Book displays were
prepared by a bilingual book company and several university
professors, to help the ESL teachers choose textbooks and
for the counselors to select initial resource materials for
tutoring in subject areas in Spanish. In addition, the
group developed an informal intercultural awareness ques
tionnaire to assess Hispanic students' acculturation
patterns and adjustment to D.C. schools.
Participants' evaluations of the summer workshop
expressed the need to meet longer and to get more of a
feeling for the specific schools they would be serving, but
they unanimously felt that the group spirit which had
developed would keep them going, as they worked in separate
schools. Thus the support structure from the bilingual
______________ 153
administration and a system of communication between schools
was established (Bilingual Office 1973d).
Evolution of Secondary Bilingual Services; 1973-1974
Although regular teachers and principals of the five
schools initially welcomed the ESL teachers and bilingual
counselors, secondary bilingual staff soon found that there
were many rigid school structures which hampered their
efforts to establish support services for Hispanic students.
As Sumner and Zellman (1977) also found, the overall struc
ture of school programs at secondary level was a great
contrast to the flexibility of elementary school organi
zation .
Bilingual counselors first discovered that changing
students' schedules to allow them to attend an ESL class was
a very complicated process. Classes were assigned by a
computerized system run through the downtown offices.
Students who had registered in the spring of 1972 were
already pre-programmed in classes. While changes in sche
dules could be made, it was a complicated, time-consuming
process, and the regular counselors in several schools did
not easily relinquish their control of scheduling to the
bilingual counselors. Some regular counselors made judg
ments about immigrants based on their ability to converse
in English, rather than testing all four skills of listen
ing, speaking, reading, and writing. They did not readily
accept the ESL teachers' tests as indicative of the need
________________________________________________________________154
for ESL, as they believed in mainstreaming through immersion
in regular English classes, or submersion as Cohen (1976)
terms immersion for minorities. During first semester, most
regular counselors agreed to place immigrants in an ESL
class only after recommendation from the regular classroom
teacher that the student could not cope with the work
assigned. The style of teaching in some of the secondary
classrooms was formal, teacher-centered lectures. In these
classes grading was based on infrequent tests so that a
student might attend a class for several weeks before.the
teacher would become aware that the student was not follow
ing what was said. Once it was agreed that a student really
needed ESL, re-scheduling was complicated by the ESL
teachers’ half day schedule at each school, with the two
teachers covering four schools. Another scheduling problem
was that ESL was not accepted by the system as a substitute
for regular English, and students worried about the gradua
tion requirement of four years of regular English.
ESL teachers also came into conflict with other
specialized staff who worked with students referred to them
by the regular classroom teachers, such as the reading
specialists and speech therapists. These teachers were also
part-time, add-on staff who struggled with the schools to
get their classes set up. They were frequently relegated to
small corners of the overcrowded buildings, and they felt
the bilingual staff were encroaching on the little territory
___________________________________________________________ 15 5
they had managed to acquire. They preferred working with
immigrants because they did not create such serious disci
pline problems as native speakers with low reading levels;
thus the bilingual teachers were seen as serious competi
tion, even though there were more than enough students with
serious academic problems for every special teacher,to have
plenty of students.
Secondary ESL classes. In spite of all these
obstacles, ESL teachers began to be assigned students, as
some regular teachers referred students from other countries
who were not doing well in their classes. Students from
all countries were accepted in the ESL classes, thus expand
ing services to more than just Spanish speakers. Bilingual
counselors soon discovered that newly arrived international
students came in at a rate of approximately three to five
per month at each school. Most of these students spoke
little English and were automatically assigned to ESL
classes, so that by the end of first semester, the ESL
classes were swelling.
Scheduling conflicts and referrals from any subject-
area teacher left ESL teachers with a wide variety of
language ability of students in each class, from advanced
students to those at beginning level to those who did not
yet read in their native language, and who thus needed
serious help in all subject areas. There was also a wide
156
age range, with junior high students from 12 to 18 years of
age, and senior high classes of 14 to 19 year olds. These
notes written by an ESL teacher to the Bilingual Office
staff express some of the complexity of organizing classes
that first year:
As you can see, it's the spread in each class
that makes it so difficult to teach. Now if all the
students were motivated, it would be a cinch, but
most of them are not and it takes some effort to keep
five and six different activities going on at the same
time, and keep order in the classroom, at the junior
high school level. . . . The tutors are invaluable.
So many of my students need individual help, because
each one is working on something different and
frequently it is not an activity that the student
can carry out completely on his own.
The biggest complaint I would have is that I do
not have enough time to work with each student. Class
periods are at the most 45-5 0 minutes long and that
time goes by so fast! Also most frustrating in the
classroom is the intercultural conflict that occurs
frequently. We have made much progress, but that
tension is always there. . . .
Students are beginning to share their experiences
with each other, verbally and then in written compo
sitions. Frequently the things shared are struggles:
students on the bus stealing from other students and
passengers— fires set in buildings at home— bad
accidents with bicycles— racial incidents— blacks
beating up latinos — sale of drugs— search_for jobs.
It's a rough life /Bilingual Office 1973g/.
Through contacts with local universities established
the previous year, an extensive system of volunteer tutors
had been organized by the Bilingual Office. University
students in language and linguistics courses or social work
or education were encouraged or sometimes required to parti
cipate, for course credit. These students and the skills
they listed were matched, as much as possible, with teacher
needs. There were many volunteers, and they were used
157
effectively at both elementary and secondary levels. Most
volunteers worked with individual students with special
problems, although especially capable and willing partici
pants were sometimes assigned a small group of 3-8 students.
Local universities also began to send increasing numbers of
student teachers to the elementary bilingual classes at
Schools A and B (Bilingual Office 1973f, 1974c).
Bilingual counselors. Secondary bilingual counse
lors, all male, one located at each of the five schools,
like the ESL teachers, struggled with definition of their
role within the schools. School principals clearly wanted
them to handle all serious discipline problems with Spanish
speakers. Before long, principals assumed the bilingual
counselors1 "expertise" extended to other international
students as well; most of the counselors spoke at least one
other language in addition to Spanish and English. Bilin
gual counselors fought hard to be accepted as regular
counselors, with full duties including scheduling students,
but in this position they were caught in a role conflict,
as mediators between students and the school system. Again,
this illustrates the tension of being both from inside and
outside the system. Several of the bilingual counselors
negotiated this tension very successfully, by solving school
administrative problems and at the same time developing good
rapport and solid trust of students. One or two tended to
be heavily pro-school administration, which did not give
________________________________________________________ 15 8
them as much flexibility in negotiating changes in the way
international students were handled by the system.
In order to get to know students, each bilingual
counselor talked to Spanish speakers in the halls and other
places where they congregated, eating with them in the cafe
teria, and encouraging them to visit his office. Students
soon came to him with problems. Gradually the bilingual
counselors were called on to aid in grade placement and
analysis of transcripts of new international students;
scheduling (although some schools took one full year to
allow this); control of tardiness and truancy, and contact
with dropouts; discipline and suspensions; translation;
dissemination of school notices and forms to Spanish-speak
ing families; and tutoring in remedial work in subject areas
in Spanish (Bilingual Office 1974d). Thus, over time, the
bilingual counselor's role became a unique combination of
duties of a regular school counselor (testing and placement,
scheduling), assistant principal for international students
(responsible for discipline and administrative contact with
home), attendance officer, advisor to students and parents,
and remedial teacher.
Services for all international students. Although
the largest number of students from other countries were
Spanish speakers, there were enough other international
students that before long it was assumed in all the schools
that the bilingual counselor and ESL teacher would handle
_______________________________________________________________ 159
problems related to all international students. Bilingual
staff took on the responsibility, although it was not speci
fically written into the ESM proposal, because of the needs
of the students and the bilingual staff's desire to be
accepted by the regular school staff. No one wanted to
insist that only Spanish speakers should get preferential
treatment.
Secondary Hispanic students. As bilingual counse
lors and ESL teachers became increasingly familiar with
student patterns, they attempted to analyze certain aspects
of student life which dominated Hispanic students' expe
rience. A central issue was low or sporadic Hispanic atten
dance at school. Through counseling students, bilingual
staff found that the major problems were: language
barriers; economic pressure to get jobs to help support
their families; immigration problems; absence of parental
authority, or stringent parental authority (thus students
cut classes to do other tasks, because they had to be home
by after-school hours); intense appetite for material things
when exposed to a society with easy access to such; involve
ment with drugs; or racial conflict with Black students
(Bilingual Office 1974c).
One goal of the ESAA funding was to stimulate inte
gration of Hispanic students into regular school life. To
analyze the kind of separation experienced by Hispanic
students, the staff administered a questionnaire on
160
intercultural awareness at the beginning of the school year
to English and Spanish speaking students at the five
secondary schools. Overall analysis of the data showed that
Hispanic students were perceived by their peers as generally
shy and isolated and sometimes discriminated against. Many
Hispanic students felt that English-speaking students were
never helpful and projected an air of superiority. The two
groups of students conducted few activities together, inside
or outside the school (Bilingual Office 1973e).
Additional data on Hispanic secondary students
revealed that over half had been in the U.S. for less than
three years. Like elementary students, no clear sense of
group identity had developed, with conflicts occurring
between Spanish speakers or with other international stu
dents as often as with U.S. Blacks. Table 1 illustrates the
wide diversity of countries represented by both elementary
and secondary students. In addition to characteristics of
recent arrival, isolation, and heterogeneity, secondary
Hispanic students' turnover rate between spring and fall,
1973, was 48 percent. This large loss was thought to be a
combination of school dropouts and flight to the suburbs.
As with the elementary schools, however, there were always
new arrivals to replace those who left (Bilingual Office
1974c).
161
Countries of Birth:
TABLE 1
Spanish-speaking Population , Elementary
and Secondary Schools involved in the Bilingual Program3-
Country Elementary Secondary Total
Argentina 4 4 8
Bolivia 6 3 9
Brazil*3 6 6 12
Chile 20 6 26
Colombia 23 15 38
Costa Rica 2 4 6
Cuba 13 11 24
Dominican Republic 14 40 54
Ecuador 19 20 39
El Salvador 46 36 82
Guatemala 21 21 42
Honduras 3 4 7
Mexico 18 11 29
Nicaragua 23 17 40
Panama 3 3
Paraguay 3 3
Peru 4 10 14
Portugal*3 2 1 3
Puerto Rico 19 10 29
Spain 5 5 10
Trinidad-Tobago 2 2
Uruguay 2 2
U.S.A. 50 28 78
Venezuela 3 5 8
West Indies 1 1
Information unavailable 35 35
TOTAL 302 302 604
Source: Bilingual
^Portuguese-speaking
Office 1973a.
162
Higher education campaign. One easily visible need
of Hispanic students at the senior high level was for some
form of career counseling. Accordingly, the new secondary
curriculum specialist in the Bilingual Office began plans
for a College/Career Day, which was held on November 30,
1973. Planned and carried out by the Bilingual Office in
conjunction with several Hispanic community organizations
whose focus was also education, the workshop brought
together representatives from twelve area colleges, univer
sities and technical schools. The enthusiastic response of
students prompted the organization of a committee of His
panic community leaders, which eventually became known as
the Coalition for the Higher Education of Latinos, with the
bilingual secondary curriculum specialist serving as chair
person. This group petitioned area college administrators
for entrance slots and financial assistance for Spanish
speakers graduating from D.C. schools. Bilingual counselors
worked individually with students on applications, entrance
tests, interviews, and other advice and practical support.
The Coalition held monthly career workshops to further
assist students. As a result, at the end of the year, out
of the 41 Spanish-speaking students who graduated, 35 were
accepted into area colleges and technical schools, all with
financial assistance (Bilingual Office 1974a).
Parent involvement. Bilingual Office staff also
organized and disseminated a monthly newsletter in Spanish
____________________________________________________________ 16 3
and English to all Spanish-speaking parents whose children
attended the five secondary schools, to regular administra
tive staff of the schools, and to all Hispanic community
organizations. Approximately 200 people attended the first
secondary Hispanic parents' meeting, held on March 17, 1974.
The focus of the meeting was to provide information to the
community about services available through the Bilingual
Office and other community agencies; it was not opened up as
a forum for community concerns. Parents were invited to
call upon the bilingual staff of their children's individual
schools for help with any problems.
In contrast to open involvement of parents in the
elementary schools, which served relatively small neighbor
hoods with homes in close proximity, there were fewer
avenues for parent involvement at secondary level. The only
times parents had any real contact with schools were for
disciplinary problems (a student's three-day suspension
required a parental visit for re-admission to school), PTA
meetings (which usually dealt with fund-raising and volun
teering but rarely with school decision-making), and parent-
teacher conferences (which were usually teacher-dominated).
The bilingual personnel did not significantly challenge
secondary school structure, but simply added their services
into existing channels. Therefore, little was done to
change Hispanic parental involvement at secondary level,
which was practically nonexistent. The one change for
__________________________________________________________ 164
parents which had come with addition of secondary bilingual
staff was the supportive entrance to school for newly
arrived families provided by each counselor. They now had
someone with whom they could communicate who explained
school rules and structures, helped in grade placement and
choice of courses, and provided continuing support and
contact with the home.
Secondary staff cohesiveness. Throughout the school
year 197 3-1974, the bonds which had been created in the
summer workshop were renewed in weekly or bi-weekly secon
dary staff meetings with the office staff. Some staff
members described these as similar to therapy sessions.
"We shared problems, made suggestions, let our hair down,
discussed conflicts with regular staff of the schools
served, confided feelings of inadequacy, cheered each other
up." The excitement of the first weeks soon was replaced by
troubling realities with which each bilingual staff member
had to deal, and the support and sharing served an important
function to keep everyone going. The Bilingual Office
staff, as they had done for elementary teachers, set up a
paternalistic support system which took care of all paper
work with downtown school offices such as certification,
credentialing, salary negotiations, and assignments to
schools. The pep talks of the director emphasized the
staff's closeness as one big family and the exceptional job
165
everyone was doing. He liked to describe the bilingual
staff as revolutionaries coming from outside the system,
creating change within the system.
Continuation of Elementary Bilingual Education: 1973-1974
School B. The major programmatic change at elemen
tary level during the 1973-1974 school year occurred at
School B. When the new principal first took over two year's
before, she had negotiated skillfully with the Parent-
Teacher Association, which had a history of active involve
ment in the school. Parents who dominated the PTA were
largely middle and upper middle class Jewish, Anglo, and
international parents. The principal explained that parents
had volunteered in the school so much and controlled deci
sion-making so thoroughly that the teachers were intimi
dated. She wanted to build up the teachers' confidence in
their own ability? then, after they, as a staff team, knew
clearly what they wanted for the needs of all the children,
parents could actively participate again. Parents were
still welcomed during this period, but they were asked not
to be quite so demanding. Using many of the ideas from her
Innovation Team experience, the principal conducted or
organized multiple workshops and sensitivity sessions.
Teachers experimented with open classroom techniques and
mixed grades, and shared skills with each others' classes.
Those teachers who were not comfortable with experimentation
166
moved to other schools or resigned and new teachers were
chosen carefully by the principal and parents. Bilingual
teachers at School B were participants in all this training
and reassessment, in addition to all the training provided
by the Bilingual Office.
Towards the end of the new principal's second year,
teachers as a team had come to some major decisions about
how School B could be better organized to achieve what they
felt would be an effective school program for their multi
faceted student body. In meetings with parents, the plans
were cemented for reorganization of the whole school around
a cluster concept. Rather than organizing classes by age,
students would be grouped by clusters, with a built-in
flexibility for providing many different types of activities
at many different levels, to meet the greatly varied needs
of the student body. There were three clusters: K-2, 3-4,
and 5-6 with a fourth (7-8) to be added. Within these
clusters children began the day with their "family" group,
followed by greatly varied schedules for each child, depend
ing on their skill levels in each subject area. As soon as
a student mastered the skills in one group, he or she was
moved on to another level. Many activities were multi
disciplinary, but there was an overall sequence of skills
expected to be mastered by the end of participation in each
cluster which teachers kept track of through informal
testing. Diagnostic reading and math tests given at the
________________________________________________________________167
beginning and end of the school year for all public schools
in D.C. helped the faculty of School B determine if they
were providing a solid base in language arts and mathematics
in addition to enrichment activities.
To leave the bilingual classes as functioning
separate units under this system would virtually segregate
them into a separate mini-school, the staff decided.
Because the new cluster organization looked interesting to
white middle class parents, teachers felt that more English-
speaking students would transfer out of the bilingual
classes, leaving the Spanish-speaking students segregated
into a separate track. Therefore, it was decided that the
bilingual program would be opened to the whole school. The
six bilingual teachers were now given the task of teaching
beginning Spanish as a Second Language (SSL) to all children
in the school; to continue advanced SSL for those English
speakers who had been in the bilingual classes; and to teach
Spanish native language arts, instruction in Spanish in
subject areas, and beginning and advanced ESL to Spanish
speakers. They soon found that it was impossible to tackle
all these needs, at all the different levels. The six
bilingual staff were spread too thin.
The compromise put highest priorities on continuing
some of the instruction begun in bilingual classes during
the past two years and providing solid help for newly
arrived Spanish-speaking children. Both English and
168
Spanish-speaking students who had been in the bilingual
classes continued to get some academic classes taught bilin-
gually. All Spanish speakers in the school received a
portion of their daily instruction in Spanish and new
arrivals took beginning ESL. The rest of the school began
receiving small doses of Spanish (SSL) daily, generally
20-30 minutes.
By the end of the year, bilingual teachers were
beginning to have some doubts about the reorganization, but
with greatly mixed feelings. They were pleased with the
reintegration of Spanish speakers into the whole school and
felt that the mix had had beneficial results in social rela
tions between the various groups. However, they also
expressed concern that use of Spanish in the classroom had
been watered down to such a small portion of each child's
day that once again the unconscious message came through to
students that English is the important language and Spanish
does not have status. There were fewer activities for
Spanish and English-speaking children to use both languages
in interaction with each other in the new organization, as
had occurred so naturally in the bilingual classes. As a
result, English-speaking children learning Spanish were not
learning a native-like accent but were imitating their
English-speaking peers, as the only time they practiced
Spanish was in an all English-speaking group. This is
similar to the finding in the immersion education experiment
169
in Culver City that it is important to have second language
peer models as well as a teacher model for acquiring native
like second language fluency (Cohen 1975a).
