Exploring Institutional Processes in a District-Wide Dual Language Program: Who is it for? Who is Left Out?

ABSTRACT

As the number of dual language programs in the U.S. is on the rise, district and school administrators need to pay attention to race as they design and implement these programs to offer equitable access for all students. Utilizing a CRT and raciolinguistics framework, qualitative interview data revealed the ways that whiteness operated in school institutional processes to inhibit access to dual language for African American and Latinx working-class families. This work suggests important policy implications for designing DL programs that are accessible to communities of Color through engaging in information sharing and meaningful dialogue with communities.

KEYWORDS:

• Dual langauge
• African American
• Latino/a children and families
• bilingual education
• critical race theory
• educational equity

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge Stephen D. Spring for his help with beginning this project back in Fall 2013, as well as Angela Valenzuela for providing encouragement to carry it forward.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

¹ In this paper we use the term Latinx to refer to people of Latin American descent or from Spain. The “x” ending challenges binary notions of gender (Martínez, 2017).