Why Arizona matters: the historical, legal, and political contexts of Arizona’s instructional policies and U.S. linguistic hegemony

Abstract

The United States is home to the largest number of immigrants of any nation (United Nations 2006). In 2005, 38.5 million residents of the U.S. were foreign born. As a result, an increasing number of children in the public schools are either immigrants or the children of immigrants: more than one of every five. Most of these children come from homes in which English is not the primary language spoken, and more than half at any one time are designated as English learners (or ELs), that is, they do not speak enough English to allow them to succeed in the mainstream English classroom. Importantly, however, about 75% of these students speak Spanish and while there is an increasing dispersion of immigrants across the U.S., still most are concentrated in particular areas such that a number of instructional options are often possible. Nonetheless, the U.S., like many other immigrant nations has struggled to find appropriate ways to incorporate these students into the public schools and to help them to become successful learners. Much of this quest has been shaped by legal and political battles over the rights of immigrants and English learners. Although there were major initiatives in the U.S. Congress and the courts in the 1960s and 1970s, there has been little policy coherence since that time.