School A. School A continued to thrive in its
increasing bilingualism and multiculturalism. There was
still limited bilingual teaching in the upper grades, due to
lack of a sufficient number of bilingual personnel to team
in every classroom. However, with a bilingual principal,
secretary, counselor, cafeteria worker, and teachers bilin-
gually paired on the playground, students freely used both
languages in all settings. All school notices to home,
signs on the walls of the school, assemblies and PTA
meetings were in both Spanish and English. School A con
tinued to attract more international families from non-
Spanish-speaking countries, at 13 percent of the school
population. English speakers were 42 percent of the total
and Hispanics 45 percent. Lago (1974:11) describes an
observer's impressions:
One's first impression when entering /School A/
is that one has just discovered a new world. A big
white poster with photographs of children from all
over the world reads "Bienvenidos." Immediately one
is surrounded by children of all colors: white,
olive, cocoa and dark-brown. One is watched by blue,
black and brown eyes, some round, others almond-
shaped. One can see many different hair styles:
straight blond ponytails, tight black curls, glossy
black pigtails, Afros. In the happy confusion of
voices it is very hard to tell who is speaking
English and who is speaking Spanish.
Table 2 gives an idea of the great variety of countries
represented at the school.
TABLE 2
Birthplaces of Students at School A, January 31, 1974
Afghanistan (1) Iran (1)
Algeria (1) Italy (1)
Barbados (1) Jamaica (5)
Bolivia (5) Jordan (2)
Brazil (2) Mexico (5)
Burma (3) Nicaragua (7)
Chile (9) Pakistan (2)
China (1) Panama (1)
Colombia (15) Peru (1)
Cuba (2) Philippines (3)
Dominican Republic (7) Puerto Rico (3)
Ecuador (14) Rumania (2)
El Salvador (2) Russia (1)
England (4) South Africa (1)
France (1) Sudan (3)
Ghana (1) Thailand (3)
Guatemala (18) Trinidad (1)
Hong Kong (4) Turkey (1)
India (1) U.S.A. (136)
Source: Bilingual Office 1974e.
In interviews with teachers at School A, Lago found
that some Hispanic teachers described themselves as pioneers
in a revolution in education. All teachers said the experi
ment was working well and that they were happier there than
in any previous teaching experience. One Anglo bilingual
teacher stated that they still had a long way to go to
achieve a completely bilingual school. The main complaint
171
among teachers was lack of space in the small ten-classroom
building.
In another graduate student's study on classroom
interaction, taken from observation of three classrooms:
the kindergarten and 2-3 at School A and 3-4 at School B,
Fuller (1974) observed that language was not a point of
conflict between teachers and students or between peers.
Both languages were used freely and affirmed by teachers and
students. However, conflicts in values and behavior
occurred when the teachers sometimes wanted individual
competition and the students preferred group competition, or
students preferred group interaction and teachers wanted
individual work. Here it seems that the bilingual teachers
were unconsciously teaching toward traditional Anglo-
American middle class values of individualism and compe
tition .
Once again the point should be made that each bilin
gual class was different, reflecting the national and
cultural background of the teachers, their past experience,
their individual personalities, and their particular philo
sophy about education. Some were Black, some Anglo, some
Hispanic. Each year different teachers teamed together,
which involved careful negotiations between the two teachers
about the way the classroom would be run and thus required
some flexibility on each teacher's part. There was no
standard imposed by the Bilingual Office or by their
172
training in all the workshops, the BA, and the MA. The
multi-faceted training merely exposed them to many different
styles of teaching. When faced with their 20-30 children,
some kind of process took place which was a combination of
all these factors, as teachers made decisions about their
classes.
Growing Status of Bilingual Education with Local School
Officials
In the fall of 1973, a new Black, female school
superintendent, coming from outside the D.C. school system,
outspoken and controversial from her first days in office,
caused a flurry of new activity and reassessment of many
issues. The Bilingual Office had to re-analyze its rela
tionship to the central school offices and to touch base
with the new staff members brought in with the change. As
it turned out, the superintendent was very responsive to the
idea of bilingual education, as she was an enthusiast for
the concept of multicultural education. In her 120 Day
Report, she outlined this philosophy as an overall educa
tional objective for the D.C. Public Schools:
Multicultural education aims to create a class
room environment really representative of the cultural
diversity of our American society. We believe that
we should create for our students a model of education
congruent with the cultural values of their homes.
Our curriculum should and will provide the opportunity
for our students to learn from each other: under
standing, respecting, and seeing differences in a
positive context. Mankind is one, but is manifested
in many cultural forms, none better than any other,
each of equal human value. We are aiming to provide
173
a better understanding of the fundamental oneness of
humanity within the rich and beautiful diversity of _
cultural expressions /Superintendent of Schools 1974b/.
Because of the higher priority now given to multi
cultural issues, the superintendent requested that the
director of the Bilingual Office be moved to the downtown
school offices, as a special assistant to the superinten
dent. The Bilingual Office remained at School A, to have
direct and immediate contact with the twelve schools being
served, with the school-community coordinator in charge.
The director was given an office in the downtown administra
tive building, near the superintendent, with a hotline to
the superintendent's office and funds for an assistant. The
assistant hired was a trained linguist. In this position,
the director was given responsibility for administration of
all bilingual education and ESL classes in the D.C. Public
Schools, from kindergarten through adult education. Bilin
gual education suddenly had new status within the school
system.
Administratively, this sequence of events which
"happened" rather than being planned by the bilingual admin
istrators, was significantly different from the experience
of other school systems which had developed a more extensive
ESL program for international students. Because there was
no resistance from an ESL division, it was easier for
bilingual education to become the controlling philosophy
for services to students originally from other countries.
174
Only one school within the D.C. Public Schools had been
established in the 1940s to offer courses in U.S. citizen
ship and ESL for adults. Until establishment of the secon
dary bilingual program, in recent years it had been the
policy of secondary schools to send new arrivals to this
school until they learned "enough" English to enter regular
classes. When the Bilingual Office decided to place ESL
teachers at secondary schools, this adult education school
was relieved to end services to secondary students, as they
were causing discipline problems and disrupting their
classes with adults. They felt that young students were
less motivated in language classes all day and needed the
variety of different subject area classes. In addition, at
the adult education school secondary students were separated
from their English-speaking peers.
Thus as long as ESL teachers at the adult education
school were allowed to continue teaching their courses, they
did not raise any major objections when the director of
bilingual education was placed as their administrative head.
The only other total school with ESL services was PEILA
(also adult education), and since it was organized and run
by the Hispanic community, there was no resistance to the
administrative move there; in fact, it was welcomed as a
sign of another pro-Hispanic victory.
It was during this school year that the historic
Lau decision was issued by the U.S. Supreme Court in
_______________________________________________________ 175
January, 1974. Although there was no specific mandate as to
how non-English-speaking children were to receive a
"meaningful education" as decreed by the court, bilingual
education was one of several options mentioned in the
opinion delivered by Justice Douglas. The uncertainty which
followed left school districts raising many questions about
how to comply with the decree. With confidence,*the super
intendent of the D.C. Public Schools submitted a letter on
February 20, 1974, to the Board of Education:
In reference to the recent United States Supreme
Court Decision that public school systems are required
by federal law to take positive action to help chil
dren who do not speak English, I would like to advise
the Board of Education concerning the programs we are
presently implementing which are specifically geared
to providing additional assistance to Spanish
speaking students.
The Bilingual Program began its operation in three
elementary schools . . . in September 1971. It
originated as a cooperative effort between the D.C.
Public Schools and the Spanish-speaking community
with the objective of providing assistance to Spanish
speaking elementary school children who were unable
because of language and cultural obstacles, to fully
participate as students in American schools
/Superintendent of Schools 1974a:1/.
The letter then proceeded to describe in detail the services
as they had been provided by the Bilingual Program up to
that point in time. The first hint of the existence of
other students with different language backgrounds who might
need special help came in the last paragraphs of the letter:
In October 1973, the Office of Planning, Research
and Evaluation conducted a city-wide survey of our
student population. According to the survey, there
are 903 Spanish surnamed and 592 Asian-American
students enrolled in our schools. Most of those
176
students attend schools which are located west of
Rock Creek Park.
We are currently attempting to determine if there
are school-age children in the District of Columbia
who are not receiving educational services because _
of language barriers /Superintendent of Schools 1974:£/.
Soon after, the director of bilingual education was given
responsibility for devising a means of compliance with the
court order for students of language backgrounds other than
Spanish, in addition to services provided for Hispanics.
Growth of Hispanic Community Agencies; 1970-1974
During the first half of the 197 0s the Hispanic
community in the D.C. metropolitan area continued to receive
new immigrants. No one had precise information on numbers,
since there was no census taken, but each year the count of
Spanish speakers in the D.C. Public Schools increased. The
Bilingual Office began to keep records of new families, and
the school-community coordinator and secondary bilingual
counselors spent over half their time working with new
arrivals. Estimates of the total number of Hispanics within
D.C. itself were all guesses mainly because it was so diffi
cult to keep track of all the movement to the suburbs.
However, it was a fairly well-based assumption that
Hispanics were the largest minority community after Blacks,
within the total metropolitan area. The Spanish-speaking
communities of Maryland and Virginia had organized into
effective community groups, assisted by United Planning
Organization (UPO) as early as 1966.
_____________ 177
In D.C. the pattern of rapid migration of new
Hispanic families to the suburbs made it more difficult to
justify numbers to be served and thus to establish a unified
effort. There was a lot of in-fighting among the community
leaders. As each new agency was established, those in
leadership within that agency sometimes competed with other
leaders for funds and services and for leadership roles
within the community. Even without coordination, there was
quite a bit of expansion of services for Hispanics.
SEP Center. The Spanish Education Development
Center continued to be a respected educational vehicle for
the community, closely connected with the Bilingual Office.
In March, 1971, the SED Center bilingual preschool began
operation five mornings per week with two full-time paid
staff, six volunteers, and 25 children. After-school tutor
ing programs started for all ages, and in response to
Hispanic parents' requests at School A, an after-school art
program was begun. The staff of the preschool was soon
expanded to three teachers and three teacher-aides, as the
number of children grew to 6 0 within one year.
The director of SED Center fought hard to have her
staff placed on D.C. Public Schools' payroll and won her
battle. It was argued that School A would have established
the preschool but did not have the space; therefore, the
SED Center preschool was set up as an extension of the
178
Bilingual Program. Some money to run the programs at SED
Center also came from the city's Department of Human
Resources and from federal funds. To get city money, some
Hispanic parents demonstrated in the mayor's office and
their cause was covered by the local news media. The SED
Center director was convinced that this was an important way
of educating Spanish-speaking adults in the community to the
way the system works and how to negotiate for needed
services. The demonstrations became a regular means of
petitioning for additional or continued support for
Hispanics.
PEILA. The Program for English Instruction for
Latin Americans was also very closely associated with the
Bilingual Office. As an adult education center, PEILA pro
vided the final link for educational services for Spanish
speakers from preschool through adult education. They
offered classes in the mornings, afternoons, and evenings in
ESL, Spanish literacy, citizenship, and GED (to pass the
high school equivalency exam). Most of their staff spoke
some Spanish. An observer who studied adult education for
international students in the D.C. Public Schools wrote the
following comments in her dissertation:
The staff of PEILA is highly motivated and profes
sionally well-prepared. Most have had TESOL expe
rience and/or have degrees in the field. They are
young, have initiative, and are open to new ideas
and suggestions for better methods. The director
realizes she can and does give very much of a free
179
hand to her staff, relying on their competence to
accomplish pre-established goals. There seems to be
a good rapport between teachers and students: enough
respect for teachers so that work gets done but a
relaxed enough atmosphere so that students are not
inhibited /Hunter 1975:65-66/.
After several years of federal funding, the commu
nity petitioned for PEILA to be placed in the regular D.C.
school budget, with the director of bilingual education
leading the campaign. Once again, students at PEILA and
other Hispanics were organized to march on downtown offices,
in City Council and Board of Education hearings. With the
approval of the new school superintendent, PEILA was added
to the D.C. adult education system in 1974.
New services for Hispanics. Other Hispanic commu
nity organizations continued to develop and expand their
services. The Spanish Catholic Center had a growing staff
of priests, social workers, and teachers. The D.C. Spanish
Advisory Committee, connected to the mayor’s office, con
tinued to present Hispanic concerns to the city bureaucracy.
There was a program run by the D.C. Department of Recreation
which had been in existence for several years, called the
Roving Leaders’ Program, which set up a Latin American Youth
Center. The two Spanish-speaking roving leaders visited
secondary schools regularly, worked closely with the secon
dary bilingual counselors to get all students enrolled in
school, and conducted human relations workshops in school
when serious conflicts occurred between students.
18 0
By 1974, a great variety of other organizations had
been set up to provide various social services to the
Hispanic community by Spanish-speaking staff. Andr6meda
was a Hispanic drug abuse and mental health center, founded
by a Hispanic psychiatrist in 1970. Ayuda was organized by
George Washington University Spanish-speaking law students,
to provide legal and consumer services in problems with
immigration, taxes, job discrimination, and many other
areas. The Woodrow Wilson International Center, directed by
a Spanish-speaking minister, housed various community organ
izations and provided a variety of services. El Centro de
Emergencia Hispano was a pilot project sponsored by the D.C.
police. The D.C. anti-poverty program sponsored a project
in the Hispanic community called CHANGE, directed by
Spanish-speaking staff. Project Adelante was still con
tinuing at a local technical institute. Project Puente pro
vided some classes in Spanish and ESL as part of the ser
vices of an area mental health center. Proyecto Amistad
provided student volunteers for social service help from a
local university. There was also a Spanish-speaking radio
station, WFAN "Radio Latina."
By this time, it was clear that Hispanic leaders
had been heard and city institutions were responding to the
needs as presented by the leaders. Many other private
groups, churches, and individuals got interested in doing
what they could to help in the Hispanic community. < The
181
Bilingual Office, as the oldest established educational
project with public funding, was one of the centers of deci
sion-making for the Hispanic community and the center of
dissemination of information to the community on educational
issues. Education was considered the key to success by most
Hispanics. Thus the staff of the Bilingual Office were
among the key leaders in the Hispanic community at that
time. It was through their network of contacts with so many
Spanish-speaking families that they were able to organize
effective community demonstrations downtown. Through in
creasing experience in training, organizing, decision-making
and developing strategies for complicated negotiations be
tween different cultural groups, the key staff of the Bilin
gual Office, SED Center, and PEILA had come a long ways
towards making a significant impact on the schools and the
Hispanic community.
Analysis of the Change Process Within Schools: 1971-1974
Local acceptance. After three years of bilingual
education in Washington, D.C., the innovation was beginning
to exhibit tendencies towards institutionalization but at
the same time retained informal, flexible qualities. A num
ber of factors had made the project increasingly acceptable
to the local school system. Perhaps most prominent was the
concern of administrators to solve problems of security and
discipline. Hispanic staff quickly showed their ability to
handle
182
problems caused to the schools by Hispanic students, and as
a result almost all principals became very laudatory of
their bilingual staff. Among Hispanic parents, concern for
security of their children was also a high priority. At
this point, for school administrators and the target commu
nity, testing and academic progress was not a major issue.
Only English-speaking parents expressed great concern for
academic progress and if they were not satisfied, they
pulled their children out of the program. In parent-teacher
conferences, some Hispanic teachers also emphasized emo
tional growth of students or maturation in the affective
areas, at least as much as academics. Here administrators
leaned towards one easily solvable problem, security, while
teachers were expanding and looking at other goals and
concerns.
Another factor which aided the establishment of the
Bilingual Program was the number of principals in the
schools being served who were open to innovation within
their teaching staff. This is frequently cited in most
change studies as a basic necessity for introducing innova
tions (Berman and McLaughlin 1976). The Lau decision, a
factor from outside the system, further helped to establish
the innovation in order to remain in compliance with the
law.
The ESAA funding initiated the first proposal which
was to serve as a planned change to be carried out.
183
However, it was still sufficiently flexible in its goals to
allow the staff quite a bit of leeway as to ways to imple
ment secondary services. Secondary staff, as elementary
staff had done, had to create their own policies in response
to the given situation at each school. They did this in
consultation with Bilingual Office staff and compared notes
with those at other schools, but they were largely on their
own for many decisions in the early years. Again, the term
"mutual adaptation" of the Rand study (1974-1977) does not
completely apply to this situation; for policies evolved
mostly in response to the local setting rather than having
a written plan which was adapted to fit the needs.
Unresolved tensions. Many examples of the tension
between detachment and institutionalization were present by
this time. The tension was inherent in the role of bilin
gual counselors, with the most successful counselors being
those who seemed to play both sides of the tension with some
kind of skillful balance between pressing for new rules and
accepting the system’s rules, between advocacy for the
rights of international students and disciplinarian of
students. The director of bilingual education charged his
staff with their role as "revolutionaries" coming from
outside the system, and yet he was working hard to get them
credentialled and into permanent positions within the
system. During the teacher strike, bilingual teachers were
184
torn between their role as Hispanic community representa
tives and joining teachers' union activities. Hispanic
community demonstrations were protests against the system to
receive more help from the system.
The tension between solving a single problem vs.
dealing with expanding problems can also be illustrated with
the growing concern for services to be provided not only for
Hispanics but also for all international students. Secon
dary staff were immediately confronted with a decision on
this issue. Although the ESAA funding had specified ser
vices only to Hispanics, secondary bilingual staff chose to
move beyond the requirements of the proposal, having been
given the expanded role of "international specialist" by
regular school staff. The Lau decision pushed the innova
tion further in this direction, as illustrated in this
complaint heard in the Bilingual Office: "Now they want us
to be multilingual, multicultural experts!"
