The politics of bilingual education expenditures in urban school districts *.(Statistical Data Included)

Introduction

This article investigates which factors shape the money spent by urban school districts on bilingual education programs. It represents a step forward in the research on urban politics and school policy making because it pinpoints the independent effects of political and other factors on funding for a specific public policy.

The issue of bilingual education has long been dominated by normative arguments about the best approaches to second language instruction for non-English-speakers. Shortchanged in this debate has been an understanding of the political, demographic, and fiscal determinants of bilingual education spending. How much freedom do school districts have in setting their spending policies? Is funding driven by need or is need only one factor among many? Do local political factors play any role, as they might serve to increase or decrease funding beyond need or capacity? Is Latino representation on school boards, for example, associated with increased money for bilingual education? This article seeks to provide some insight into these important public policy questions.

Bilingual Education in America

The history of bilingualism in America is more complex than is commonly known. The use of more than one language by a community has been part of the American social and political landscape for more than two centuries (Kloss, 1977). The Continental Congresses of 1774-89, for example, regularly published documents in German and French as well as in English (Gonzalez, Brusca-Vega, and Yawkey, 1997). In the classroom, an 1839 Ohio law allowed for instruction in German, English, or both according to the wishes of parents (Crawford, 1991), and similar laws were passed in other states with large numbers of non-English-speakers, such as Louisiana and New Mexico (Ambert and Melendez, 1985). At the turn of the century, six hundred thousand elementary schoolchildren received all or part of their education in German (Kloss, 1977), "probably a larger proportion than receive Spanish-English instruction today" (Attinasi, 1998: 274).

A confluence of political and social developments in the late 1800s and early 1900s brought renewed hostility to languages other than English (Higham, 1963). First, an unprecedented wave of immigration from 1890 to 1914 led the U.S. to focus on assimilating new ethnic groups into American culture (Crawford, 1992). In addition, World War I led to hostility to the German language, at the time a leading second language (Heath and Ferguson, 1981). By 1923, thirty-four states required English to be the only language of classroom instruction, leading to a "sink or swim" policy of English immersion (Brisk, 1998).

In 1968, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) and committed the federal government to helping students with limited English skills (Birman and Ginsburg, 1983). The BEA remains the major piece of national legislation on bilingual education, although amendments were passed in 1974.