The Marketing of Dual Language Education Policy in Utah Print Media

Abstract

We argue the emergence of a shift in U.S. language education policy discourses from an equity/heritage (EH) framework focused on equity for English learners and non-English heritage languages, toward a global human capital (GHC) framework linked to neoliberal considerations of the language skills of individuals and nations. This discursive shift represents a change in the audience to which language education programs are primarily marketed. Drawing on a critical approach to content analysis to test for evidence of this discursive shift in Utah, we analyzed 164 articles from 5 Utah newspapers from 2005 to 2011 that assigned value statements to dual language and bilingual education. EH values declined or changed little over time whereas GHC values increased. Policy implications are discussed.

Keywords

dual language immersion bilingual education educational equity critical language policy and planning critical discourse print media content analysis

In the United States, language education policy has seen major shifts in the level of value expressed for educational models that support the development of languages other than English with recent efforts focused on the promotion of dual language (DL) education models that support the academic development of two languages beginning in kindergarten or first grade. This article is based on data from a larger program of research on the latest U.S. DL boom with the state of Utah as its key forerunner. Starting in the 2006 to 2007 school year, the number of elementary school DL programs in Utah markedly increased from a relatively flat growth rate from 1997 to 2005 to a 300% increase in 2006. In 2008, spurred by a unique state-level DL policy and funding mechanism ( Critical Languages Pilot Program, 2008), DL programs continued to spread at a rapid rate increasing by another 325%. Discourses of Utah “leading the nation” in DL education began to circulate shortly thereafter (Shorland, 2012). Our goal for this article was to examine the discourses surrounding this new DL policy reflected in the Utah newspaper media as a way to better understand what values were driving this policy as well as whether these values reflected issues of educational equity and students’ language rights. We view a shift away from equity and language rights discourses in the media coverage of DL policy as representing a change in the audience to which language education programs are primarily marketed and potentially signaling a corresponding shift in who would benefit from new language education programs established in the state—from language minoritized student groups toward more privileged student groups—and in doing so exacerbating existing educational inequalities and opportunity gaps.

We are focused on equity and language rights as the center of our critique “to ensure that language policies in education promote equity rather than inequity” (Menken, 2008, p. 6) “for all language groups including the disempowered socioeconomic groups within language groups” (Hossain & Pratt, 2008, p. 69). We see equity and language rights as overarching concepts for assessing how power is operating with an eye to equalizing its imbalances. Drawing on the work of Ball (2006) and Shohamy (2006), we take the position that the value discourses of a policy and those surrounding it are strong indicators of the intent of a policy including who stands to benefit and who is excluded. In the case of DL policies, importantly, it also indicates whether the linguistic rights of language minoritized groups are part of the conversation. Our analysis draws on Fairclough (2010) in focusing on discourse, in this case media discourse, as a lens to the power effects of education policy. In this article, we first theorize that there is a shift underway in language education policy orientations in Utah that are gaining momentum across the United States. We then argue there is currently movement away from a discursive climate that emphasizes language education’s potentials in equalizing power imbalances among social groups or categories toward an orientation based in neoliberal or “free”-market interpretations of globalization and neoliberal interpretations of education as investment in the “human capital” of individuals and national economies (Olssen, Codd, & O’Neill, 2004) which veils the continued reproduction of educational inequalities among social groups. We name this a shift from an equity/heritage (EH) policy framework to a global human capital (GHC) policy framework. After citing evidence for this policy framework shift based on our review of the academic literature and other research we have conducted in the Utah context, our goal was then to test whether the shift held true within the discursive values expressed within local Utah print media coverage. We wanted to see how the Utah print media was helping to shape and reflect discourses or public perceptions about instruction in multiple languages at the elementary level, both in its DL and bilingual education (BE) forms, by asking the following questions:

In articles from Utah’s five major newspapers, what value discourses are associated with DL and BE from 2005 to 2011?

To what extent do the trends in value discourses in Utah print media from 2005 to 2011 support the theory of a policy framework shift from EH to GHC?

