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Bilingual Education: Texas vs. Arizona

Bilingual education and programs in the school systems are very crucial to have in order for the success of each and every non-english speaking student. This article takes a look at Texas and Arizona and how they will be compared through similarities and differences, state regulations. Bilingual education program entails teaching academically in two separate languages, secondary language and in the students native language or tongue. Overtime, the bilingual education program has helped students advance, develop and improve their secondary language skills.

Similarities

Firstly, commonalities between the state of Texas and the state of Arizona in the bilingual education program department are pretty hard to come by, because their views are so different. Unfortunately, finding information on the similarities of this topic were slim to none. One factor that made these two states similar was that both at one point and still today have and had spoken English only in schools for a while. For decades Texas teachers had used English-only laws to sanction punitive actions against Mexican American students who violated the no-Spanish requirement (Rodriguez 2020). Arizona’s english only proposition states: Proposition 203 would repeal the existing bilingual education laws and change the law to require that all classes be taught in English (BallotPedia 2006).  Texas would only have this regulation for a short period of time while Arizona still enforces this rule today and has been used for the last 20 years.

Differences

As far as talking differences between the two states of Texas and Arizona there are an unlimited number of differences between the two. On June 3, 1973, Governor Dolph Briscoe signed into law the Bilingual Education and Training Act (S.B. 121) enacted by the Sixty-third Texas Legislature. This event marked a historic turning point in the education of Mexican American students in the state (Rodriguez 2020). By June 1973 Texas had already signed a Bilingual education act to be able to teach non-english speakers in the classroom. One the other hand the state of Arizona, in more recent years would start implementing a law created that would reject having bilingual education in schools and would become a harsh reality for the state and students. When Proposition 203 passed in 2000, English-learner (EL) students were no longer allowed to receive any instruction in their native language during the process of acquiring English (Hoffman 2019). Because of this proposition students no longer had time for other extracurricular activities and would cause student success to decline for non-english speaking students. It has also prevented opportunities for our EL students to interact organically with their native English-speaking peers (Hoffman 2019). Instead of trying to have a steady and effective development of the English language, bilingual students were made to give up extracurricular activities that only English speaking students could have. Ending in a separation and alienation of bilingual students as a whole. Ultimately making the state of Arizona the only state to moderately ban bilingual education and programs and have english as the states official language. Arizona Proposition 103, also called the English as the Official Language Act, was on the November 7, 2006 election ballot in Arizona as a legislatively referred constitutional amendment. It was approved (Ballotpedia 2006)

State's Bilingual Education Regulations

State’s bilingual education and programs are made up of policies and regulations that get decided on by the state officials and are passed when the majority votes them into action. There are a number of state regulations that qualify what should and what should not be taught in these bilingual programs. Every state has specific guidelines and regulations that they use to ensure the success and attainment of a quality education for non-English speaking students. Bilingual Education Act (BEA), U.S. legislation (January 2, 1968) that provided federal grants to school districts for the purpose of establishing educational programs for children with limited English-speaking ability (Britannica 2021).

Regulations in Arizona

Instead of having regulations that benefit the non-english speaking student, the state of Arizona has laws against bilingual students. A 20-year-old law requiring English learners to be separated during the school day for explicit English language instruction — a model many say has left them trailing their peers in core subject areas. Arizona is also the only state in the country with such a law still on the books (Jacobson 2020).  The proposition 203 that was placed was thought to be of aid to bilingual students but in the long run hurt them undoubtedly. The ideology behind this proposition was that instead of slowly teaching the students by English, striping away English altogheht would help them assimilate quicker and in a more timely manner, but this was not the case. The ballot initiative was based on the theory that prohibiting ELs to receive instruction in their home language would help them learn English faster (Jacobson 2020). In realizing this, trying to revoke this has been in process. Other regulations put on bilingual education programs in Arizona have tried to help students instead of harming them. After two years and countless setbacks, Stand Arizona-sponsored ELL reform legislation passed in 2019. This was a big deal and will help 85,000 English Language Learners (ELL) across the state (Morley 2019). This kind of process proves that there is a want to move forward in a positive direction to be able to help not just english speaking students, but bilingual students as well.

Regulations in Texas

There are a multitude of regulations that benefit the bilingual student in the education system in the state of Texas. These regulations protect and ensure that every bilingual student gets a fair and equal opportunity and education as their English speaking counterpart. In Texas it is mandatory for bilingual programs to be emplaced if there are more than 20 non-english speaking students within the school. This will automatically guarantee that the student will be able to participate in regular classroom instructions without the problem of a language barrier. The Texas Law that governs all bilingual education programs, including dual language, is Chapter 89. Any school district that has at least 20 English-learners in the same grade level must implement at least one of four bilingual education programs (DL Education and Tx Law 2021).

References

Adesope, O. O. (2020, September 2). Bilingual Education. American Federation of Teachers.    Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://www.aft.org/ae/fall2015/goldenberg_wagner

BallotPedia. (2006, November 7). Arizona English as the Official Language, Proposition 103 (2006). Ballotpedia. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://ballotpedia.org/Arizona_English_as_the_Official_Language,_Proposition_103_(2006)

Britannica, T. Editors of Encyclopaedia (2021, August 27). Bilingual Education Act. Encyclopedia Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bilingual-Education-Act

DL Education and TX Law – RGV PUEDE | Parents United for Excellent Dual-Language Education. (2021). RGV Puede. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from http://rgvpuede.org/en/dl-education-and-tx-law/

Jacobson, L. (2020, January 29). Arizona board approves more flexibility for ELs under English-only law. K-12 Dive. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://www.k12dive.com/news/arizona-board-approves-more-flexibility-for-els-under-english-only-law/571185/

Kathy Hoffman, The Arizona Republic. (2019, November 17). Arizona is the only state with an English-only education law. It’s time to repeal it. The Republic | Azcentral.Com. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://eu.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/2019/11/17/arizona-only-state-english-only-law-we-repeal-it/2564675001/

Morley, S. (2019, September 30). We Passed English Language Learners Reform In Arizona: Why? What’s Next? Stand for Children. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from http://stand.org/arizona/blog/whats-next-language-learners-reform-az

Rodriguez, R. (2020, February 15). Bilingual Education. Https://Www.Tshaonline.Org/Handbook/Entries/Bilingual-Education. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/bilingual-education

Rumbaut, R. G. (2014, October 5). Bilingual Education. American Federation of Teachers. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://www.aft.org/ae/fall2015/goldenberg_wagner

Williams, C. P. (2019, October 30). Who—and What—Is Bilingual Education For in the Twenty-First Century? The Century Foundation. Retrieved December 7, 2021, from https://tcf.org/content/commentary/bilingual-education-twenty-first-century/?session=1