Language Diversity in the Classroom - ymerleksi - home

268 Language Diversity in the Classroomthe two key themes: literacy and mathematics. There is a number of goodanalyses of the issue, the rapid growth of which indicates the contentiousnature of the NCLB legislation and its implementation. Particularlyrecommended are Abernathy (2007), Chrismer et al. (2006), Hess andPetrilli (2006), Poetter et al. (2006), Valenzuela et al. (2007) and Yell andDrasgow (2005). Grenoble and Whaley (2006) provide a brief but usefuldiscussion of the new legislation in the context of native non-Englishspeakingyoungsters and attempts to ‘revitalise their flagging mothertongues’; see also Abedi (2004).The transitional emphasis in America (and, indeed, in most othercontexts) and the increasingly restricted scope of bilingual programinitiatives have culminated in the legislated rejection of those initiativesin some quarters. In California, for example, a wealthy entrepreneur, RonUnz, spearheaded a campaign that led to the passage of Proposition 227 in1998. The act stressed the need to teach children English ‘as rapidly andas effectively as possible... children shall be taught English by beingtaught in English’ (Baker, 2006: 196), and made bilingual educationvirtually illegal; for useful discussions of this important event in the lifeof bilingual programs in the USA, see Crawford (2004), García (2000) andOrellana et al. (1999). Since then, bilingual education in Arizona andMassachusetts has also been restricted. These were not particularly closecontests: the winning majorities in the three states were 61, 63 and 68%,respectively. Dade County, Florida is famous as the home of the firstAmerican bilingual education program in contemporary times: the CoralWay school experiment started in 1963, well before federally fundedprograms were established. But even there, anti-bilingual legislation wasenacted in 1980. While not specifically directed at schools, the law(passed with a 60% majority) compels official use of English only, andprohibits the financial encouragement of any other language or of‘any culture other than that of the United States’ (Crawford, 1992a: 91;the text of the ordinance can be found in Crawford, 1992b: 131). A fewyears later, Floridians endorsed English as the official state language, byan overwhelming margin (8416%). 5The most interesting examples here are the first and the lastmentioned in the preceding paragraph. California and Florida are stateswith very large Hispanic populations, settings in which unofficial uses ofSpanish have steadily expanded, but also settings in which anglophonereactions to it have predictably been the strongest. It is of some interest,too, that considerable numbers of Spanish-speaking voters in Californiahave rejected bilingual education naturally wishing to heighten theirchildren’s chances of success in English milieus, and apparently swayed