We see Utah as a forerunner that can provide early evidence of any nationwide policy framework shift that hold values that disregard equity concerns for English learners (ELs) in U.S. schools. We draw on the theoretical principles of Fairclough’s (2010) critical discourse analysis approach, specifically his notions of discourses as instruments of power, to show the reader how we theoretically constructed the objects of research necessary for the critical content analysis of Utah newspaper coverage of DL and BE. We will detail how in this analysis we found that in articles that discussed the value of DL and BE programs, equity and heritage values declined over time, whereas values associated with globalization and human capital increased. These changes suggest support for a policy framework shift from an EH policy framework into a GHC policy framework signaling and reinforcing an alarming corresponding shift in the audience these language programs are marketed to and who will benefit from Utah’s DL program from language minoritized student groups toward more privileged student groups.

Understanding U.S. Language Education Models

Before we proceed, it is important to understand the varied vocabulary associated with the language education programs under discussion. DL education provides grade-level state curriculum content knowledge through English and another language to achieve high academic achievement, bilingualism, biliteracy, and intercultural awareness (Baker, 2011; Howard, Sugarman, Christian, Lindholm-Leary, & Rogers, 2007). There are three types of DL education, foreign/second language immersion programs for English-speaking students, developmental BE programs for ELs¹, and two-way immersion, which combines these two student groups (Hamayan, Genesee, & Cloud, 2013). In Utah, as of 2012, 77.8% of DL programs were one-way programs based on the foreign/second language immersion program model with the rest being two-way immersion programs. This is due to the exclusion in the legislation that created the Utah DL initiative in 2008 of program options based on one-way DL programs grounded in the developmental BE model.

DL programs also vary by the amount of instructional time associated with content instruction in each language in the early grades. A 50:50 DL model, such as the one implemented in Utah, features instructional time being equally split between the two languages throughout the grade levels. A 90/10 DL model starts in the lower grades with 90% of the instructional time in the non-English language and 10% of the instructional time in English. The instructional time in these two languages gradually changes until both languages are taught 50% of the time in the upper grades (Hamayan et al., 2013). Another type of language education program that provides instruction in English and students’ home language for students entering school with no or limited proficiency in English is transitional BE—a model that unlike DL is intended to quickly transition EL students to English as their sole academic language rather than to develop students’ bilingualism (Baker, 2011). Although foreign language immersion and two-way immersion types of DL programs are rapidly increasing in number, BE programs—from developmental BE forms of DL to transitional BE programs—are in decline in the United States (García, 2009). Because Utah reflects a similar shift in the types of language education programs supported by the state over the period of time we are studying, we examine discourses surrounding both DL and BE (DL/BE).

The Value Discourses of Language Policy Frameworks

Society is filled with value-laden discourses about language that are “used to create group membership (‘us’/‘them’), to demonstrate inclusion or exclusion, to determine loyalty or patriotism, to show economic status (‘haves’/‘have nots’”), . . . [to] classif[y] . . . people and identities,” and to control (Shohamy, 2006, p. xv). These value discourses reflect broader cultural discourses and are embedded in language policy discussions (Dorner, 2011; Shohamy, 2006). For example, language policies in the United States have always been strongly debated due to conflicting values especially within education where the means to educate ELs equitably has been fraught in debates between advocates favoring English-only as part of an assimilative approach to education for U.S. immigrants and those favoring language education approaches that value and support the development of two or more languages (Wiley & Wright, 2004). Today, we see the debate around educational language policies shifting in ways that overshadow these long-standing equity concerns. Because educational policy frameworks have their own value discourses to describe the benefits of educational models that support the development of languages other than English through the state curriculum such as DL or BE, it is important to understand not just what value discourses are present but also which values dominate and for what purposes.