The flexibility and informality allowed teachers in
choosing ways to handle problems and teaching styles was
generally still the pattern at this stage, although there
were some hints of moves toward some standardization, such
as the decision to use one reading series for all classes.
That decision did not last long, as teachers became dis
satisfied with the books and continued creating their own
materials or pulling from many different sources. All the
training that teachers received did not create one uniform
________________________________________________________________185
style of teaching. Staff decisions made were fairly demo
cratic, with all teachers and staff having input in the
process, although there was a little authoritarian decision
making at the office level. Many decisions were left to
the individual staff members immediately involved with each
situation.
From uncertainty, the Bilingual Program was moving
towards increasing clarity and social cohesion. The inno
vation had begun with great insecurity among bilingual
staff, lack of clarity of goals, and expanding problems with
students. With experience in classrooms over time and the
skillful work of the director towards group process, bilin
gual staff gradually made conflicts more negotiable until a
real sense of group cohesion and identity began to develop
in the second and third years of operation. Staff became
more confident and frequently committed themselves to extra
work beyond that required of regular school staff. Secon
dary staff went through similar stages of development in a
shorter period of time, partly because the bilingual
directors had learned from previous experience and set up
structures such as the summer workshop and weekly staff
meetings to provide immediate contact and feedback.
Finally, having started as an unknown, the Bilingual
Program was gaining an identity of its own through increa
sing exposure to the outside world. Hispanic parents were
fully aware of its existence and the continuing increase in
186
Hispanic enrollment indicated community approval of the
project. English-speaking families at School A had also
become full supporters. Area universities began to acknow
ledge the program's existence as increasing numbers of
volunteers and student teachers were sent to train with the
bilingual teachers. Likewise, the media provided increasing
recognition.
187
CHAPTER VI
GROWING FEDERAL INFLUENCE: 1974-1976
This chapter continues description of evolution of
the D.C. Bilingual Program from 1974 to 1976. This period
marks the beginning of the use of Title VII funding to
expand the project with resulting federal influence. In
addition to strengthened contact with the Hispanic commu
nity, a Chinese component is added in the second year of
Title VII funding. All themes introduced in previous chap
ters continue through this phase, with increasing institu
tionalization of the program playing a central role.
Fourth Year of Bilingual Education in D.C.: 1974-1975
Since all of the elementary bilingual staff and a
few of the secondary counselors were involved'in the Mas
ter's program, no 1974 summer institute was planned by the
Bilingual Office. By the end of the summer, 21 of the 25
staff had received their Master's degree in bilingual educa
tion, and the other four finished during the following year.
All had completed general certification requirements for
probationary status at the elementary level, one step above
entry-level, temporary positions, and had moved up in the
pay scale. The Bilingual Office still had one more "battle
to fight" with the system, however: that of convincing the
188
Board of Examiners to create a bilingual teacher's license
and an ESL license. The director frequently used military
images to measure his perceived success of the program.
Success was described not in achievement scores of students
but in victories won towards the successful institutional
ization of the program.
Federal funding. As the fourth year of elementary
bilingual education and second year of secondary bilingual
services began, there was a shift in funding. The EPDA
money, used during the past four years for training, had
snded. ESAA funding had added six new positions during the
past year, but the project was not qualified for additional
ESAA money for 1974-1975. After considerable negotiation,
the ESAA money was extended to December 31, at which time
D.C. Public Schools again absorbed these additional bilin
gual positions into the local school budget (Bilingual
Office 1975d). In the meantime, the director had decided to
apply for the first grant to come directly from bilingual
education funds under Title VII of the Elementary and
Secondary Education Act (ESEA). The grant was funded at
$121,36 7, to be used for "extension and innovation" of the
Bilingual Program (Bilingual Office 1974b). Now federal
money was to be used to innovate the innovation.
Four new components were to be added with the
federal money: two additional staff members for the school-
community function of the office; eight new teacher-aides,
189
to include some Hispanic parents and community members in
the project; one Spanish-speaking teacher for secondary
level to develop a transitional social studies course; and
development of a resource center, to be run by a resource
teacher and a new teacher-aide trainer. This much expansion
of office staff required more space than School A had to
offer, so the request was made for a move of the Bilingual
Office to larger quarters. The school system was finally
able to grant the use of three sizable rooms in an admini
strative building which housed special education resources,
in a location very convenient to all the schools being
served by the Bilingual Program, and the office relocation
was carried out in November. The move, coupled with system
freezes on hiring, and decentralization and reorganization
of the D.C. school system, delayed the actual hiring of some
of the new staff (Bilingual Office 1975f) . All components
of the newly extended program were under way by second
semester.
Relationship to Hispanic community and parents. The
school-community component of the new ESEA Title VII grant
was functioning in a fairly short time since the ground work
had already been well laid out. When the director of the
Bilingual Program had been moved downtown as special assis
tant to the superintendent, the school-community coordina
tor, still priest and leader in the community, had taken
190
over as director of the Bilingual Office. The two school-
community positions were then filled by a nun and a man
studying to be a priest, both very active in the Hispanic
community. They provided continuity with the church connec
tions which had been established from the first days of the
Bilingual Program, and their dedication to round-the-clock
work for the community was an integral part of their job
which they voluntarily accepted. One school-community coor
dinator described the job in this way:
I work very hard. I’m used to that and that's the
only way I can work. El trabajo es mi apostolado.
I have to do it 100 percent to the best of my
ability. . . . I have no hours; 24 hours a day I am.
available. I live right in the heart of the commu
nity, so people can contact me at home or the church
or at the office /Interview, April 16, 1980/.
Throughout the year, this team continued to work
with newly arrived families to determine in which school
each family member should be placed, serving as translators,
explaining the procedures for enrollment, and assisting with
social service help. Secondary counselors worked in con
junction with them to handle secondary students. A detailed
handbook was prepared to be given to each new family, the
Directorio informativo para padres latinos, as well as a
pamphlet stating the philosophy and functions of the
Bilingual Program. (See Appendix B.) The Directorio began
with a very strong, almost militant, statement of community
accomplishment:
191
Padres y amigos, "las Escuelas Pfiblicas del
Distrito de Columbia tienen como propdsito ofrecer
la oportunidad a cada nino para que se desarrolle
al m^ximo, como individuo y como miembro de la
comunidad." En nuestra comunidad latina hemos venido
luchando para que estos prop6sitos sean una realidad.
Llegamos a la meta en varias Escuelas Pfiblicas donde
el Programa Bilingue funciona y seguiremos luchando,
no solamente por su mantenimiento, pero tambi^n por
la extensidn de nuestros servicios a otras Escuelas
Pfiblicas donde asisten nuestros nihos latinos^
/Bilingual Office 1975b/.
New families were first given help and then encouraged to
participate in community activities and concerns.
The school-community coordinators also kept close
contact with other Hispanic agencies by serving on the
boards of various agencies and coordinating special events
for Hispanic children, such as a summer camp, mountain
climbing, horseback riding, an international children's
festival, Hispanic Christmas celebrations, participation on
a local TV show, and many trips to special events sponsored
by the National Park Service or other federal agencies. In
addition, they were on call for any services requested by
schools, and served as translators at PTA meetings (Bilin
gual Office 1975c).
Parents and friends, "The aim of the Public
Schools of the District of Columbia is to provide
the opportunity for each child to develop to his or
her full potential, as an individual and as a member
of the community." In our Hispanic community we have
come forth fighting to make this aim a reality. We
have reached the goal in several public schools where
the Bilingual Program is functioning, and we will
continue fighting, not only for its continuation,
but also for the extension of our services to other
public schools where our Hispanic children attend.
192
Table 3 gives an idea of the extensive activities carried
out by the school-community coordinators.
TABLE 3
Activities of School-Community Coordinators, September 1,
1974 to April 1, 1975a :
Type of Activity_________________________Frequency of Activity
School visits, placement of new arrivals, 106
transfers, and student follow-up
Schools surveyed for Spanish-speaking 181
students
Home visits 80
Social services and follow-up 136
Cultural and social programs for students 12
Coordination with,Adult Education Center 10
Visits to other community agencies 25
Workshops for teaching staff, students, 6
community
ct
Source: Bilingual Office 1975f.
Because of the need to provide a more thorough
summary of activities implemented with Title VII funds,
administrative staff required increasing care in record
keeping by the new staff members. The stimulus of federal
funds thus influenced the project by pushing towards
increasing professionalization of roles. Each year new
staff members hired brought additional "expertise" through
previous experience in other U.S. educational settings.
This was another force which pushed the bilingual project
______ 193
towards a more institutional stance, in contrast to the
attitude of earlier staff of trying to apply creative solu
tions to problems they had never encountered before. As
staff members learned "educational language" and bilingual
teachers were socialized by regular teachers into what was
expected of them, there was more settling into roles and
less testing of new ideas.
Some of the same process gradually occurred with
each position. The two new school-community coordinators
attacked their jobs with enthusiasm and energy. At the same
time their fresh ideas were mediated by established require
ments of the schools, guidelines of the Title VII proposal,
and the role established by the previous school-community
coordinator. Some of the tasks they were required to carry
out involved extensive record-keeping of individual students
and their families, surveys of schools to keep track of all
Spanish-speaking students, and keeping an up-to-date file
in the Resource Center of the latest, information on school
policy, community publications and social services. This
system established a further bureaucratization of bilingual
services, which increased efficiency in some ways but also
increased the amount of time staff members had to spend on
filling out forms. Some bilingual teachers and counselors
resisted the effort at first.
The school-community coordinators, along with other
bilingual administrative staff, helped to organize a parent
194
advisory council for School A. An overall Bilingual Educa
tion Advisory Council for the Bilingual Program was also
established as required by Title VII guidelines, with the
first meeting held on January 29, 1975. In past years,
parents at individual elementary schools had provided consi
derable input into the decision-making aspects of admini- -
stration of the schools; however, Anglo and Jewish parents
had dominated that participation in the very early stages.
With each successive year, more Spanish-speaking parents
became active, as elementary school PTA meetings were con
ducted in both English and Spanish, and Hispanic parents
held special meetings with staff members to make sure their
concerns were heard. From the first days of the project,
individual teachers kept close communication with individual
concerned parents, which sometimes influenced the process
which took place within each classroom. The advisory
councils were new, more open means of community and parent
participation in the decision-making process within the
Bilingual Program. While the ultimate decisions were made
by bilingual administrative staff and principals, the deci
sions were subject to mediation through the councils. This
marked a significant difference in parent-school relations
from the patron-client relationship to which Ogbu (1974)
refers in a bilingual project in Stockton, California.
As a further means of involving parents and commu
nity members in schools, by February, 19 75, the Bilingual
________________________________________________________________195
Office had hired eight new Spanish-speaking teacher-aides
with Title VII funds. By this time, the number of Spanish
speaking personnel hired in the schools was enough to have
a small economic impact on the D.C. Hispanic community,
similar to that which Read, Spolsky, and Neundorf (1976)
describe occurring on the Navajo reservation with the hiring
of native language teachers. Many of the Spanish-speaking
teachers hired in D.C. were struggling for jobs when they
first arrived. For the teacher-aides, six of whom were
parents, it was a significant opportunity to move into a new
profession with higher pay and potentially more job secu
rity.
Immediately, the teacher-aides began receiving
training. Workshops in methods of teaching reading, math,
and second language were provided by the teacher-aide
trainer, and all aides were required to take courses in ESL
at PEILA. Other courses were arranged so that all teacher-
aides were involved in furthering their education, whether
it was working towards a high school degree or BA at univer
sity level. After one week of observation of bilingual
classes at School A, the teacher-aides were placed in six
elementary schools, under the supervision of bilingual
teachers. They tutored students individually and in small
groups, giving special help to new arrivals, and helped with
class process and grading of papers. As they expressed
readiness to take on more responsibility, they were used by
_______ 196
teachers to break classes into smaller groups and direct
various activities. By the end of the year, feedback from
school principals, parents involved, and bilingual teachers
indicated that the teacher-aide program was extremely help
ful for dealing with new arrivals in their first weeks of
adjustment to this country and had provided a significant
avenue for parent participation.
Resource Center. Another new service added with
Title VII money was the Resource Center, located at the
Bilingual Office. In addition to compiling and beginning
the process of cataloguing all the materials which had been
collected over the years at the office, the resource teacher
and teacher-aide trainer ordered more materials, requested
bilingual curriculum guides from other city school systems,
and began to collect more audio visual and hands-on mate
rials for teachers. Materials could be checked out of the
center by anyone in the schools or community. A bi-weekly
newsletter to staff kept teachers informed of the latest
acquisitions and activities of the program, and the Boletln
continued to be sent bi-monthly to Hispanic families.
The resource teacher also began a process which was
intended to make the system more efficient which leaned
toward more bureaucratization. She conducted a classroom-
by-classroom inventory of all materials being used by
bilingual/ESL teachers and asked the teachers to assess all
their materials using a specific evaluation form. This
________________________________________________________________197
file of materials available was to be kept in the office,
with at least one copy of each resource available at the
Resource Center. Once again, some teachers resisted the
extra paper work involved and felt that the free-flowing
style of the early innovation period was giving way to a new
period of more control by new office staff. Several of the
new staff members had had some experience in other bilingual
education projects and they were more fluent with little
accent in both English and Spanish. They brought a new
"expertise" and energy to the project which once again
changed the direction of the innovation towards becoming
more of an educational institution.
Elementary school programs: 1974-1975. Within
schools, there were no major changes at the elementary level
during 1974-1975. The principal of School A felt they had
come a long way towards the most appropriate and effective
school program for their community. He was an outspoken
enthusiast of the school's accomplishments:
Realpolitik of budgets, freezes, cuts, etc.,
notwithstanding, bilingualism is a vital, exciting
newcomer to education. It has growing significance
internationally and nationally. Witness the corres
pondence in the office of the principal and the
director; count the hundreds of visitors who observe
the activities in the classrooms, searching and
gleaning from our experience ideas to feed embryonic
programs in their own schools. . . .
/School A/ no longer has a struggling program.
Bilingual education in our school is about to bloom.
The children are learning; so too are the teachers
and the principal. There is strong support in a
community which three years ago was skeptical and
198
even irate about the program's installation in the
school. The staff in September of 1971 was splin
tered, inexperienced and hostile. Suspicion and
mistrust resided inside as well as outside the
offices. Fighting among children was a daily pheno
menon. Yet, problems were confronted and people
talked, and new ways were tried. Rigidity and mis
trust dissolved. Parents and teachers collaborated
to organize fiestas. A parent-teacher group met
evenings to teach adults Spanish and English. At
long last the once divided constituents formed their
PACTS group and called it "/School A/ Community
Advisory Council." Parents, well below the poverty
level economically, sit comfortably next to their
more affluent neighbors. Translation slows down the
rate of communication at their meetings, but everyone
understands. They want to know Who is not committed
and Why not. . . . Spanish-speaking parents are vocal
and outspoken participants in the /School A/ Advisory
Council /Bilingual Office 19746:1-37.
The principal described some of the facets of the
program at School A which distinguished it from a regular
school in the District. One was the attitude towards
students with "learning problems." No special education or
psychological referrals were made from School A, because
teachers believed that most of the difficulties students
encountered could be overcome in a relatively short time
because there was no longer a language barrier.
Each child is /seen as/ a linguistic and cultural
resource and, as such, he/she has an obligation to
teach others as well as to learn from them. . .
The multicultural orientation of education /at School A7
is the natural outgrowth of the entire school
community, itself multiracial, multilingual and
multicultural. Multicultural education begins with
the heightened awareness__of and pride in one's own
cultural identity. At /School A7 this consciousness
is; growing and spreading. Long may it thrive!
/Bilingual Office 1974e:5-67.
The principal also felt that new students' culture
shock was absorbed and mediated by the Spanish-speaking
199
teachers. Even when new students arrived with little school
background, teachers stated that they could progress through
more than one grade level within one year with the help of
the student volunteers coming from universities and the
teacher-aides. The extra help and team teaching made
teacher-student ratios significantly lower than that expe
rienced in most regular classrooms in D.C. Another aspect
of teaching at School A which made it somewhat unique,
according to the principal, was the flexibility of methods
used by teachers to provide for the variety of instructional
needs of the students. Teachers had been exposed to many
different ways of teaching, and they were willing to experi
ment with a variety of styles from day to day, as they felt
were appropriate for the situation.
One major concern of the principal was that students
were still reaching the upper grades with inconsistent
levels of reading in English. Since Spanish is a phonetic
language where most symbols correspond to only one or two
sounds, there were fewer problems in teaching reading in
Spanish. The principal felt that English should be taught
in the same way, even though English sound-symbol correspon
dence is less consistent than Spanish. He proposed that
students be taught by the Weiss Phonics method, an older
approach to teaching English and Spanish phonetically, first
developed during World War II. Following successful work
shops with School A teachers, additional workshops were
200
provided for bilingual and regular teachers at other schools
(Bilingual Office 1975f). The method was adopted and is
still in use at School A and a few other schools in the
District. Bilingual teachers say they like it for its
highly structured, step-by-step approach, and its contention
that English spelling is 95 percent phonetic, more easily
teachable and rule-following than generally assumed. The
textbooks are very old and out-of-date looking, but teachers
say that students feel a sense of accomplishment when they
use them.
In other elementary schools, the Spanish-speaking
population figures continued to stabilize, in spite of the
mobility of the students themselves; therefore, Spanish
speaking personnel were kept in the seven elementary schools
with few changes. School F had changed to a cluster concept
similar to School B. Accordingly, one bilingual teacher and
two teacher-aides were assigned there to provide Spanish as
a Second Language instruction to the whole student body in
addition to native language instruction for 44 Spanish
speakers. School B was left with four bilingual teachers
and two teacher-aides. System freezes in hiring this year
had caused the loss of two bilingual positions when teachers
resigned. At School E the two bilingual teachers began team
teaching a second-third grade bilingual class, with a
mixture of English and Spanish speakers (Bilingual Office
1975f).
201
S econdary: 1974-1975. At secondary level, great
hopes among secondary bilingual staff for a transitional
bilingual program for newly arriving Spanish speakers at
junior high level had ended when plans for an expanded ESAA
project had not been funded. Therefore, the program con
tinued as it had been established during the previous year.
