In the last article, we learned the complicated, and often repetitive, intersection of immigration, language, and education. We ended with two landmark court cases, Lau v Nichols (1974) and Castaneda v Pickard (1981), which helped shape many of the policies that govern language support programs today. Yet court decisions are only one part of the story. Between federal laws, state policies, and local implementation, educational decision-making is often more complicated than it first appears. 

As I mentioned before, I began teaching in 2003. I was hired as a Spanish teacher, but since I could communicate in Spanish, I was also asked to teach two English as a Second Language (ESL) classes. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn’t know our State’s Department of Education existed. I didn’t know there were laws that I had to comply with. I just did what I was told and tried to do right by the kids. Looking back, it seems absurd. I was asked to serve multilingual learners because I spoke Spanish. That happens more often than people realize, and I have seen similar responsibilities assigned to many other well-intentioned but unprepared educators.

Since then, I’ve had the opportunity to view the issue from multiple perspectives. I earned graduate degrees in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages and Educational Leadership, though neither program included much discussion of federal or state education policy related to multilingual learners. Over the years, I served as a program coordinator, State Education Agency director, principal, and consultant. Each role provided a different view of the same system—from classroom instruction to district programming, state policy and accountability, and building-level leadership.

What I’ve learned is that most educators only see a small piece of that system. Teachers see the realities of the classroom. State leaders see compliance and accountability. District leaders navigate local politics, budgets, and staffing realities. As a result, the word compliance is often used, and misused, to justify decisions from all sides. Understanding how these different perspectives interact is essential to understanding how language support policy developed in the first place.

To understand how policies are developed and enacted, we need to briefly revisit the structure of our government. Public education operates within a layered system of local, state, and federal government. Legislatures pass laws, executive agencies enforce them, and courts interpret them when disputes arise. The tension between these layers of government is constant, particularly in education, where debates over local control and federal oversight have existed for decades.

One lesson I did not fully appreciate until I worked for a State Education Agency is that there is a chain of command. State Education Agencies are part of a state’s executive branch and are responsible for implementing and overseeing state and federal educational requirements. They are the bureaucrats that don’t get enough credit (or pay) for the work they do.  Local school districts are local governments that have their own policies, which are supposed to follow applicable state and federal laws, but sometimes don’t. Teachers, principals, and other school employees are contracted through the school district so they must follow school district policies, even if they don’t align with what the feds, the state, or this article says is best practice.

Now, let’s explore some of the work of our federal legislative branch. Prior to the Lau v. Nichols Case, the Civil Rights movement resulted in a few different laws that impacted the education of immigrant children. First proposed by President John F. Kennedy, the Civil RIghts Act (CRA) of 1964 prohibited discrimination against various classes. Title VI prohibited discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives federal assistance (this one’s important throughout the article). In 1965, Congress passed the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), which was the federal government’s first major effort to influence K-12 education through funding and accountability measures. Before this Act, public education was primarily a state and local responsibility funded and governed by state and local communities. Notice the connection here: the CRA prohibited discrimination in any program that receives federal funds and the ESEA provided federal funding to schools. Now that States and local districts received federal funding for education, they had to also comply with the CRA. 

For our purposes, education of immigrant children was largely governed by Title VI of the CRA and Title VII of the 1967 CRA amendments, known as the Bilingual Education Act. Now that we had a law, it needed to be enforced. At the time, education policy and enforcement was done by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW) and the Office of Civil Rights (OCR). In 1970, the HEW issued a memorandum regarding the Identification of Discrimination and Denial of Services on the Basis of National Origin. Check it out – there’s a lot to unpack. The key to remember here is that they say “the district must take affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency in order to open its instructional program to these students.” 

Now that we have that understanding, let’s return to the Lau case. The San Francisco Unified School District believed it was providing equal opportunity by placing students in the same classrooms and offering the same curriculum, teachers, and resources regardless of background. Considering the era, their position made sense. However, recall the memo from the HEW: school districts must take affirmative steps to address the language barrier so students could meaningfully participate in school. The school thought they were doing enough. The Chinese American parents felt differently. The Supreme Court agreed with the parents (and the HEW). Justice William O. Douglas wrote that “there is no equality of treatment merely by providing the same facilities, textbooks, teachers and curriculum for students who do not understand English effectively.”

The Court based its decision on Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs receiving federal funds. In essence, the Court affirmed what HEW had already argued nearly four years earlier: school districts must take affirmative steps to address language barriers so students can meaningfully participate in school. The findings of Lau eventually found their way to legislation through the Equal Educational Opportunities Act (EEOA) of 1974.

By 1974, there was little question that schools had a responsibility to help students overcome language barriers. The real question was how. Just as importantly, how would broad federal laws and court decisions be translated into state policies and local educational practice. That turned out to be far more complicated. Neither Congress, the HEW, nor the Supreme Court had specified what schools were supposed to actually do. How were schools supposed to take these affirmative steps? What does that mean in practice? How would they know if it was enough or if they were compliant? Importantly, how were educators and school leaders supposed to make these decisions? Most had never studied second language acquisition, language development, or program design, a practice that largely continues today. Those questions would eventually lead to another landmark case: Castañeda v. Pickard.

The Castañeda case, filed by parents in Raymondville, TX, accused the district of ability-grouping in a way that discriminated against students due to ethnicity and national origin. On paper, the district implemented a state-mandated bilingual program as well as a language remediation program; however, the parents felt as though they were insufficient and prevented their children from accessing the general curriculum. Again, a local school district believed it was meeting its obligations. This time, however, the district could point to documented affirmative steps and state guidance supporting its approach. It operated a bilingual program, provided language remediation services, and was acting within the framework established by the Texas Bilingual Education and Training Act. Unlike Lau, the question was no longer whether schools had to act, it was whether the district’s actions were appropriate.

In the end, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of the family and gave us what is known as the Castañeda Standard. According to the standard, programs for language minority students must be: 

• Based on sound educational theory
• Implemented effectively with sufficient resources and personnel, and
• Periodically evaluated for effectiveness. 

The Castañeda Standard provided much-needed guidance; yet, the framework also left much room for interpretation. To this day, we debate what it means to satisfy each of these mandates.

The first prong of the Castañeda Standard, sound educational theory, was and still is open to debate. There are various types of bilingual and English-only models. Some approaches are whole-school while others temporarily remove students from the classroom for English classes. The model districts use is almost entirely dependent on where the school is. A district with thousands of Spanish-speaking students has options that are simply not possible to a rural district serving a small student population or even a large district with dozens of languages. Then, when a model is selected, what does it mean to provide “sufficient” resources and personnel and what are valid and reliable methods to objectively evaluate the program for effectiveness? Even though we got more guidance, we had even more questions.

As I look back on these debates, something else stands out. Much of the conversation centered on where students should be placed and what programs schools should offer. Should students be in bilingual education? ESL? A newcomer program? The discussion was largely about structures and services rather than the learning process itself.

Those are important questions, but they are not the same as asking what multilingual learners actually need in order to develop language, access academic content, and demonstrate what they know. Fortunately, while courts, policymakers, and school systems were debating programs and compliance, researchers were developing a deeper understanding of language acquisition, cognition, and learning. That work would eventually reshape how many educators thought about supporting multilingual learners.

To Be Continued…

Coming Next: From Theory to Practice: How We Learned to Support Multilingual Learners