In this article, we set out to explore what value discourses were present in discussions within Utah newspapers related to DL/BE language policies, how they have changed over time, and theorized that a language policy framework shift is occurring from an EH policy framework centered on responding to the needs of ELs and other minoritized communities to a GHC policy framework that focuses solely on producing multilingual workers to compete in the global marketplace. We conceptualize each policy framework as a combination of these two overarching value discourses: EH and GHC. We do not understand EH and GHC as opposite ends of a theoretical continuum scholars can use to classify instances of policy, but rather as competing value discourses that are already operating within U.S. language policy that shift in dominance to lead people to conceptualize these policies’ benefits in particular ways and for particular students. The EH policy framework is dominated by the value discourses related to equity and heritage. This value discourse is premised on the idea that schools are inherently unequal for many students (Carter & Welner, 2013; Lea, 2011). Equity in this case focuses on achieving equal academic outcomes for students sometimes through unequal means. This is because educational policy that seeks to be equitable will often treat students in an unequal way as it seeks to take difference, diversity, and uniqueness of case into consideration to reduce the opportunity gap many marginalized student groups experience (Carter & Welner, 2013). In the case of language education policy, schools that seek greater educational equity for ELs and other linguistically minoritized students promote programs that simultaneously support these students’ home languages in addition to English (Corson, 1992; McCarty, 2002; Schmidt, 2002)—an educational practice that has been documented to increase academic achievement outcomes for these students (Hamayan et al., 2013; Lindholm-Leary & Borsato, 2006; Rolstad, Mahoney, & Glass, 2005; W. P. Thomas & Collier, 2002) thus reducing the gap in academic outcomes between student groups. We understand heritage within language education policy as concern for cultural identification with schooling for language minoritized students or as concern for language rights or the preserving or fostering of local non-dominant languages. However, the GHC policy framework focuses on the value discourses related to globalization and human capital. The globalization discourse appeals to a purportedly new international interconnectedness that Fiss and Hirsch (2005) show to vary widely in definition but summarize as “U.S.-global integration” (p. 31).² By human capital, we mean a preoccupation with economically conceptualized language skills—market( )ability—within competitively conceptualized individuals and nations and their “workforces.” With the term market( )ability, we hope to highlight the policy trend that promotes the teaching and learning of language skills for the sole purpose of supporting the global marketplace.

Theoretical Underpinnings

Critical Discourse and Education Policy

Stephen Ball (2006) conceives of policy as both “text” and “discourse.” As text, education policy offers the language for the decisions made by the state. As discourse, it reveals the broader cultural discourses in society about the way things are or should be valued to be (Dorner, 2011). It is this focus on policy as discourse that we intend to use to examine language education policy discussions in the media around DL/BE. Olssen et al. (2004) frame education policy in the contemporary “global era” as “transformative discourse that can have real social effects” (p. 3) and point to the work of Norman Fairclough as a means of conceptualizing and examining how these discourses are operating in texts. Thus, we work theoretically from a conception of language and its role in power relations based on Fairclough’s (2010) work—formulated as a way to theoretically orient the study of patterns of how language represents reality—discourses—in a way that can critique how such uses of language are instruments of social power.

In Fairclough’s theory, the researcher does not claim to arrive at a scientific objectivity but instead seeks “to clarify how semiosis,” the conveyance of meaning through signs such as in language, “figures in the establishment, reproduction and change of unequal power relations,” including the “exclusion of some people by others” (p. 231). As part of semiosis, Fairclough sees discourse as one element of the social practices or “socially produced ‘permanences’” that both afford and limit the choices and actions of individuals and groups (p. 354) and that are in the process “reproduced and/or transformed” by them (p. 356). Just as Fairclough opposes any approach to discourse that abstracts “language from its material interconnectedness with the rest of social life” (p. 303), we use the term policy framework to encapsulate how policy is both a question of framing—particular language choices with particular political effects—and of working, as it often very tangibly and durably moves resources, people, and other material things in particular directions rather than others.

Fairclough (2010) recommends that researchers use their judgment to select linguistic or theoretical concepts that best describe how particular texts instantiate broader relations of power. In this article, we draw on the theoretical tools that undergird Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis to identify our object of research and use it to consider our study’s findings. Primarily as a researcher of how economic discourse, specifically neoliberal discourse, has colonized other social fields and discourses on a “global(ization)” scale, Fairclough’s (2006, 2010), research-object construction in his own empirical work was helpful in constructing our own. The object of research we construct for this study is a theory of a shift in language education policy discourses related to DL/BE education in Utah toward neoliberal globalization discourses (the GHC framework) and away from discourses of equalizing “unequal power relations” (Fairclough, 2010, p. 231; the EH framework). In the following sections, we show how this theory of a policy framework shift—so integral to our methodology—comes from both a review of the academic literature and our investigations of the recent language education policy shift in Utah.