The politicking to place the secondary positions on regular
school budget was very tricky, given the system freeze on
hiring, so it was quite a relief to the bilingual staff to
be able to continue the bilingual counselor and ESL posi
tions that were begun the previous year.
Instead of setting up transitional bilingual courses
in math, science, and social studies as had been planned,
the one new bilingual teacher added through Title VII funds
took on the task of developing a bilingual social studies
course, which was pilot tested second semester, 1975, at one
junior high school. The main goals of the course were for
newly arrived Spanish-speaking students to master background
skills required in regular history and geography courses at
junior high level, to study comparative geography and
history of the U.S. and Latin America, with emphasis on
pride in one's own cultural heritage, to deal with practical
solutions to problems students encountered in everyday life
in their new setting in the U.S., and to master English
vocabulary in social studies as their English skills
increased during the year (Bilingual Office 1975d) . The
2 02
course was taught in Spanish with increasing introduction of
English as the semester progressed. The course became
popular enough to be established the following year as a
permanent part of the curriculum at the two junior high
schools with the largest number of Spanish speakers. It
attracted all Spanish speakers regardless of the number of
years they had been in the U.S., and occasionally a few
English-dominant students who had some knowledge of Spanish
enrolled in the course.
Significant changes had occurred in relationships
between bilingual and regular staff at secondary level dur
ing the first year of settling into roles, so that by the
second year some bilingual staff were actively organizing
a variety of activities requested by regular staff. Staff
development workshops for regular staff on language and
culture, cultural conflicts in the classroom, teacher
techniques for students learning second language in a
content area, nonverbal communication, and similar topics
related to the teaching of international students were con
ducted by bilingual staff in some of the schools served.
Bilingual teachers and counselors were called on for assis
tance and advice in ways to handle international students
or to mediate in an intercultural conflict. Bilingual staff
also began to participate in sponsoring various extracurri
cular activities such as soccer teams, international clubs,
and special assemblies with intercultural presentations.
___________________________________________________________ 203
A few "battles" had also been won in secondary at
the administrative level. Most bilingual counselors were
now given full responsibility for scheduling of all inter
national students. ESL was accepted with full course credit
at seventh and eighth grade level. Beginning in ninth
grade, however, ESL could not be used as a substitute for
the four years of regular English required for high school
graduation. Regular teachers were a little more sensitive
to the entering international students and graded less
severely during their first months in school, partially
recognizing the time period necessary to pick up enough
English to follow what was being said in the classroom. ESL
teachers were now given the responsibility for testing and
diagnosing all entering international students in English
language skills, before these students were assigned to
classes. Again, in relating these accomplishments of the
program, bilingual staff seemed to measure one important
aspect of success of the program by the number of victories
won in negotiation with system administrators. This con
tinues to reinforce the theme of the creative tension
between coming from outside the system and working to be a
part; of the system.
The comraderie continued among bilingual secondary
staff across schools, as monthly parties were organized in
homes on weekends. There was a sense of excitement that
they were doing something special in the schools, different
204
from the role of regular staff, and the sense of group
togetherness still continued into the second year.
Ethnicity of bilingual staff. A statistical report
completed in January, 1975, illustrates the continuing
variety of ethnic and cultural backgrounds of bilingual
staff. Out of the 48 staff members (office staff, teachers,
counselors, and teacher-aides), 31 were native Spanish
speakers and 17 native English speakers. Birthplaces repre
sented were: Argentina (2), Bolivia (1), Chile (2),
Colombia (2), Cuba (9), Ecuador (2), El Salvador (2),
Guatemala (1), Guyana (1), Honduras (1), Puerto Rico (6),
Spain (2), United States (17). Of the 17 from the U.S.,
there were 7 Blacks, 8 Anglos, 1 Mexican-American, and
1 Italian-American. Most of those born in the U.S. were the
ESL teachers of the Bilingual Program (Bilingual Office
19 75a). The one imbalance in staff hiring was the higher
percentage of Cubans and Puerto Ricans. When questioned
about this issue, the directors responded that they did the
best they could to keep as multicultural, multinational,
multiracial a staff as possible, within the limits of those
who were available at the time of hiring and given the
qualifications of the people who applied for the positions.
Chinese component: 1975-1976
Aware of the Lau decision and its implications, the
Bilingual Office staff prepared for another shift in
205
strategy by including initiation of services for the second
largest language group in D.C. in the new proposal for ESEA
Title VII funds for 1975-1976. The Chinese community, with
a visible commercial center located downtown, had already
established and functioning community groups and services,
such as the Chinese Community Church and the Chinese Cultu
ral Center. These groups organized a Chinese Parents' Asso
ciation and petitioned the Bilingual Office for assistance.
The proposal which evolved was presented and approved in the
spring, 1975, by the Chinese Parents' Association, with 65
Chinese community members present. The Chinese component of
the Bilingual Program was one of three aspects of the new
Title VII project, which was funded at $175,007, and was
potentially renewable (with funding variation, depending on
needs) for the next three years (Bilingual Office 1975e).
Chinese community. Chinatown in D.C. has been in
existence since the mid-nineteenth century. First located
around 16th Street and Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., it was
later moved to its present location between 6th and 9th
Streets on H and I Streets, N.W. Chinese living in the
District number between 800 and 1000 people with 600 of
these living in the Chinatown area; therefore, it is a very
small but nevertheless visible ethnic community in the heart
of the city. Those concentrated in the city tend to be low
income families working in the restaurants in Chinatown,
while middle income
206
families and professionals more often locate in the suburbs
of Maryland and Virginia. The Chinese Community Church,
located in Chinatown, in existence for 45 years, has tradi
tionally served as a gathering place for new arrivals to the
community . (Kwok 19 79) .
Most new immigrants come from Taiwan and Hong Kong,
with some from parts of mainland China. The majority of
those who settle in D.C. speak Cantonese, although some
speak Mandarin, Shanghai, and other dialects. In a ques
tionnaire completed by 6 3 Chinese parents in Chinatown in
the spring of 1975, 50 percent said they had been in the
U.S. less than two years. Because 86 percent said they did
not need English to function in their jobs, and 75 percent
had had less than one year of weekly English instruction,
they seemed to be linguistically and socially isolated from
the English-speaking community. According to the 1970
census, 72 percent of the families from the Chinatown area
had incomes under $10,000 and 37 percent had incomes under
$5,000. Median family income of the elementary school
where the largest number of Chinese students attend was
$5,602 in 1975 (Bilingual Office 1975e).
Parents said they had almost no contact with the
schools their children attended because of the language
barrier, and they felt their children were discriminated
against in schools. Sixty-one percent of the parents indi
cated their children had been beaten up at least once going
_________________________________________________________ 2 07
to or coming from school, and 6 9 percent said their children
were taunted during confrontations because they were
Chinese. In spite of bad treatment, college aspirations
were high, with 86 percent of the parents responding that
they planned for their children to attend a university
(Bilingual Office 1975e). In summary, characteristics of
low income, low level of English, relatively recent arrival,
and problems in school were fairly similar to the experience
of the D.C. Hispanic community.
Chinese school-community coordinator. Careful nego
tiations in choice of the Chinese school-community coordi
nator were carried out between the Bilingual Office, down
town school administrators, and representatives of the
Chinese community organizations. The woman finally chosen,
born in Shanghai and raised as a teenager in New York, was
a fluent speaker of English, Mandarin, Cantonese, and
Shanghai, and had experience as an elementary school
teacher. She assertively began the task of assessing all
needs of the Chinese community in the schools and fighting
for services to meet those needs.
The initial tasks of the Chinese school-community
coordinator were similar to those of her Spanish-speaking
counterpart. She visited schools, counted numbers of
Chinese students and languages spoken, and offered her
services to those schools at any time as interpreter and
208
social service worker. She made home visits, enrolled new
Chinese students, and organized a tutoring program in seven
schools with the largest Chinese enrollment. The six tutors
chosen were Chinese parents and community members who made
themselves available for tutoring individual Chinese stu
dents at the schools for an average of 10-12 hours each
week. They worked with recently arrived students, tutoring
in Cantonese in subject areas at elementary level and teach
ing more English at secondary level, using native language
for explanation of subject area terminology. The Chinese
enrollment at the nine target schools chosen for various
services by the Chinese coordinator was 107 students at six
elementary schools and 12 8 at three secondary schools
(Bilingual Office 1976d). However, the majority of the
Chinese students were concentrated at one elementary, one
junior high, and one senior high school.
To begin services to students, the 60 Chinese
students at one of the junior high schools were called
together for a brief after-school meeting to be introduced
to the new coordinator. As a result of the meeting, several
of the students met with the ESL teacher and expressed their
genuine surprise that there were so many Chinese students.
They proposed a celebration of Chinese New Year, the first
to be held in a D.C. Public School. Student leaders took
over the organization of a parade, traditional dances,
songs, Kung Fu demonstrations, and a fashion show of
____________________ 2 09
ancient costumes loaned by the Taiwanese Embassy. The cele
bration was covered by the media and attended by Chinese
parents and community members as well as the student body.
This activity was significant since it was the first
time Chinese students as a group shared their culture
with peers. The Chinese coordinator has reported
that as a result of efforts put on this program,
Chinese students at /School L/ have been visibly
proud of their Chinese language and cultural heritage.
Some students who rarely spoke Chinese before, after
working together on the program now speak freely in
their native language to friends and the same group
of students who designed the New Year's program have
now formed a Chinese music and dance club which meets
regularly after school /Bilingual Office 1976a/.
Regular teachers later commented to the ESL teacher that
they were surprised and pleased that the activities and
increased use of Cantonese and Mandarin among students in
social situations had not detracted from the Chinese stu
dents 1 continued excellent academic performance in regular
classes.
At the end of the school year, a special summer
school for Chinese students was organized in two elementary
schools. Staff members were the Chinese school-community
coordinator and six tutors, three of whom were elevated to
teacher-aide status and were preparing to begin coursework
to complete their BA in bilingual education (Bilingual
Office 1976d).
A Chinese Parents' Advisory Council was formed,
as an extension of the Chinese Parents' Association, to
receive information from the Title VII project staff and to
make recommendations for changes in the project. Eighteen
210
members unanimously approved the proposal for a second year
of bilingual services to the Chinese community and schools.
(See Appendix C for a general description of Chinese
services in the D.C. Bilingual Program as of 1977.)
Other Bilingual Services: 1975-1976
The Spanish school-community coordinator, reduced to
one again due to a smaller Title VII grant than requested,
continued to expand her contacts with the Hispanic commu
nity. During the summer of 1975, she succeeded in placing
12 8 Hispanic elementary and secondary students in summer
jobs and camps. She joined the committee for Spanish
Heritage Week, an annual community celebration in July, and
organized a Dla del Nino (Children's Day) with special acti
vities for young participants. In addition to her esta
blished activities from the previous year, she and the
Chinese coordinator set up a Spanish/Cantonese telephone
line to give weekly updated news and information about the
D.C. Public Schools. The line with weekly updated messages
continues in service today and is advertised on the media
and public bus lines.
The continuing Title VII grant also supported a
three-member instructional resource team, adding one more
staff member to those responsible for in-service training,
directing the teacher-aides and tutors, and manning the
Resource Center. The resource teachers responded to
requests for help from individual teachers in schools,
211
as well as for staff development workshops requested by the
various schools served. They conducted a total of 30
workshops during 1975-1976, many of which were for regular
teachers, thus expanding the impact of the Bilingual Program
on the schools in Region II, where the main concentration
of students from other countries were located. In response
to regular teachers' requests, they began teaching a Spanish
and cross-cultural communication course after school, twice
a week. They also taught an ESL course three days a week
for the teacher-aides, parents, and community members. The
resource teachers were also responsible for directing the
curriculum committees which had been organized over several
years' time but had met infrequently and never completed
their tasks. Four groups were prodded to produce first
drafts in Spanish vernacular Pre K-6, SSL Pre K-6, ESL 7-12,
and Social Studies 7-12.
The teacher-aide program continued with six Spanish
speaking teacher-aides and three Spanish-speaking teacher
trainees, who were close enough to completing their BA to
prepare for full-time positions. The Bilingual Office
arranged for their schooling to be paid by funds from local
agencies. Parents who had joined the program felt pleased
that they had gained insight into the system of U.S. educa
tion and their own ability as teachers and they had improved
their English skills.
The Resource Center became better organized and more
212
complete with new materials as this school year progressed,
due to the occasional help of teacher-aides and the enthu
siasm of the resource team. All three members were young,
energetic, and fully bilingual. They were enthusiastically
received by regular teachers in the staff development work
shops they conducted and thus they carried through success
ful public relations work for the Bilingual Office. The
following excerpt from a Bilingual Program newsletter,
outlining plans for the coming year, illustrates the style
of the resource team:
Enthusiasm Abounds for the Coming Year I
The 1976-1977 school year just has to be the best
one yet for the Bilingual Program. Here are some of
the reasons why:
1. More Experienced Staff. We have been fortunate
to keep almost all of our staff from last year.
Since teachers improve each year, we can't help
but be great with all the experienced profes
sionals we have!
2. More Materials Available. Materials continue to
arrive that may be of use to you this year. Copies
of a large number of texts and AV materials are
now available at the Resource Center. They are
for you to borrow. Teachers will still have to
make many of their own materials, but lots of
ideas can be obtained from what is becoming a
truly impressive library about Bilingual Education.
3. Curricula in Spanish. This year drafts of some
very exciting curricula for Spanish Language Arts
(Spanish Vernacular) and SSL are being completed
by the respective curriculum committees. These
should be of great value in standardizing and
unifying instruction throughout the program.
4. The Resource Teachers. The Resource Teachers are
organized and ready to go this year. They will
do everything they can to help you make this the
best year ever. All you have to do is call and
ask for assistance.
5. School-Community Coordinators Have it Together.
They have been .getting themselves together this
summer and are now ready to begin an incredibly
213
productive new school year.
With an experienced staff, most of the materials we
need, curricula, enthusiastic Resource Teachers and
together School-Community Coordinators, the program
just can't help being really great this year!
/Bilingual Office 1967e/.
In May, 1976, the resource team organized the First
Annual Conference on Bilingual Education for the metro
politan area. It was the first effort at outreach to other
school systems in the area. The one-day conference was
attended by approximately 16 0 people, with 30 staff members
of the Bilingual Program presenting 16 workshops on topics
such as methods of teaching reading in Spanish, elementary
and secondary ESL, SSL, science, and social studies; admini
stration of a bilingual program; bilingual teacher training;
library services in bilingual education; bilingual counsel
ing; federal funding in bilingual education; cross-cultural
communication; understanding students from Hong Kong and
Taiwan; and helping Indochinese refugees.
The 3 0 who volunteered to give the workshops came
from four elementary and four secondary schools, plus all
the staff of the Bilingual Office, so there was a good
balance of staff represented (Bilingual Office 1976b).
Giving a workshop was a new experience for half of those
who presented, so it was another means of gaining confidence
and feeling a sense of professionalism. Most staff members
felt that they were participants in a rather unique educa
tional project which had come a long ways from its early
214
days to a level of maturity and sophistication sufficient to
train others in neighboring school systems who were looking
for ways to meet the needs of their growing international
student population. Following the conference, bilingual
staff members who participated felt a strong sense of pride
and accomplishment.
During the 1975-1976 school year, there were only a
few programmatic changes in schools. School A now had a
preschool added to its program, completing full bilingual
services for preschool through sixth grade, and School B had
classes for preschool through eighth grade. There was a
large concentration of Spanish speakers in the seventh-
eighth grade at School B, so two bilingual staff members
were assigned to this cluster; however, since only one
Spanish-speaking staff member was added, the extension
actually decreased the amount of Spanish taught in the
school to all grade levels.
At secondary level, staff were reorganized, with one
bilingual counselor and one bilingual/ESL teacher placed at
each of three schools where the main concentration of inter
national students were located. The teachers at the two
junior high schools taught four classes of ESL plus the new
transitional bilingual social studies course in Spanish and
English. All classes were large, with an average of 30-45
students. At high school level, one academic school was
being phased out to make room for a fine arts high school,
________________________________________________________________215
less popular with international students. The change con
centrated a larger number of international students into the
one remaining high school with regular academic services
west of Rock Creek Park. (See Appendix D for a listing of
direct bilingual services to schools in 1976.)
Administrative changes in the school system had
again occurred, with the forced resignation of the contro
versial superintendent in the spring of 197 5. The man who
became acting superintendent had moved up through local
school system ranks and was respected for his knowledge of
the way the system worked and his careful decision-making.
The School Board opted for stability over change after the
stormy period of the previous superintendent, and the acting
superintendent was eventually hired as the new superinten
dent. The administrative turnover did not cause any sub
stantial changes in the Bilingual Program. The new super
intendent had been former principal of the high school with
large numbers of international students and he was sensitive
to the need for special services for these students; thus
local bilingual staff positions were not threatened. With
the administrative change, the director of bilingual educa
tion chose to move back to the Bilingual Office. The move
did not cause any significant change in connections with
downtown school officials! as those lines of communication
were firmly established.
A triumph of the Bilingual Office in final
216
institutionalization of the project into the local school
system during the 1975-1976 school year was the successful
negotiation of two new licenses in the system, one for
Teachers of English as a Second Language, and one for
Bilingual Education teachers. The Board of Examiners met
with bilingual teachers and Bilingual Office staff until a
negotiated agreement was reached for courses to be required
for certification in these fields. This process was
unusual, due to the fact that the subject areas were rela
tively new fields. The director of bilingual education felt
once again that he had successfully instituted an innovation
which was not system produced from the top-down but was
created through consensus with all levels of bilingual
staff to be affected by the decision.
Analysis of the Change Process from 1974 to 1976: Federal
Influence
Taking an overall look at the factors which had
affected the evolution of the Bilingual Program itself over
the last five years, indirect federal influence had brought
substantial change. Essentially, the project had started
in 1971 with local initiative by a small, inexperienced
staff whom the director liked to think of as revolutionary,
anti-establishment innovators to the system. Three years
later, federal money added substantially to the number of
office staff, and required parent advisory councils and
regular reports. Record-keeping was institutionalized by
217
the new staff members to write the reports. The guidelines
of the proposals pushed new staff members towards more pro
fessionalization of roles, following established educational
role expectations.
