Immigrant Children and the Politics of English-Only: Views from the Classroom (New Americans (LFB Scholarly Publishing LLC).) (New Americans (Lfb Scholarly Publishing Llc).)

Stritikus examines the effect of California's anti-bilingual initiative, Proposition 227, on the education of Latinos. He highlights the teachers' role in enacting the policy, studying two schools which developed their own Proposition 227 implementation plans. One ended its bilingual program and began a program of English immersion, and a second maintained its bilingual program through obtaining parental waivers. Using sociocultural analysis of classroom observation data, Stritikus shows how Proposition 227 implementation legitimized questionable educational practice and made effective teaching more difficult. His research documents how teachers' actions under the policy were closely connected to their political and pedagogical ideologies. This book discusses the debate over the English-only movement, examining how it affects teachers and students and highlighting one California district's experience with changes brought about by Proposition 227. Chapter 1, "Introduction," reviews the issue. Chapter 2, "Teachers' Place in the Local Enactment of Language Policy," discusses research questions and purposes of the study and the theoretical background. Chapter 3, "Research Method, Research Site and Participants," describes the study. Chapter 4, "The Proposition 227 Policy Context: Teacher Perceptions and Behavior," discusses district level decisions, teacher actions, and beliefs of teachers at different schools. Chapter 5, "Proposition 227 and Teachers' Work: English-Only and Open Court," describes learning in these classrooms, tensions, teacher-student interactions, reading and writing, and teachers' individual qualities and classroom practices. Chapter 6, "Literacy Practice at Open Valley," describes one school's literacy instruction (e.g., reading groups, multidimensional student participation, and guided reading). Chapter 7, "Conclusions," discusses how teachers are more than policy conductors, individual teacher qualities play a large role in policy, and Proposition 227 was not the answer to school and district concerns. An appendix includes focal events and literacy materials. (Contains 15 tables and 81 references.) (SM) Annotation Stritikus (education, U. of Washington) presents the case of one California school district's experience with the changes in bilingual education policy brought about by Proposition 227. His ethnographic study focuses on four teachers in two schools in a rural district, and seeks to understand the nature of teachers' work in an out of classroom literacy contexts in the new policy environment created by Proposition 227. The author examines how teachers' work influences the nature of Proposition 227 as a reform strategy, and several factors that contribute to the connection between policy and practice. He concludes with possible implications of the findings for the understanding of language policy and the education of culturally and linguistically diverse students. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) As typical teachers look at the students in their classrooms, they see dramatic differences from the classrooms of their youth.