Language Education Policy, Equity, and Heritage

To understand why we as researchers take an engaged advocacy on behalf of the EH framework rather than making a disingenuous claim to detached objectivity, it is crucial to understand that the discourses of Fairclough’s critical discourse perspective fundamentally coincide with the discourses of the EH framework. Principally, both begin from a theoretical stance that power is unequally distributed in society and the status quo’s injustices and their logics are and should be in a constant state of contestation. EH discourses and critical scholarship both rely on the concepts of marginalization and minoritization to describe ways in which individuals and groups are granted less social power, and the concept of privilege to describe how they are granted more power. The concept of equity is also used as a means to endorse the use of unequal treatments that are likely to remedy instances of marginalization and minoritization.

A key area where marginalization occurs in language education policy is with respect to how language privilege is connected to heritages. “Heritages can be thought of as ethnic or cultural traditions that are often caught up in discourses of racialization/Whiteness, which foster what Thompson (2001) refers to as “perceptions of rac[ial] superiority, inferiority, and ‘otherness.’” In the United States, there is a strong link between racialized social group identities and language policy attitudes (i.e., negative views of Latina/os associated with opposition to bilingual instruction) (Schmidt, 2002). The racialization process works by using characteristics such as skin color or language to portray others as being so different “that it is impossible to conceive of being equal members of the same . . . community with those so racialized” (p. 158). Thus, in the United States, where speaking English confers privilege, communities that communicate primarily in other languages are racialized and thus marginalized or minoritized (Schmidt, 2002).

Part of this language privileging and racialization process is the practice of using English as the nearly sole language of instruction in schools, such that students who come to school not yet speaking English are severely set back by not receiving comprehensible instruction (Schmidt, 2002). This privileging of English leads to monanglicization (Valdez, Freire, & Delavan, 2014), the process by which languages other than English tend not to be passed on from parents to children. It is this marginalization of heritage languages and the resulting monanglicization and unequal school achievement that the EH framework works against. It seeks policy that supports, whenever feasible, the use of multiple languages of instruction that match local communities’ heritage languages and works toward a society where diverse heritages confer power that is more equal to that of English and Whiteness and can therefore endure intergenerationally to create a more equal or democratic society. GHC discourse, however, is a more recent phenomenon than the privileging of English and the resulting monanglicization; GHC challenges neither of these directly preserving the racialized status quo, instead placing attention on economic and geopolitical calculations around language knowledge, hence our term market( )ability, and by doing so overshadowing educational equity concerns.

Print Media as Discourse on Policy

We see media discourses—specifically print media—as social practice that offers an important window on wider social and policy discourses. As newspaper stories “emerge within a larger universe of beliefs, values, and worldviews” (Hodgetts, Masters, & Robertson, 2004, p. 460), we along with a growing number of researchers view them as a valuable means of looking at the media’s role in educational policy formation and dissemination and the creation of the public’s “common sense understandings” (S. Thomas, 2006, p. 17). Falk (1994) writes, “the newspaper medium selects, develops and presents for public consumption what the discursive themes of policy will be” (p. 11). Wallace (1993), however, argues that in the early 1990s, the media’s critical role in the formation of policy was not adequately studied. Two recent publications show that more and more work is filling this gap. First is a book by S. Thomas (2006) that uses Fairclough’s critical discourse analysis to analyze print media as one of three sites of public discourse on education policy. Thomas argues that media discourses “are essential to the construction of discursive threads within the complex web of contested meanings that characterize policy-making processes” (p. 311). Second is a special issue of the Peabody Journal of Education in 2007 on “the media, democracy, and the politics of education.” In this issue, however, Opfer (2007) argues that a gap still exists in that much of the work in this media–education connection has followed the model of pointing to flaws in particular media reports on education and subscribing to a simplistic picture of blaming the media for public ignorance or apathy. She recommends “more systematic and longitudinal research” on media reporting on education. Our approach builds on the work of other scholars that have examined the media debates over BE (Galindo, 1997; McQuillan & Tse, 1996; Wright, 2005) and works to fill this gap identified by Opfer by examining the occurrences of value discourses on the educational program models in question in Utah newspapers over time. We see print media journalists as participants in the politics of competing value discourses. Despite recent declines in newspaper readership, they remain an important window on policy discourses as they continue to capture the top topics trending online at a particular time. Although most print media, as in the case of our research, is simultaneously available online, future work on how the EH/GHC discourse shift is playing out in expanding forms of electronic media would be an important complement to the current study.