This trend introduced a new conflict in roles, with
teachers complaining that the directors of the program never
visited their classes any more, in contrast to the early
days of family-like cohesion, nor were they concerned with
encouraging staff members to develop and expand services
within their individual buildings. The complaint was that
Bilingual Office staff members had to spend too much time
in record-keeping, proposal writing and other administrative
services to keep the federal money coming and not enough
time in schools. Another goal of the proposal not yet
realized was to establish a more standardized bilingual
curriculum; yet principals seemed pleased with the variety
of adaptation of teaching methods their bilingual staff used
with their heterogeneous classes. There were mixed feelings
about whether the standardized curriculum would really be
useful.
One clear positive effect of the federal funding was
the strengthened contact with the Hispanic community and, in
the second year, with the Chinese community. With the
school-community coordinators1 expanded contacts with
Hispanic and Chinese community organizations and agencies,
the training of teacher-aides from both communities, and the
218
two Parent Advisory Councils, significant new target commu
nity participation in the project had been established. At
the same time, the bilingual staff also had continuing
involvement and influence in community activities and
decision-making.
In addition to satisfying the objectives of the
Title VII grants, federal influence came through the Lau
decision. The D.C. school system knew they were in com-,
pliance with the Lau Remedies as far as Spanish speakers
were concerned. With Chinese students the next largest
language group, the new Title VII grant had begun services
for these students, although they were not yet receiving
full bilingual teaching. An additional small grant from
the U.S. Office of Education in the middle of the 1975-1976
school year added a Vietnamese school-community coordinator
to the Bilingual Office staff as part of the Indochinese
Refugee Assistance program. The following school year,
after it was determined that most Indochinese refugees had
settled in the suburban metropolitan areas rather than
within D.C. itself, the program was terminated for D.C.
schools.
In response to the first requirement of the Lau
Remedies, identification of NES/LES students, during the
1975-1976 school year the research assistant carried out the
first thorough Language and Cultural Heritage Survey in all
District schools. The survey did not test students'
219
English proficiency but it counted all students who spoke
another language at home. This project involved an enormous
amount of staff time and once again was resented by teachers
and counselors who felt that direct services to the indivi
dual students were being neglected in the process of filling
out forms for federal requirements. While grassroots staff
members were disgruntled, federal officials were pleased.
The program officer from the federal Office of Bilingual
Education wrote back: "Particularly impressive was the
extensive system of data collection used to identify the
bilingual students" (Bilingual Office 1976f).
The survey identified 1,835 students located in 91
schools in the D.C. school system who spoke 82 different
languages other than English and came from 100 different
countries. Spanish speakers represented 42.5 percent of
these students, at 780; Chinese students were next, with
320, although eight different Chinese dialects, some not
mutually intelligible, were spoken among this group; and
French speakers numbered 103, coming from countries in
Europe, Africa, North America, and the Caribbean. Other
groups having more than 2 0 speakers were Bengali (Bangla
desh) , German (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), Greek
(Greece), Ibo (Nigeria), Korean (Korea), Portuguese (Brazil
and Portugal), Tagalog (Philippines), Urdu (Pakistan), and
Vietnamese (Vietnam) (Bilingual Office 1976f).
The survey did uncover a problem, which had been
220
known but never before precisely identified: that of ade
quately providing for all international students scattered
throughout the District. Seventy percent of the inter
national students were located in 27 schools in Region II,
which was the area the Bilingual Office was serving, but
language groups were scattered throughout those 27 schools,
and it was more difficult to establish bilingual services
for other than Spanish speakers. The survey helped esta
blish a few more ESL positions in elementary schools in
Region II. (See Appendix E for the results' of the 1979
survey.)
Continuing Change: Incorporation of the Bilingual Program
From 1974 to 1976, there were many signs of a
serious move towards full institutionalization of the
Bilingual Program. All elementary and secondary teacher and
counselor positions and some of the office staff positions
had been absorbed into local school funds. Most teachers
and counselors had completed requirements for certification,
and an ESL license and bilingual education license had been
created. Secondary bilingual staff were now accepted and
established at schools as the "international specialists."
All bilingual staff were gradually working into the system's
culture, partly through steps they had taken as advocates
for bilingual/multicultural education coming from outside
the system, and partly through response and adaptation to
the system.
221
The unresolved portion of this tension now shifted
to a new phase. As bilingual administrators began to leave
their roots as innovators from outside the system, as the
system absorbed and professionalized staff both through
local and federal influence, a gap began to grow between
office staff and teachers in the field. This new conflict
will be further examined in the next chapter, along with a
continuing description of the other themes raised in pre
vious chapters.
222
CHAPTER VII
THE PROCESS OF CHANGE WITHIN SCHOOLS AND COMMUNITY
From 1976 to 1979 the ESEA Title VII grant was
renewed each year with some funding variation, and bilingual
services to D.C. Public Schools went through no major
changes. By the school year 1979-1980, the large federal
grant had ended and all positions were absorbed into the
local school budget. Therefore, this last chapter will
present glimpses of various aspects of the last four years
along with analysis which summarizes the themes, without
following the chronological pattern of the previous three
chapters. The first section will focus on the relationship
of community groups and schools while the second portion
will discuss the change process within schools.
Continuing Maturation of the D.C. Hispanic Community
During the second half of the 1970s, the Hispanic
immigrant population within D.C. itself has not increased
significantly, but the pattern of the District's serving as
a port of entry continues. Figures are still widely
disputed as to accurate numbers of Hispanics living in the
District, estimated at anywhere from 1 to 11 percent of the
total District population. Even with continued high
223
mobility to the suburbs, the Hispanic community within D.C.
does not seem to be decreasing at the present time, from
indications of numbers of people served by the Hispanic
agencies. School population figures for Spanish speakers
have remained relatively stable, even with the continued
mobility, for the last seven years.
The problem of finding housing has become increa
singly difficult, to the point that some community leaders
feel within the next ten years the D.C. Hispanic community
may eventually_be forced out of the inner city, if the city
government does not do something to improve the housing
situation.
Adams-Morgan and Mount Pleasant . . . have long
been principal residential areas for Hispanics. But
governmental concern has mounted over the last five
years as more and more of the low-income residents
there have been displaced from rental housing by the
sale of old houses to young, middle-class whites
returning to the city and the conversion of other
properties to condominiums, which the old-time resi
dents cannot afford /Nunes 1980/.
While it is difficult to estimate precise numbers of
Hispanics affected by rising housing costs within the city,
enough are still able to find housing within D.C. that the
commercial heart of the community and Hispanic agencies
along Columbia Road continue to thrive at the present time.
As of February, 1980, 25 Hispanic service organiza
tions are functioning to serve the needs of the D.C.
Hispanic community in addition to services provided by the
*
local government such as medical care, food stamps, police
224
protection, public libraries. Two new Hispanic theater and
art groups help to create a sense of community identity
through movies, plays, art displays, and a location for
community meetings. A few outdoor Hispanic murals have been
painted within the neighborhood. Each summer a week-long
Hispanic Festival is celebrated.
Three local political achievements are considered
very significant by current directors of the Hispanic
agencies. One was the establishment in 19 76 of the Office
of Latino Affairs within the D.C. government, to have
greater access both to the Hispanic community and to the
city's governmental structures. Second, in 1977, a
15-member D.C. Commission on Latino Community Development
was organized to provide a community forum for decision
making which affected the Hispanic community. By law, this
commission was empowered to convene hearings, thus expanding
the base of decision-making to a much broader forum from the
earlier pattern of control of just a few leaders within the
community. A third important step was the formation of the
Council of Hispanic Agencies in January, 1977, which brought
all the leaders of the various agencies together under one
common political base. The in-fighting of the earlier years
now gave way to more serious negotiation for Hispanic
community concerns within the Council. Over the last three
years, these three bodies have become major forces for
representing Hispanics1 concerns to the present city
225
government structure.
In 197 8, Washington, D.C. elected a new mayor. The
election was considered a significant change of power from
the older, established Black leadership to a mayor who was
younger and a more militant civil rights activist of the
1960s. The new mayor had been a member of the School Board
when the Bilingual Program was organized. He was wT ell aware
of the existence of the Hispanic community and made promises
to the community in his campaign, some of which were ful
filled soon after taking office, following a meeting called
by Hispanic leaders to demand immediate action. The
director of the Bilingual Program was appointed one of the
five members of the mayor's task force to assess the needs
of the Hispanic community. The executive director of the
Office of Latino Affairs was made a member of the mayor's
cabinet and soon after, a Hispanic was appointed to the
position of acting city personnel director (Dickey 1979).
Promises were made by the mayor to try to include more
Hispanic employees in the city government, at least one for
every city agency with over 25-30 employees (Sanchez 1979).
When one year later the Hispanic community
expressed anger that the mayor's assistants had forgotten
some of his promises, the mayor responded to a planned
confrontation at a press conference called by Hispanics by
paying an unannounced visit to "el barrio" and reaffirming
"his commitment to the city's 75,000 Hispanics who helped
226
"elect him" (Harris 1980) .
/The mayor/ shrugged off yesterday's Hispanic horse-
trading as nothing more than "pressure politics at
play. That's the way it should be. I love it. . . .
The whole thing is like a marriage. There's spats.
There's differences. There's little arguments. But
you .make up" /Harris 19 80/.
Various Hispanic community leaders explain the
gradual process towards fuller political involvement in the
city system in different ways. Some see a real change of
awareness among adults in the community:
When immigrants first arrive, they don't want anything
to do with local politics. We have had to educate
people to become aware of the political realities
in D.C. and how it affects their lives. Now we go to
City Council, the Board of Education, to government
hearings, and express our needs. We have learned
that in this country you have to fight for your
rights /Interview, November 6, 1979/.
A spokeswoman for the Council of Hispanic Community Agencies
expressed the mood in this way:
There is a Hispanic community in Washington and
we are here to stay........ We will not be rolled
over, stepped on, ignored or taken for granted any
more. . . . We will not be quiet__when we are being
attacked by racism and politics /Harris 198()/.
Another community leader explained that more recently they
have found press conferences an effective means of express
ing needs to the city government:
Demonstrations are not so necessary now because we
can let the people know what we want through the
media. We have contacts with all the local TV
channels and the newspapers. The Hispanic community
is more oriented now to the need for communication.
Community people understand how to use the system
more, for sharing, for a dialogue with all community
groups. Spanish-speaking people complain a lot, but
227
really we are very hard workers. We come from under
developed countries where life is hard, so we're not
used to luxuries and we work hard /Interview,
April 16, 198(D/.
Another sign of the increasing maturation of the
D.C. Hispanic community is the development of what some
Hispanics refer to as a "third generation" of leaders.
Those who have been running the agencies for the last 5-10
years are now slowing down somewhat, and some say they are
ready for a change:
It's time for new people to bring in new ideas. We
did our thing. Excellent new young people are coming
in with a strong educational background, more energy
and enthusiasm, completely bilingual, more assertive,
and they_know the system. They're really great
people /Interview, November 6, 1979/.
Some of these "third generation" leaders feel, however, that
the second generation does not yet want to release control
into their hands. Conflicts occur in determining the best
way to negotiate political processes. But new ideas have
been conceived and carried out by the "new generation."
One of these ideas is a bilingual high school which
was just begun in February, 1980, located in the heart of
the Adams-Morgan area. The school is funded with a $100,000
grant from the U.S. Department of Labor and is an alterna
tive public high school for recently arrived Hispanic
students. Classes will be taught in English but supple
mented with Spanish, with a lot of individualized instruc
tion. The aim is to help students with English, to reach
the 16-to-21 age group, and to direct these students and
228
other potential dropouts towards a more promising career
(Valente 1980). One.could look at the bilingual alternative
high school as a failure of the Bilingual Program to provide
adequately for the needs of Spanish-speaking students in the
regular high school, but the staff of the Bilingual Program
affirm it as a positive step in the direction of providing
every service possible for the many needs of Spanish
speakers in the District.
Use of the Schools as a Vehicle for Hispanic Community
Development
Over a short period of ten years, a lot of changes
took place within the D.C. Hispanic community, from the
early experimental, haphazard efforts at community organiza
tion described in Chapter IV, to continued development and
expansion described at the end of Chapter V, to the present
more organized but democratically expanded base for
decision-making in the community just analyzed in the
previous section. Even though the Hispanic community is
relatively small, Hispanics have made considerable progress
towards becoming a working, effective, lively force within
the total D.C. community.
This study has attempted to show that the public
schools have served an important function in this process of
community development. Members of the Hispanic community
were able to use the schools as one means of providing
support for a sense of community identity and then building
229
upon that consciousness-raising to capitalize upon making
full use of a minority community's rights within this
society. The following section describes how this process
developed and was aided by the Bilingual Program.
Most of the first community programs established
were educational in nature: Project Adelante, to train
adults in English and prepare them for higher professional
levels; Spanish Education Development Center, providing
support services to schools such as after-school tutoring
programs and a preschool; PEILA, with instruction for adults
in English and classes for passing the high school equi
valency exam; and the Bilingual Program. The Hispanic
leaders of these projects worked together closely in the
early years to confer on common concerns, establish goals
of the community, and develop new strategies in response to
problems they encountered. With the adults with whom each
program worked, the leaders strove to establish a sense of
community identity and political consciousness-raising.
Within the Bilingual Program itself, several struc
tures aided this process. One was the function of the
school-community coordinator. Over the last ten years, the
three people who carried out this role in the Bilingual
Office have been very effective counselors, highly respected
through their dual functions as educators and community
religious leaders, available around the clock, and sensitive
to the concept of the most effective learning and growth
230
taking place through whole-person help for all members of a
family. In terms of Maslow's hierarchy of needs (1970), the
school-community function of the office took upon itself the
responsibility of helping to provide for the first levels
of basic security. The school-community coordinators also
had large numbers of contacts with families in the community
and could call people together for community emergencies in
a fairly short time.
A second structure which expanded the Hispanic
community's sense of identity and development was the actual
hiring of Hispanic teachers and teacher-aides. By 1979, 41
native Spanish-speaking bilingual staff were employees paid
by the local public school system. Many of these staff
members received an enormous amount of free professional
training through workshops, conferences, summer institutes,
English classes, and bachelors and masters degrees in
teaching and counseling. In addition to those who came with
formal professional credentials who were helped to meet the
training requirements of this country, structures such as
the teacher-aide program provided access for a few parents
and community people to move into a new profession.
The bilingual staff generally have kept close
contact with parents. In comparison to regular school
staff, who frequently live outside of the school community
and have little involvement with their students' lives after
3:00 P.M., over half of the bilingual staff live in the
______ 231
District and are involved with students, parents, and the
community after school hours. In interviews, many bilingual
staff members expressed a sense of purpose, of caring, of
their identification with and dedication to the Hispanic
community and its growth. They see D.C. as a culturally
pluralistic city which should affirm all components of its
multi-ethnicity. Some believe that Hispanics in D.C. serve
the important function of providing a buffer zone between
Blacks and whites in the city, a mediating force.
A third aspect of the Bilingual Program which has
further reinforced the concept of community growth centers
around parent participation in school activities. A new
project begun by the Bilingual Office in the fall, 1978,
was conceived in Community Advisory Council meetings.
Federal funding was granted to begin classes for three hours
on Saturday mornings, for parents, in the same instruction
their children receive during the week. Three classes are
conducted by bilingual teachers from the bilingual staff in
Spanish language arts, mathematics taught in Spanish, and
English as a Second Language. Emphasis is on both consumer
skills and on instruction so that parents can help their
children with homework. For some parents, this is the first
opportunity they have had to attend school in their native
language. The program is exciting, warm, and sensitively
taught to make sure that all class members are following
each step which the teacher presents. Approximately
232
35 parents have enrolled each year, with another 15-20
auditing classes as time permits. Attendance among those
enrolled is consistently high. The majority of the parents
in attendance are women. Babysitting is provided as well
as a small stipend.
Other aspects of parent involvement in schools
center around what would traditionally be called Parent-
Teacher Association (PTA) meetings. The activities of most
school PTA's generally focus on fund-raising and organizing
parent volunteers for paraprofessional help in classrooms
or assistance on field trips. The Bilingual Program has
not radically altered these structures, but it has provided
a context for fuller participation of all groups of parents.
In the two schools with the largest number of bilingual
staff and students, Schools A and B, the multi-ethnicity of
the schools is openly affirmed in parent meetings. In
addition to international celebrations and dinners and
translation of all meetings into both Spanish and English,
Spanish-speaking parents have been encouraged to speak out
and express their needs and concerns. Many times, however,
Hispanic parents have found it very difficult to talk
openly when white middle and upper middle class parents
are present. In joint meetings they sometimes let white
parents dominate and they are particularly conscious of the
need to choose Hispanic leaders who feel comfortable with
both languages, feeling that these people best know how the
233
system works. Spanish-speaking parents have expressed
concerns much more easily when they meet separately from
English-dominant parents.
The Spanish-speaking Parents' Advisory Council
helped to serve this function. As a structure required by
Title VII guidelines, it gave parents an all Spanish-speak
ing context in which they could openly participate in the
thought process of school decision-making. Parental input
at these meetings was carefully considered in staff deci
sions. However, ultimate decision-making always was carried
out by the principal of each school building, or with the
three administrative heads in the Bilingual Office. From
analysis of Parents' Advisory Council minutes of meetings
and observation of a few sessions, this observer did not see
signs of any significant decision-making on the parents'
part. While there was considerable representation of a
variety of parents at these meetings, the overall impression
is that bilingual staff more often presented their own
concerns and dominated the meetings. Concerns raised by
parents were frequently fairly simple problems to solve,
such as issues of security or school lunches. The major
overriding concern for Hispanic parents was that their own
children be provided basic security and that they could
trust teachers to put their best effort into a secure,
nurturing relationship with each child.
