American Studies

Thesis

Fidelity to the Model: Dual Immersion Education in Berkeley Unified School District in the Face of Multiple Oppositions

A result of a deep dive into legislative efforts, school district archives, educational methods and policies, and interviews with key players, this work focuses on the dual immersion language programming offered by Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) in Berkeley, California; it highlights the ways in which the district’s program has survived, grown, and changed while faced with multiple forms of opposition, and the specific ways in which the district’s action and inaction have served as responses to these oppositions. The dual immersion education model, in which students are taught both in English and in a second language native to a significant population of the students (the ‘English-learners’), strives to generate greater educational equity. In Berkeley, this type of two-way language learning, by way of a Spanish-English immersion program, was implemented in 1997 in order to do just that. Just a few months later, California voters passed Proposition 227, requiring that all public school instruction be conducted in English, including for students with limited English proficiency, and solidifying a real opposition to all bilingual programs within the state, as well as a specific hurdle to the newly established programming within BUSD. Despite the hostile environment for the dual immersion model in California, and by way of an imperfect escape clause, BUSD’s program strengthened and flourished, surviving long enough to see California’s progress on the issue, including a reversal of Proposition 227, and to be subsequently met with another opposition, largely from the other side of the aisle. These opponents claim that what was once a well-intended educational model meant to help English-learners achieve academic parity with their peers has become an enrichment program for privileged native-English-speakers seeking a unique educational opportunity. Amidst this landscape, BUSD continues to offer its dual immersion program with an unwavering commitment to its less-privileged Latinx English-learners, for whom the program is expressly intended. Unanticipated, though, is the very real and extremely current question of who truly holds the power. When it comes to school leadership and decision making, it seems that the families with more cultural (and financial) capital are often the ones in control. This plays out in BUSD at Longfellow Arts and Technology Middle School, the middle school which houses the dual immersion program, by way of the early-exit from the program by many nativeEnglish-speaking students. Indeed, when this early exit compromises model fidelity, BUSD’s dual immersion programming, and thus the quality of the education offered to the most vulnerable and in-need English language learners is at stake.