One principal explained that greatest anxiety came
234
from parents with younger children. By third grade, parents
asked fewer questions and volunteered less in activities at
school. Among white parents, two principals described an
abrupt change in parent voluntarism by the middle 197 0s.
The community control movement in which white liberal and
Black middle class families had been very active in schools
in the late 1960s and early 1970s disappeared very rapidly
as increasing numbers of mothers took full-time jobs. Some*
felt the change was connected with women's liberation and
others described the hard reality of inflation. Even though
community activism has slowed down in schools among middle-
class parents, bilingual staff still talk of fairly frequent
contact with Hispanic parents at the elementary level, and
in general Hispanic parents seem to affirm and trust the
relationships .their children have with the bilingual staff.
Another teacher strike in March, 197 9, demonstrates
the close relationship established between parents and
staff and the increasing maturation of Hispanic parent
involvement in schools. The strike was called by the
Washington Teachers' Union after the School Board refused
to extend the old contract since negotiations on a new
contract were at a stalemate. By this time, most of the
bilingual staff were probationary or permanent employees in
the system (two steps above their entry-level temporary
positions). Almost all bilingual teachers, except for a few
who had been hired more recently, chose openly to support
________________________________________________________________235
the strike and join the picket lines. One hundred percent
of the staff at School A went on strike. This placed the
bilingual administrators in the difficult position of order
ing Bilingual Office staff to assist in keeping schools
open, by crossing picket lines and working within schools
with students present:
We're on neither the School Board's side nor that of
the teachers. But administrators are required by
law to keep buildings operating and safe for the kids
who do attend. Any other position is insubordination.
Administrators don't have a union to back them or
any grievance procedure. Therefore, as an admini
strator you have to perform your duties /Interview,
March 19, 1979/.
Bilingual teachers at School A were not happy with
the way things were being handled, so they called an emer
gency community meeting in 24 hours. The meeting hall was
crowded with over 150 parents and children, Hispanics and
English-speaking parents in almost equal numbers. Teachers
presented their point of view and the large majority of
parents expressed sympathy and support. There was a lot of
tension and excitement, and both Hispanic and Anglo parents
spoke openly: "We came here to support our teachers and
end the strike. What can we do right now?" English-
speaking parents wrote a quick petition, to be signed by
everyone present, requesting reinstatement of the old
contract and binding arbitration until the new contract was
completed. While the petition was being prepared, several
Spanish-speaking parents jumped up and said that was not
236
enough. 1 1 iQueremos una raanifestaci6nI " The Hispanic
president of the School A Community Council (equivalent to
a PTA) took control of the podium and asked how many could
get off work the next morning to march on the downtown
offices of the Board of Education and the school admini
stration .
The next day at 10:00 A.M. a group of approximately
30 parents and 20 students from three schools presented
their concerns to the school superintendent and one School
Board member present, in a press conference with local media
coverage. In this meeting, Hispanic parents were assertive,
forceful, confident speaking in English:
The School Board is no longer representing the
interests of the community. We want teachers back
in school with no penalties.
Kids are on the streets, getting into trouble. . . .
Teenagers need supervision; they need their teachers.
Even though schools are kept open, there is no learn
ing going on--just babysitting.
A child, in perfect Spanish and English, spoke to the
superintendent: "Please give us our teachers back.
We want to learn" /Field notes, March 13, 1979/.
Although the director of the Bilingual Office was there to
provide translation, parents were able to express their
concerns without help. Later the director explained that
parents had contacted him, recognizing that only the
teachers' point of view had been presented at the meeting,
but they wanted most of all to get their children back in
school and for the strike to be over.
237
One bilingual staff member summarizes changes among
Hispanic parents since the inception of the Bilingual
Program in this way:
In the beginning, parents were more dependent.
Now parents are on their own. They're getting along
with the system. . . . They attend more school
meetings. They have seen a change in the behavior
of students and they have better, closer relationships
with teachers. They're not afraid like they were
before. . . . They don't have a direct role in final
decisions made in_schools, but they certainly influence
decision-making /Interview, April 16, 1980/.
Chinese Community-School Relations
The much smaller Chinese community seems to be going
through some early stages similar to those experienced by
the Hispanic community, in its relationship to the Bilingual
Program. The first steps initially taken to establish some
bilingual services to Chinese students were begun by a few
leaders from the Chinese Community Church. Through those
early efforts of a few people, the Chinese Parents' Asso
ciation was organized and was able to petition successfully
for the Chinese component of the Bilingual Program. In
1978, a Chinese Neighborhood Association developed as an
outgrowth of the Chinese Parents' Association. Because of
the concentration of most Chinese children within three
schools, the Chinese Parents' Association was able to serve
as a meeting place where Chinese parents could express
concerns in place of a PTA. The Chinese Advisory Council,
which was intimately related to the Parents' Association,
238
also served a similar function. The activities of these
various community organizations seemed to be stimulated by
the existence of the Bilingual Program.
Through these meetings, the Chinese school-community
coordinator was able to find dedicated neighborhood people
with some educational background who became the first
Chinese tutors in the Bilingual Program. Several of these
people were eventually trained to become full bilingual
teachers. Their commitment to the community as both parents
and teachers is total. They have become leaders within the
community, and they continually talk to parents about the
need to become more assertive and speak up for their rights
as a minority community.
Education has always been highly respected by
the Asian cultures. Due to their culture and respect
for learned persons, parents have high esteem for
the teachers. The role of the teacher is never
questioned. Thus, it is not a part of the parents
to become actively involved with the school in any
way. Getting parents involved with the Bilingual
Program is a slow and difficult process. . . .
Recent immigrant parents need to know how things
are done in the United States. Public opinion plays
a large role. Rather than being passive, Asian
parents should learn to be more vocal so that the
federal, state or local governments will recognize
the needs of any_community who request funding
/Kwok 19 79:6, 13/.
Chinese bilingual staff feel that they have come a
long ways in encouraging pride and identity within the
Chinese community. Many Chinese parents now more openly
affirm the importance of maintaining their combined Chinese
and U.S. cultural heritage. Like Hispanic staff, Chinese
239
bilingual staff have also accumulated a wealth of training
and experience, but they are small in number and they worry
some that the community is not growing in population, and
therefore it is difficult to expand services. In fact, the
population of the Chinese community within the downtown area
itself has been declining in recent years due to plans for
a new Civic Center to be constructed near Chinatown and thus
displacing residents, as buildings are torn down. However,
at the present time, as long as the Chinese school popula
tion remains stable, the D.C. Public Schools have provided
local money for one Chinese school-community coordinator,
three full-time Chinese bilingual teachers, and two full
time Chinese teacher-aides within schools.
Bilingual Education as a Change Agent Within Schools:
The Tension Between Innovation and Institutionalization
Bilingual education is an unusually sensitive school
program to implement, complicated both from a political and
a pragmatic point of view. The experience of the D.C.
Bilingual Program demonstrates some of that complexity. At
the same time, from the early stages of evolution, up
through the present period of expansion and professionali
zation, the D.C. Bilingual Program has passed through stages
similar to those of other school innovations. The following
discussion summarizes the political strategies used to reach
the vantage point now accomplished by the leaders of the
240
Bilingual Program, and the practical means of implementation
achieved through adaptation to the school structures
already in existence. The overall theme of this discussion
focuses on the constant tension experienced by bilingual
staff between the desire to keep the innovation detached,
coming from outside the system, and the need to institu
tionalize the innovation in order to remain in existence.
Early years. As shown in Chapters IV and V, the
Bilingual Program started with little expertise, but with
a lot of enthusiasm and pioneering spirit. Within class
rooms, the early years were a time of great experimentation
in teaching styles and materials used. Many textbooks were
tried, but teachers usually resorted to local material
development to attempt to fit the needs of their hetero
geneous classes. Teachers varied greatly in their compe
tence in both English and Spanish. There was little testing
and there was no standardized curriculum for bilingual
classes. Bilingual administrators struggled with various
political strategies as they worked to establish a beachhead
within the system.
As bilingual staff became increasingly socialized to
the standard procedures expected within schools, they
adapted to educational language and role expectations
projected by regular school staff. However, in areas where
they felt international students should receive different
treatment, they sometimes pressed for changes in the system.
______________________ 241
For example, bilingual counselors at secondary level now
play a mediating role between regular administrators and
students. They are responsible for all discipline, counsel
ing, and scheduling of international students and in this
role they have changed a few course requirements, procedures
for testing, and means of carrying out school disciplinary
measures. International students at elementary and secon
dary levels are now given special placement privileges
crossing school boundaries, if the Bilingual Office requests
a transfer for a student to a school with more bilingual
personnel. Overall, however, bilingual staff have accepted
and adjusted to the general patterns and rules of the school
system as it was established when the Bilingual Program
first started.
Federal influence. Chapter VI begins to describe
the initial stages of the introduction of extensive use of
federal grants in the Bilingual Program. Before 1974, small
federal grants had been used for purposes of training bilin
gual staff and for adding six secondary positions, but all
positions were in a short time completely supported by local
public school funds. The director felt that this was a very
important and successful political strategy for being
accepted as an essential structure within the local school
system. After establishment of the Bilingual Program as an
integral part
242
of local schools, then federal money was used to extend
bilingual staff and services. The process of increasing
bureaucratization and professionalization of roles continued
as the requirements of the federal grants pushed office
staff to spend time keeping track of all tasks, filling out
forms, and creating a system to prepare for each major
report which had to be presented--proposals, statistical
studies, interim reports, final reports, and evaluations.
As this process occurred, increasingly less time was spent
by Bilingual Office staff within schools themselves. More
office assistants were hired to carry out the tasks neces
sary to follow the requirements of the federal proposals and
their tasks had little to do with direct school services.
Thus the paternalism and closeness among Bilingual Office
and school staff was gradually lost as the organization
outgrew its family proportions and as the directors had less
time to deal directly with school issues.
Almost all bilingual teachers within schools
describe this change over time, some with bitterness, some
with resignation; while others see a positive side to the
change:
I don't think we're doing things right anywhere.
The administrators and office are completely separate
from what the teachers are doing. Teachers might
listen to a resource teacher but then they go back
and do what they were doing all along. The admini
stration is completely out of touch with classrooms.
. . . We have lost our identity as a group /Interview,
January 17, 1979/.
243
We don't get together as much as we used to across
schools now, but it's really not so necessary. There
was so much insecurity at the beginning; we needed to
band together for support. Now our energy goes into
the classroom, with the kids /Interview, January 18,
1979/.
The directors are more concerned about the program
than they are about the children /Interview,
November 5, 197 9/.
The resource teachers and school-community coordinators
are the only ones who have any idea what's going on
in schools. . . . The enthusiasm generated by the
directors in the early years has now fizzled out.
Too many things get started but there's never an end
product. It's like they've put a wall between the
office and the people in the field /Interview,
March 7, 1980/.
Another illustration of the increasing distance
between office staff and teachers in schools is the amount
of interchange of ideas on new projects. Bilingual teachers
at two schools spoke of projects in recent years which had
potential opportunities for expansion of bilingual services
where the follow-through by office staff was not sufficient
to get the projects underway. One of these was School B.
Bilingual teachers at School B over the last nine years have
been reduced from six to three, plus one teacher-aide,
through budget freezes and shiftingr; allocation of teachers.
In the early years, the bilingual staff there had hopes of
eventually creating a full bilingual school similar to
School A, since they had the second-largest Spanish-speaking
group, varying between one-third and one-fourth of the
student body. After the cluster concept changed the organi
zation of the school, some of the bilingual staff felt their
244
total impact on the school had been so watered down as to be
reduced to the role of an add-on service. They complained
that both Spanish and English-speaking students could not
get enough Spanish instruction with consistency to reach the
point of effective bilingual/bicultural learning.
Following a change of principals, in 1977 negotia
tions began for possible expansion of bilingual teaching at
the school. Potentially, the new program looked very pro
mising to bilingual staff at the school, and they were
excited about it. Somehow, however, the whole plan fell
through. Each person interviewed had a different explana
tion for the failure: English-speaking parents voted the
project down; office staff did not follow through with the
needed footwork to get the project off the ground; the
principal did not really give it full support; downtown
administrators vetoed the project. Whatever happened,
bilingual teachers felt the bilingual directors had let them
down.
Discussion for another project at one junior high
school was begun by English-speaking parents in 1978.
Because of the number of students from other countries, it
was proposed that the school set up an international studies
program to take advantage of the resources available through
the multinational student body. The principal endorsed the
project enthusiastically and proposed that the bilingual
staff participate in the discussions. Bilingual staff
245
members at the school requested a ruling on the Bilingual
Office staff's position in response to the proposed project
but did not receive a clear mandate to be part of the
decision-making. As a result, the project was funded but is
completely separate from Bilingual Program activities.
Bilingual staff at the school were angry that the Bilingual
Office staff neither played a leadership role nor allowed
them to take the initiative in plans for the school. This
again illustrates the tension between democratic and author
itarian decision-making in the program.
Professional conferences. Still another instance
of increasing professional distance and specialization of
roles between Bilingual Office and school staff has been the
use of State Technical Assistance grants to organize pro
fessional conferences, curriculum development, and stan
dardized testing. It must be emphasized that these results
are unintentional consequences, not at all planned by the
directors. Following the success of the First Annual
Washington Metropolitan Area Conference on Bilingual Educa
tion in May, 1976, the second and third annual conferences
were held in 19 77 and 197 8 with people in attendance from
many school districts of the surrounding region. At the
first and second annual conferences many D.C. teachers and
other D.C. bilingual staff participated in presenting the
workshops. However, by the third annual conference, almost
246
all of the presenters were from local universities, or'
directors of metropolitan area offices, with a few of the
Bilingual Office staff (Bilingual Office 1978a). As a
result, the workshops were less directly related to class
room issues and there was less participation of classroom
teachers. The third annual conference became the last one
of this type sponsored by D.C.
In December, 1976, the Bilingual Office had spon
sored a Round Table on Bilingual Education, paid for by a
State Technical Assistance grant. The purpose of the Round
Table was to bring together experts from around the country
to look at the D.C. Bilingual Program and suggest ways to
improve existing services to "pocket language group" stu
dents, who had been identified in the first Language and
Cultural Heritage Survey the previous school year. The
Round Table was also a means of coming to terms with how to
comply with the Lau v. Nichols decision and the accompanying
Lau Remedies memorandum from HEW. Thus the focus was on
administrative issues. Participants in the Round Table
discussed five areas: initial assessment of educational
level of limited English speaking students, curriculum,
effective instructional techniques, training of teachers,
and evaluation instruments to measure effectiveness of
bilingual programs. The structure of the conference
consisted of closed sessions, with discussions only among
invited participants. A final transcript of the sessions,
247
papers presented, and findings was produced in book form and
disseminated to other bilingual education projects. Once
again, the conference was valuable for administrators, and
it served political purposes, but it had little relevance
for classroom teachers.
The findings of the Round Table were summarized into
two areas most stressed by those who participated:
1. The need for a systematic approach to the initial
assessment of limited English-speaking ability
students for the purposes of diagnosis, placement
and instruction.
2. The need for a sequenced curriculum, consistent
with that of the school system, for the use of
bilingual, English-as-a-Second-Language, and
regular classroom teachers working with students
of limited English-speaking ability /Bilingual
Office 1976g/.
These two issues, testing and curriculum, could be taken to
symbolize the professionalization of education. The assump
tion among educators is that once standardized assessment
and a sequenced curriculum are developed and used by
teachers, schools will function more efficiently and
students will learn more. While these issues are important
to administrators, teachers may not necessarily agree that
students function best under a standardized system. Bilin
gual teachers in schools continue to emphasize the variety
of needs of the heterogeneous mixture of students they
always receive in the classroom and the need for flexible
styles of teaching to meet those varied needs. Thus, the
findings of the Round Table served important administrative
248
purposes to show the continued progress of the project
toward professionalization as expected by federal and local
school standards. However, these benefits did not necessar
ily filter down to the classroom level. The involvement in
federal grants and the professionalization of the Bilingual
Program to standard educational expectations created an
increasing gap between a growing top-heavy administrative
structure and the grassroots staff who were directly
involved with students.
One more conference was held in March, 1980, along
the same organizational structure as the Round Table. The
Forum on Bilingual Education again emphasized the increasing
professionalization and expertise of Bilingual Office staff,
some of whom took part in the panels along with nationally
recognized experts, but the conference had virtually nothing
of use to classroom teachers. Those teachers who attended
expressed their frustration with this pattern.
Continuing Tension of Innovation and Institutionaiization
To summarize the main theme throughout this section
of the tension between innovation and institutionalization
(or between coming from outside the system and becoming a
part of the system), the Bilingual Program provides many
illustrations of the creative use of this tension, best
symbolized in the role all bilingual staff have played of
mediation between international students and the school
249
system. However, through adaptation to local educational
expectations and roles and professionalization through
federal influence, the innovation has moved into a new stage
with considerable separation between office and school
staff. Other tensions mentioned in previous chapters follow
the same pattern, f First, the early stages were marked with
uncertainty followed over time by greater clarity as to
what staff were actually trying to implement and more
cohesion as a group. The cohesion between office and
schools is now lessened, but there is more cohesion between
bilingual and regular staff within each school. * Second, the
flexibility of teaching methods and materials of the early
years has given way to a push of the office staff for more
standardization of curriculum and testing, but this is
mediated by the continuing adaptation of teachers to special
needs of students. This will be illustrated in the sections
which follow. % Third, after the period of initial uncer
tainty, the innovation was carried out with enthusiasm and
a sense of purpose among staff. As the years have passed
and professional distance has increased between office and
schools, a sense of lowered morale seems to be apparent in
interviews with some teachers in schools. At the same time,
this "slowing down" is somewhat mediated by new staff who
continue to bring new vitality to the project through visit
ing schools, bringing new ideas, and providing some sense
of regeneration. The description which follows illustrates
250
some of this spiral of renewal.
Bilingual special education services. Increasing
professionalization of the innovation and specialization of
roles continued as two new Bilingual Office staff members
added special education services to the program. In 1978,
the school system hired a Spanish-speaking school psycholo
gist to be based out of the Bilingual Office. Later that
year, a newly hired resource teacher had specialized in her
training in special education. The two began to develop a
plan for bilingual special education services to schools.
The Spanish-speaking psychologist, a former priest
dedicated to the community, describes his work as much more
complicated than that of a regular school psychologist
because in addition to the role of psychologist, he must
understand sociological and multicultural variables, and
play the roles of translator, counselor, and cross-cultural
specialist. He has a larger case load than he can handle,
and the multiple legal cases oriented towards mainstreaming
special education children in more recent years have compli
cated the procedure for placement, either with a school-
(
based special education teacher or in a special education
school. Furthermore, teachers in special education do not
necessarily have the skills to deal with children from other
linguistic and cultural backgrounds.
Both staff members in special education feel that
251
they have a tremendous amount of pioneering work to do.
In setting up a procedure for testing along with the other
resource teachers, they feel they have made some progress.
All initial assessment of new students from other countries
is done at the Bilingual Office Resource Center. Following
testing, students are placed in the appropriate school and
grade level. A local test was developed by bilingual
personnel for children ages 5-8 in English language profi
ciency assessment. Various other standardized tests are
used to determine native language and subject area skills
for each age level (Bilingual Office 1977a). For children
with special learning or behavioral problems, the bilingual
school psychologist is especially pleased with the System
of Multicultural Pluralistic Assessment (SOMPA), which
provides a comprehensive profile of all aspects of a
student's personality, from a multicultural point of view.
He fights the school system's demand for IQ scores, which
he feels do not begin to represent adequately a student's
learning potential. The overall concern of the new bilin
gual special education staff is to humanize the system a
bit more, to provide learning opportunities that meet each
unique child's individual needs. As they have visited
schools and worked with both regular and bilingual teachers,
they feel that the schools with the largest number of
bilingual staff are doing the best job of providing for
each individual student.
252
Bilingual curriculum development. Another project
of the resource teachers which illustrates the continuing
tension between flexibility and standardization has been
curriculum development. From the very first days of the
Bilingual Program, curriculum development had been a goal.
Each year it was mentioned in succeeding proposals, and the
issue was raised in evaluations. In the early years,
teachers organized curriculum committees, which met with
some regularity even though it was an extra duty which they
voluntarily accepted. Some parts were written and pilot-
tested in classrooms. However, nothing was yet in final
form when a new directive came from the local school admin
istrative offices downtown. In 1977, the whole school
system chose to implement a competency based curriculum
(CBC), and all subject areas at all grade levels were to be
re-written in CBC form. Some schools with bilingual staff
agreed to serve as model CBC programs. Bilingual staff
received training in the components of CBC curriculum
writing and bilingual curriculum groups again began to meet.
Some teachers resented the seemingly endless process, and
fewer participated.
Occasional consultants have been used in more recent
years to write parts of the CBC curricula for bilingual and
ESL classes. As of spring, 1980, the curriculum is still
being written. Some federal money has been granted to
finish the process and to begin field-testing in the fall.
253
Some bilingual staff members feel that they will have
accomplished a great deal when the curriculum is completed
and classroom teaching is somewhat more standardized. Some
of the bilingual teachers say they are eager to try out the
curricula that have been produced, while others feel it will
interfere with a significantly flexible process they have
developed which feels right to them in dealing with their
varied students. The unfinished curriculum again symbolizes
the tension— always evident— between leaving a somewhat
loose, flexible structure, "loose coupling," and tightening
control for a more standardized, efficiency-oriented opera
tion. The unstructured flexibility seems to serve a very
important function in schools in the midst of the bureau
cratizing tendency.
Within Schools
Between 1976 and 1980, bilingual and ESL services
to schools were shifted only very slightly to serve needs
of international students. The structure for assignment of
bilingual staff had not changed significantly in the nine
years of operation of the Bilingual Program: School A was
the only school with a full bilingual staff, while all
other schools had from one to four bilingual staff members,
depending on enrollment of international students with
limited English proficiency. In the spring of 1980 there
were 47 bilingual staff in 10 elementary schools, 1 middle
254
school, 2 junior high schools, and 1 senior high school,
and 15 Bilingual Office staff members (Bilingual Office
1980).
Transitional or partial bilingual services. Staff
members in schools with small numbers of bilingual personnel
agree in general in their perceptions of the help they give
to students. Most feel that they have been given a signi
ficant decision-making role within their schools which
allows them to handle most concerns of international stu
dents, from counseling, to ESL instruction, to native
language instruction. Those at secondary level also handle
extracurricular activities such as coaching the soccer teams
and directing the international clubs. In addition, elemen
tary bilingual teachers sometimes provide Spanish as a
Second Language instruction for English-speaking children.
However, most of these staff also feel that while
they provide quite a variety of services, the total impact
they have on students is much less than that experienced at
School A, where Students receive an integrated, full
bilingual/multicultural curriculum. Secondary staff members
constantly refer to differences in academic preparation
between students from School A and those coming from other
schools. The general impression is that both English and
Spanish-speaking students from School A more consistently
have a better command of both languages and are at or above
grade level in all subject areas. This is reflected in the
__________________________________________________________ 255
findings of the 197 8 evaluation, which confirms the pattern
staff have observed in academic achievement as measured on
the Prescriptive Reading and Math Tests, with students in
the full bilingual school scoring consistently higher than
students in the partial bilingual schools (Behavior Service
Consultants 1978). A similar contrast was mentioned in the
19 77 evaluation, in measurement of students' self-concept.
Administration of the Self Observation Scales Test, which
measures the way children perceive themselves and their
relationship to school, revealed significantly higher scores
among students at School A over bilingual students in
partially-serviced schools in areas of social maturity,
school affiliation, and self security (Sachs 1977) .
Another serious problem which some bilingual staff
at partial-service schools have discussed is the tremendous
contrast in social status of bilingual classes between the
full bilingual school and those schools with partial or
transitional services. In the schools where ESL and native
language instruction in a content area is one or two class
periods daily, these classes tend to be perceived by regular
staff and students as a lower track for slow students. Even
in the schools organized around clusters, there are not yet
enough bilingual staff to give sufficient Spanish instruc
tion to English speakers for all students to feel the impact
and importance of learning both languages equally well.
The unconscious message of the curriculum is that English
_______________________________________________________ 256
is the status language. That Spanish instruction which does
take place is not taken very seriously by English-speaking
students. It is an extra in the curriculum. In contrast,
the full two-way bilingual school (School A) demands a total
commitment of all students to the successful learning of
both English and Spanish, and there is a high level of
school spirit in academic achievement and successful mastery
of the two languages by all students, as well as an uncon
sciously-taught deeper level of sensitivity to multiple
cultural backgrounds. Both English and Spanish speakers are
placed on an equal status with each other and both groups
have equally complex tasks to perform.
While bilingual staff at schools with partial
services see some limits to their role and impact on the
schools and on students, most principals praise their bilin
gual staff highly. Secondary principals appreciate the
greater control of discipline: "The Bilingual Office has
done a tremendous job in getting these kids off the streets
/Interview, January 18, 1979/. 1 1 "He's my right-hand man.
He talks to students in the hall— knows where they're at
/Interview, November 13, 19 79/." The director of the
Bilingual Program likes to be personally present when there
is any kind of crisis involving international students, and
principals depend on him for immediate help on any critical
issues they cannot quickly resolve. Other principals
i
describe the dedication of bilingual staff beyond that
257
required in teachers' contracts and their willingness to
keep in close touch with parents: "She is a ball and a
half of energy, assertive, hard-working /Interview,
January 18, 1979/." "He is consistent with students and
strong academically /Interview, December 5, 19 79/."
Maintenance, two-way bilingual education. Everyone
seems proud of School A: English and Spanish-speaking
parents, students, Hispanic community members, teachers,
Bilingual Office staff, and the principal. An outside eva
luator summarized her observations in this way:
/School A/, i.in my view, is a distinguished social and
educational achievement. Spanish-speaking and English-
speaking students of diverse cultural backgrounds are
at home in its school environment. Discipline and
social discontinuities, which were serious and divi
sive in 197 0, are now absent in this culturally
diverse school. Students, both Spanish and English-
speaking, can be found who have achieved a high level
of bilinguality. Teachers are culturally diverse,
and the curriculum has a remarkable multiculturalism
/Bilingual Office 1976g:160/.
The standardization and efficiency required at the
Bilingual Office has been mediated by a more flexible,
spontaneous response of teachers to students within schools.
Teachers at School A describe the importance of their
increasing years of experience in bilingual teaching and
development of a sense of competence, but they also
emphasize the continuing need to be somewhat open and
flexible in response to students' needs. One teacher
describes it in this way:
258
I've worked here longer than any place before.
It's amazing. Here there is warmth, culture, support.
Nobody feels ridiculous in my classroom. We have so
much space for acceptance. We laugh together; no one
rejects another. Religion, race, economic differences
in background never make a difference.
We are very strict in terms of homework and
discipline. To be in this school is a privilege.
Kids perceive the_importance of being here and they
are proud of it /Interview, October 31, 1979^/.
The general organization of teaching patterns at
School A is based on bilingual team teaching. Teachers and
the principal are all convinced that team teaching is one
of the most important keys to success at the school.
Students are grouped in a variety of ways so that they do
not feel locked into a specific "track" or low group. Some
times classes and groupings contain mixed ages of students.
In addition to certain specified goals in second language
learning, native language development, and subject areas
agreed on by the staff, many opportunities for various types
of enrichment are provided by staff and parent and community
volunteers. The school enjoys a low student-adult ratio of
18 to 1, in contrast to the density patterns of most public
schools. Enrollment continues to be high, with operation
of a small building at approximately 150 percent capacity.
Some classes meet in halls, closets, and two temporary
structures outside. The building is open with various
programs for children from 7:00 A.M. to 7:00 P.M. and is
used on weekends for many programs sponsored by school
people or the Department of Recreation. It is definitely
259
a community-oriented school.
The principal feels his staff are basically solid
academically and over the years they have learned a lot in
providing a context for solid cognitive growth to take place
for all students.
You've got to have people who really know how to
teach and know their subject areas. We've put in
some big battles to get good people and keep them
here. With strong teachers, they love the kids
enough to make them want to learn. It's personality
that makes a teacher, not past training or experience,
but experience helps. The best teachers are always
the ones who_want even more for the k^ds than their
parents do /Interview, March 13, 19 80/.
One of the strong conclusions of the staff of
School A is that maintenance, two-way bilingual education
is the only model of bilingual teaching which seems to work
effectively and consistently for all students. The princi
pal expresses his frustration that there is at present no
full bilingual junior high school for students from School A
to attend when they finish their elementary school years.
The two junior high schools which have bilingual staff have
been able to offer only English as a Second Language classes
and transitional bilingual social studies for recently
arrived immigrants, because the ratio of Spanish speakers
to English speakers is much smaller than that of School A.
The new alternative bilingual high school is also designed
mainly for new Hispanic arrivals and potential dropouts.
Adding a seventh-eighth grade to School A has been • ■ ; .
discussed repeatedly by the community, but the most
26 0
insuperable problem seems to be space. The bilingual staff
all long for more continuity between schools.
Administrators' Perceptions of Successes of the Bilingual
Program
By 19 80, a number of staff members had moved on to
higher positions in bilingual education in other settings.
The director feels that experience and training in the D.C.
Bilingual Program is an effective tool for professionaliza
tion and he is proud of the D.C. staff members who have
taken leadership roles in other locations. One of the \
office staff members joined the staff of the federal Office
for Civil Rights and later the Office of Bilingual Education
(now OBEMLA). Another became coordinator of a bilingual
program in Arizona. A former D.C. bilingual teacher directs
elementary services of the Bilingual Program of Arlington,
Virginia, and another former staff member is a bilingual
counselor in Arlington. Two former staff members are the
regional representatives for the Lau Center which operates
out of Miami, Florida. Five former bilingual staff members
are pursuing their PhD in bilingual education. At the same
time that these staff members have moved on, bilingual
teachers and office staff complain that there are few
systems for upward mobility within the local project itself.
The directors of the Bilingual Program know they
have come a long ways over the last nine years of existence
of the program. They feel they have had a significant
261
impact on the school system and the community. The director
in charge of policy operates more as a political strategist
than as a bureaucrat. He says he purposely divorces himself
from day-to-day decisions within schools in order to develop
general strategies which take into account the total
picture.
To influence the system to set standards as you want
them, you have to direct from the outside. Most
people are not good strategists; they get bogged
down in too many details. They become plant managers
and lose perspective about what they're doing. . . .
In process, working with groups, there is always
tremendous resistance. But if the group produces
change, you shorten the time of implementation. You
really have to have somebody that knows and under-
stands political process /Interview, December 29, 1979/.
The director feels he functions in a political world. The
school bureaucracy at top levels is an extremely competitive
system, because of the great expectations which are laid on
schools and their serving in urban areas as a point of
contact between diverse ethnic groups.
When asked what are the most significant accomplish
ments of the Bilingual Program, the director mentioned
changes in the Hispanic community, increased parent involve
ment in schools, training of bilingual teachers, the
establishment of a bilingual teaching license and ESL
license, and total local funding; for in 1979 all the posi
tions established with Title VII funding five years before
were absorbed into the local school budget. Conscious
political strategies which the director feels have worked
262
effectively have involved establishing close ties with the
downtown school administrators, demonstrating the bilingual
staff's capability professionally, and through these
connections, slowly and consistently adding new positions
as they could demonstrate the need. The bilingual and ESL
licenses symbolize the full institutionalization of ' ' *
bilingual teaching as an integral part of the school system,
as long as there are continued numbers of students coming
from other countries.
A Last Word: The Lack of Closure
Little has been said about evaluation because it
seemed to play such a minor, almost negligible, role in the
day-to-day life of bilingual staff. This again points to
the difference between a centrally-inspired reform, in which
evaluation serves an important function mainly for the
federal or state planners, and a locally-evolved reform such
as this one which puts its priorities on other issues than
those measured in a traditional evaluation. Office staff
admitted quite openly that the federally required evalua
tions were of little use to the program in providing really
meaningful feedback. The evaluations were not ignored
because they spoke poorly of the program. To the contrary,
they were laudatory; for example:
This.evaluator studied the D.C. Bilingual Program
five or six years ago, during its first year of
operation. The development since then, both in
efficiency and in effectiveness, can only be described
as remarkable /Sachs 1977:52/.
________________________________________________________________263
The evaluation . . . shows an exciting program with
dedicated and qualified personnel. Many aspects of
the program are going well and are to be commended.
It is a tribute to the program to find so many studies
and papers written about various aspects of the
program at different times /Behavior Service
Consultants 19 78:37/.
But there were always problems with design of the evaluation
or with late award of a contract to an outside firm because
of complicated regulations required by the 99 percent
minority school system, or other such problems.
This brings us back to the theme that in schools
single problems become expanding problems which never quite
get solved. No one can say that the Washington, D.C.
Bilingual Program has solved all problems for students who
speak other languages. There are many questions left
unanswered, many unresolved tensions, unaccomplished goals,
new concerns. Yet some changes have taken place in both
the community and the schools which seem to be significant
in various ways for many of the people involved. This case
study has tried to show the constructive nature of that
complexity.
264
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APPENDIX A
CHRONOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE BILINGUAL PROGRAM:
DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA PUBLIC SCHOOLS, WASHINGTON, D.C.
I. 1970-1971 School Year - Initial planning stage
A.. Training of teachers: 16 native Spanish-speaking
teachers received one year's training through
a grant from the U.S. Office of Education under
the Education Professions Development Act (EPDA).
B. Hiring of three administrative staff
C. Decision to begin services to three existing
schools, one of which was to be a model of full
two-way bilingual education
D. Five-week summer institute, conducted by teachers
from Coral Way Elementary School, Miami, Florida
II. 1971-1972 School Year - First year of operation
A. Local funding for all bilingual positions, with
supplemental EPDA funding for staff development
and materials development
B. September: 22 bilingual teachers assigned to
three elementary schools, with a fourth school
added in December
C. Seven-week bilingual summer institute, designed
to develop curriculum, educational objectives,
and exchange ideas on teaching methods and
materials
D. New principal of School A chosen by community
with approval of downtown school administration
III. 1972-1973 School Year
A. Services added to three more elementary schools,
with three counselors sent to five secondary
schools in February
B. Summer: 25 teachers began MA in bilingual
education with continuing funding from EPDA
285
IV. 1973-1974 School Year
A. Emergency School Aid Act (ESAA) funding for
additional secondary bilingual services
B. School B changed to organization by clusters,
and separate bilingual classes ended
C. Director of Bilingual Program became director
of all bilingual education and ESL services,
kindergarten through adult education
V. 1974-1975 School Year
A. ESAA and EPDA funding ended; all bilingual/ESL
positions absorbed into local school budget
B. ESEA Title VII grant added 2 school-community
coordinators, 8 teacher-aides, 2 resource center
staff, and 1 secondary bilingual teacher
C. Transitional bilingual social studies courses
added, secondary level
D. Hispanic Parents' Advisory Council organized
E. U.S. Supreme Court Lau decision; D.C. in
compliance for Spanish speakers
VI. 1975-1976 School Year
A. Chinese component added with Title VII funds;
Chinese school-community coordinator and six
Chinese tutors hired
B. Chinese Parents' Advisory Council organized
C. Resource Center organized with three resource
teachers
D. First Language and Cultural Heritage Survey
conducted city-wide to identify all students
who speak languages other than English
E. First Annual Conference on Bilingual Education
for the metropolitan area, sponsored by Bilingual
Program
F. Two new teachers' licenses created: bilingual
education and ESL
286
VII. 1976-1977 School Year
A. School A: full bilingual school, preschool
through sixth grade; School B: partial bilingual
services for all students, preschool through
eighth grade; partial bilingual services at
nine other elementary schools and four secondary
schools
B. Three Chinese teacher-aides hired
C. All teacher-aides training to become bilingual
teachers
D. Round Table on Bilingual Education, funded by
State Technical Assistance grant
E. Second Annual Conference on Bilingual Education
for the metropolitan area, sponsored by Bilingual
Program
VIII. 1977-1978 School Year
A. Competency based curriculum (CBC) writing project
begun for bilingual and ESL curricula
B. Several schools with bilingual staff became
CBC models
C. Third Annual Conference on Bilingual Education
for the metropolitan area, sponsored by Bilingual
Program
IX. 1978-1979 School Year
A. Spanish-speaking school psychologist hired
B. Saturday morning classes for Hispanic parents
in Spanish language arts, mathematics, and ESL
C. Four-week teacher strike; most bilingual teachers
active union members
X. 1979-1980 School Year
A. All positions begun with ESEA Title VII funds
were absorbed into local school budget
B. Chinese services: one Chinese school-community
coordinator, three Chinese bilingual teachers,
and two Chinese teacher-aides
287
C. Plans for bilingual special education services
developing through Resource Center specialist
and bilingual school psychologist
D. Forum on Bilingual Education, funded by State
Technical Assistance grant
E. Spring, 1980: 47 bilingual staff in 10 elemen
tary schools, 1 middle school, 2 junior high
schools, and 1 senior high school, and 15
Bilingual Office staff.
288
APPENDIX B
BACKGROUND, PHILOSOPHY, AND GOALS OF THE BILINGUAL PROGRAM1
WASHINGTON, D.C.
Background
Historically, in the United States, the education
of children whose first language is other than English has
been almost completely neglected. Ill-equipped to deal
adequately with such children, the educational system has
been insensitive to their special psychological and academic
needs. Psychologically, the attempt to force children to
conform immediately to a monolingual, monocultural mold has
frequently engendered frustration which begins with appre
hension, leads to rebellion or, on the other side of the
coin, to apathy and withdrawal. The child's capacity to
understand is challenged in virtually every experience.
His language no longer serves him in communication, and the
apparent denigration of his own values in this involuntary
total immersion program often leaves him emotionally
scarred. Academically, his lack of the language tool
causes him to fall behind his classmates. Despite the fact
that he may have been a good student in his own country, he
1Source: Bilingual Office. Public Schools of the
District of Columbia; Bilingual Program. Washington,
D.C.: D.C. Public Schools, June, 1975.
289
often is considered dull by teachers and pupils alike. Nor
has the system been aware of the enrichment benefits, in the
nature of broadened horizons, which these children offer to
schools in particular and to the community in general.
It is against this background of traditional neglect
that the District of Columbia Public Schools faced, in the
early 1960s, a growing enrollment of native speakers of
Spanish who brought with them values, expectations and
customs of the Latin American countries from which their
families had emigrated. These children had the standard
range of ability which, nevertheless, was frequently camou
flaged by other obstacles. In addition to those from a
middle class milieu with standard Spanish and well developed
learning skills, there were those who spoke non-standard
dialect, or who entered the upper grades illiterate in
Spanish and English, or who came from a disadvantaged envi
ronment unprepared for any school situation. Thrusting
these children into classes with American youngsters, the
majority of whom had already established learning skills,
created an untenable situation.
Moreover, unlike other areas in the United States,
the Spanish speaking population of Washington, D.C. was not
representative of a single area or dominant culture, i.e.
Mexican-American, Puerto Rican or Cuban, but included
families from some 21 different Latin American countries,
with those from Central America predominant. Language was
290
frequently the only common denominator, and this problem of
diverse cultural, geographic, academic and economic back
ground was further exacerbated by high mobility deriving
from Washington's situation as port of entry for many
Spanish speakers. Some came for a short period and returned
to their native countries, intimidated by the urban environ
ment; others remained in Washington only until financially
secure enough to move to the suburbs. In 19 73, the turnover
of Spanish-speaking students in one elementary school was
41 percent, but long before, the continuing need to intro
duce newly arrived Spanish-speaking children to the American
school, American culture and the English language had become
readily apparent.
In 1970, the Hispanic community, recognizing the
increasing seriousness of the school situation and the lack
of attention to their children's needs, initiated efforts
to have 16 native Spanish speaking teachers trained for
placement in District of Columbia Public Schools. After
completion of a year's training . . . and with cooperation
from the school system, they became part of the Bilingual
Program of the District of Columbia Public Schools. Three
elementary schools . . . took part in the Program which
began operation in September 1971. . . .
Since the inception of the Bilingual Program, 35
teachers have received training in bilingual and multi
cultural class techniques through summer workshops,
291
in-service training and a grant from the U.S. Office of
Education under the Education, Professions Development Act.
This grant culminated in the summer of 1974, with the com
pletion by 25 teachers of an M.A. in Bilingual Education
from American University. The Bilingual Program of the
District of Columbia Public Schools, which at present
reaches 750 Spanish dominant school students and 550 English
dominant children, has, in the space of three years, become
one of the first in the United States to serve an urban,
multiracial, multicultural population.
Philosophy and Goals
The administration and staff of the Bilingual
Program believe in the value of being bilingual and multi
cultural in this ever shrinking world. It is believed that
a child deprived of speaking.his native language is deprived
of his cultural identity; that pride of heritage is neces
sary to healthy development; that provided one of the lan
guages is the mother tongue, children who learn through two
languages tend to learn as well or better than those who
learn through one; that a bilingual approach to learning
actually decreases what is often called retardation in
children who come from foreign countries; that the language
and identity problems are among the chief reasons for
alienation of many immigrants who come to this country.
Based on the belief that there is a transfer of
292
skills from one language to the other, the methodology
provides that the amount of instructional time in each lan
guage be adjusted to group and individual needs. Children
are introduced to reading in their native tongue and then
encouraged to read in the second language. Subsequent
instruction and curriculum assist them to advance in know
ledge through the use of both languages as means of communi
cation.
Teaching children from such diverse Hispanic
cultures, while an asset in terms of fostering cultural
understanding, also presents a challenge in that the pre
ferred ability to communicate with the child in his own
dialect becomes impossible. Consequently, standard Spanish
curriculum materials are used and dialectal accents, voca
bulary and idioms are avoided in instruction, but dialectal
variations are fully accepted from the children as an
important part of their cultural identity. This blend of
strictness and acceptance minimizes the confusion of lan
guage diversity and maintains the richness of cultural
diversity.
With this philosophy as a premise, the following
goals have been established for the Bilingual Program:
1. The participating pupil, both English dominant
and Spanish dominant, will increase his profi
ciency in the second language and his under
standing of the second culture so that he
293
functions comfortably in either language or
culture;
2. He will achieve as much in skills and under
standing of concepts as he would in a mono
lingual school;
3. His proficiency in speaking, reading and writing
the second language will equal that of the
first;
4. He will have pride in his own cultural heritage
and have respect and understanding for the
cultural heritage of others;
5. The education of Spanish-speaking children will
be integrated into an existent educational
system, while encouraging at the same time
healthy psychological development and main
tenance of cultural identity.
Personnel
. . . It is generally agreed that the key to any
successful instructional program is the teacher, and a
bilingual program demands an unusual degree of competency
and sensitivity. Being bilingual is important for communi
cation with the child and with his family as well, for
strong parental and community support are clearly essential
to any good program. But bilinguality will not suffice,
because the prime virtue is not language ability but the
294
ability to relate to the child, to value his culture, to
help him grow within his identity. The Bilingual Program
seeks teachers who are able successfully to use strategies
which add to the child's experience, specifically those
features of school language and culture necessary for
success in the school setting and beyond, without attempting
to replace the child's native language and values and
without endangering the child's concept of himself and his
family. . . .
Since individual needs are a prime consideration,
English (Spanish) as a Second Language is emphasized as
necessary, as are English and Spanish language arts.
Subject matter is taught and reinforced in both languages.
Through workshops, in-service training and graduate study,
teachers review the latest methods and techniques to help
English dominant children appreciate another language and
culture and to allow Spanish-speaking children to maintain
their language and culture while becoming full fledged
members of this society. . . .
295
APPENDIX C
D.C. BILINGUAL PROGRAM: CHINESE COMPONENT1
The Chinese Component of the District of Columbia
Public Schools Bilingual Program was established in Septem
ber, 1975. The School-Community Coordinator was hired to
serve as a link between the Chinese parents and the school
system and between the Chinese students and the school
system under the direction of the Director of the Bilingual
Program. The short range objective of the program is to
assess and pinpoint the needs of these students, K-12, and
to provide immediate social and academic assistance to the
Chinese student and his family. Once students have been
identified, the School-Community Coordinator is responsible
for visiting the schools where the students attend; discuss
ing with teachers, administrators, students and parents the
needs of non-English speaking students; and planning with
them a program that will meet these needs. The long range
objective is to build a framework within the target schools
for the establishment of a Chinese/English bilingual pro
gram in the near future.
In 1975-1976, after a needs assessment, six Chinese
■ ' ’Source: Bilingual Office. Bilingual Program:
Chinese Component: A Brief Description. Washington,
D.C.: D.C. Public Schools, 1977.
296
tutors were selected by the School-Community Coordinator to
help students in seven schools. The school assignment was
based on the number of Chinese enrollments in each school
and in accordance with the needs of these students. Tutors’
were paid on an hourly basis through a stipend. The School-
Community Coordinator was directly in charge of observing
and supervising the tutors. Although 56 Chinese students
were receiving direct instructional services in 1976-1977,
the rest of the Chinese and other Asian students were
receiving indirect services from the School-Community Coor
dinator and other staff members of the Bilingual Program/
In order to enhance cultural awareness among the
Chinese students and to encourage better understanding on
the part of other students, the School-Community Coordinator
has worked with Chinese students to present a Chinese New
Year Assembly program to its student body. This was the
first time in the history of the school system where Chinese
students performed as a group. Folk dances, Kung Fu demon
strations and a fashion show of costumes of different
periods of Chinese history were on the program. The
assembly created pride within the students as well as
greater admiration and understanding for the Chinese culture
by the administration, faculty and student body of the
school. Another Chinese New Year Celebration program was
performed in February, 1977. The show was also performed
in two other schools to promote better understanding of the
_____ 2 97
Chinese culture. A group of Chinese students also partici
pated in an International Student assembly program in April,
1977.
During the summer of 1976, the Coordinator acted as
supervisor and teacher in an eight-week summer program for
35 students. Four tutors also taught on a voluntary basis.
Due to a cut in the school system’s budget, there was no
summer school program in 1977.
In September, 19 76, three tutors were promoted to
full time Teacher-Aide positions on the elementary, junior
high and senior high levels. One of the Teacher-Aides is
also in the traineeship program for her degree in Bilingual
Education. The Teacher-Aides are assigned to regular class
room teachers to work with Chinese students. Where time
permits, the Teacher-Aides act as assistants to the Coordi
nator in the assigned schools to facilitate any matter which
may arise concerning the Chinese, students. Three tutors
continue to be paid by a stipend to work with students in
other schools of the system. In schools where there are
fewer Chinese students, the Coordinator goes directly to the
school to consult with administrators and teachers to meet
the needs of individual students.
The number of full time Teacher-Aides will be
increased to four as of September, 1977. Due to this addi
tion in the FY 1978 Federal Grant, we will no longer have
tutors in the schools.
_______________________________________________________________ 298
The School-Community Coordinator meets regularly
with the Title VII and Title I Parent Advisory Councils,
Parent-Teacher Associations and other educational and commu
nity groups to keep parents and members of the community
informed of school activities. A weekly taping is made by
the Coordinator for the District of Columbia Public Schools
Spanish/Chinese Telephone News Information Service
(576-6358) to inform parents of the activities in the
schools and in the Chinese community. She has also con
ducted workshops on cultural awareness in schools, local
universities and neighboring school districts.
The Coordinator is also responsible for the selec
tion of Chinese bilingual materials for the Resource Center
of the Bilingual Program. Book evaluations are done with
the help of the Teacher-Aides.
Although all personnel of the Chinese Component are
funded by the Title VII Grant, the local school system has
alloted monies for educational supplies. In addition, the
Title VII Grant for State Coordination of Technical Assis
tance has provided resources for the Asian students in the
school system. It is anticipated that the school system
will absorb the Chinese bilingual component, as well as the
rest of the Bilingual Program, at the end of its funding
period in June, 1979.
299
APPENDIX D
D.C. BILINGUAL PROGRAM: DIRECT INSTRUCTIONAL SERVICES
AS OF SEPTEMBER, 19 76^
Information for each school is provided in the following
School A:
order: School: Year program began; Type of
program; Grades served; Number of Students
(LEP: students of limited English proficiency;
English: English-dominant); Number of Teachers
1971; Bilingual school, ESL, SSL; PK-6;
181 LEP, 170 English; 10 Bilingual, 10 English,
1 Teacher-Aide.
1971; Bilingual clusters, Spanish enrichment,
ESL, SSL; PK-8; 64 LEP, 152 English;
3 Bilingual, 2 Teacher-Aides.
_________ 1971; Spanish enrichment, ESL; K-6; 60 LEP,
60 English; 1 Bilingual, 1 ESL.
School D: 1971-1972, 1976; ESL; K-6; 30 LEP; 1 ESL.
School B
School C
School E 1972; Bilingual class, Spanish enrichment, ESL;
1-4; 21 LEP, 28 English; 2 Bilingual,
2 Teacher-Aides.
_________ 1973; Bilingual clusters; 1-4; 48 LEP,
92 English; 1 Bilingual, 1 Teacher-Aide.
School G: 1973; ESL; K-6; 8 LEP; 1 ESL itinerant.
School F
School H
School I
1973; ESL, Chinese tutoring; K-6; 20 LEP;
1 ESL itinerant, 1 Chinese tutor.
1975; Chinese enrichment, Spanish enrichment;
1-6; 32 LEP; 1 Chinese Teacher-Aide, 1 Spanish
Teacher-Aide, itinerant.
Source: Bilingual Office. Round Table on
Bilingual Education in Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C.:
D.C. Public Schools, December, 1976..
300
School J
School K
School L
School M
School N
School 0
1976; ESL; K-6; 33 LEP; 1 ESL.
1976; Spanish enrichment, ESL, SSL; 5-8; 38 LEP,
28 English; 1 Bilingual.
1973; Transitional bilingual, ESL, Chinese
enrichment, Bilingual counseling; 7-9; 76 LEP;
1 Bilingual/ESL, 1 Teacher-Aide, 1 Chinese
tutor, 1 Counselor.
1973; ESL, Spanish enrichment, Chinese enrich
ment; 7-9; 45 LEP; 1 ESL, 2 Teacher-Aides
(Spanish/Chinese).
1973; ESL, SSL, Bilingual counseling; 7-9;
13 LEP, 34 English; 1 Bilingual/ESL/Counselor.
1973; ESL, Bilingual counseling; 10-12; 108 LEP;
1 ESL, 1 Teacher-Aide, 1 Counselor.
301
APPENDIX E
LANGUAGE AND CULTURAL HERITAGE SURVEY: 1978-1979
D.C. BILINGUAL PROGRAM1
Introduction
The "Language and Cultural Heritage Survey" is an
annual activity of the Division of Bilingual Education of
the District of Columbia Public School System. The data
gathered on students who speak languages other than English
are presented in this document. The transfer of information
onto individual cards last year has enabled us to keep a
more accurate record on each student, following him/her
throughout the School System. This system will also make
it possible to send preprinted survey forms to the schools
next year, thus facilitating the schools' gathering of
information.
1978-1979 Survey Results
A total of 1,97 4 students who speak languages other
than English were reported. An additional 28 3 speak only
English although another language is spoken in the home or
they speak a variety of English which differs phonologically
■'"Source: Bilingual Office. A Linguistic and
Cultural Profile of the Student Population of the District
of Columbia Public School System. Washington, D.C.:
D.C. Public Schools, 1979: 1-3.1-
302
or morphologically or syntactically from that used in the
classroom (e.g. British English). Since these students do
not speak a language other than English (although they may
understand it), they have not been included in the official
number of speakers of languages other than English.
The 1,974 students who do speak languages other than
English at home come from 108 different countries and
represent 80 different languages. There are also different
dialects^ of languages spoken (e.g. Portuguese spoken in
Brazil and that spoken in Portugal). For our purposes, the
only language broken down into dialects is Chinese, since
its dialects are not mutually intelligible.
Spanish is spoken by 52.6 percent of the total
population of speakers of other languages. These 1,040
students come from many different Spanish-speaking coun
tries, although 39 percent were born in the United States.
It should be noted that our Spanish-speaking student popu
lation differs from that of other large urban centers in
that a majority of our students come from Central America.
The second largest group comprises students who
speak various dialects of Chinese. A total of 2 79 students
■^Dialect: "a local or regional variety of language
distinguished by features of vocabulary, grammar, and pro
nunciation from other local or regional varieties and
constituting together with them a single language of which
no one variety is standard." (Webster's Third New Inter
national Dictionary of the English Language, Springfield,
Mass.: G. & C. Merriam Company, 1971, p. 622.)
303
speak Cantonese, Foo Chow, Fukienese, Mandarin,
Shanghainese, Taiwanese, and Toishan.
Other languages having between 30 and 100 speakers
are French (including speakers of French Creole); Tagalog;
Portuguese; and Ibo. Languages which have between 15 and 3 0
speakers are Vietnamese; Arabic; Urdu; German; Yoruba;
Burmese; Greek; Italian; Farsi; and Hindi.
Of the total 1,974 students, 84 percent (1,66 0) are
enrolled in 25 schools in Region II. The remaining 314
students attend 40 different schools throughout the School
System.
The survey also requested information on the
students' proficiency in English. Six categories of profi
ciency based on communicative competence were given.
Results show that 1,366 were considered as not being fluent
in English.
Summary
This Linguistic and Cultural Profile of the Student
Population of the District of Columbia Public Schools shows
that Washington, D.C. is indeed a multilingual, multi
cultural city. A demographic study of this type aids the
Division of Bilingual Education in providing services to
students who speak languages other than English.
304

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Asset Metadata

Creator Collier, Virginia Parker (author)

Core Title A sociological case study of bilingual education and its effects on the schools and the community

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Education

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag education, bilingual and multicultural,education, sociology of,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c26-487428

Unique identifier UC11247692

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Legacy Identifier DP24760.pdf

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Document Type Dissertation

Rights Collier, Virginia Parker

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Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

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