A Language Education Policy Framework Shift

Neoliberal Discourses in Language Education

Fairclough (2010) sees the rise of “neo-liberal capitalism” after the 1970s as critical to understanding contemporary discourse and its role in education and educational policy.

The capitalism of what we can call the “neo-liberal” era has been characterized by, among other things, “free markets” (the freeing of markets from state intervention and regulation), and attempts at reducing the state’s responsibility for providing social welfare. It has involved a restructuring of relations between the economic, political, and social domains, including the extension of markets into social domains such as education. (p. 11)

Fairclough (2010) has documented ways in which higher education has appropriated (or been colonized by) neoliberal discourses that originated in the field of economics. Fairclough also sees the change of scale from national to global as key to neoliberal capitalism, such that “free market” discourse has always been tied to facilitating “the emergence of global markets” (p. 11) and to “facilitating the restructuring and re-scaling of social relations in accord with the demands of an unrestrained global capitalism” (p. 12).

Critical education language scholars have documented and critiqued neoliberalism’s pervasive influence in K-12 education most notably identifying the ways in which it undermines equity and democracy for many marginalized student groups (Sleeter, 2007, 2008; Tollefson, 2006; Tollefson & Tsui, 2014), and highlighting how the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and its management-theory-derived, standards based, English-only accountability requirements are the most recent manifestations of these neoliberal influences in language education having negative effects for ELs and other language minoritized students (Wiley & Wright, 2004). Lois Weiner (2007) points out an important aspect of neoliberal discourse that deserves close attention, that “neoliberals adopt the rhetoric of social progress, a discourse previously associated with progressive social movements and the social goals they advanced, for example equalizing educational opportunity” (p. 164). This is definitely true of NCLB, whose text begins, “An act to close the achievement gap with accountability, flexibility, and choice, so that no child is left behind.”

School choice as a neoliberal discourse in education is linked to privatization and the charter school movement. Of note in this respect is the fact that the entrepreneur most famous for his company’s (Edison School’s) failure to improve test scores and achievement gaps via privatization, and for nearly winning a contract to run 60 of Philadelphia’s public schools, has now admitted to the failure of this project and has moved on to different avenues of educational entrepreneurialism (Matthews, 2011; Saltman, 2005). Interesting for the contextualization of this study is the fact that the new project the Edison Schools founder has moved on to is running a global network of elite DL schools with tuitions approaching US$40,000 per year (Matthews, 2011). This is a key example of what Atasay and Delavan (2012) have characterized as the repetitive failure of neoliberalism to fulfill its promises to fix the monumental failures it identifies. Neoliberal discourse’s promises of equity have to compete with mounting evidence that the projects it justifies usually enhance inequality rather than curtail it.

We also see this example as one aspect of the full arrival of neoliberalism to language education that is unfolding as we write this article. Academic articles pointing to a shift toward neoliberal globalization discourses dominating language education in particular are few but telling. In the Canadian context, Monica Heller is the central figure in a group of researchers with a significant corpus of empirical and theoretical work (Budach, Roy, &Heller, 2003; da Silva & Heller, 2009; Heller, 2002, 2003, 2008, 2010, 2011; Heller & Duchêne, 2012) exploring how neoliberal globalization is affecting language education and multilingual identities in Ontario and Quebec. One of the most recent academic articles (da Silva & Heller, 2009), points in its title to “the discursive shift from minority rights to economic development” (p. 95), which very much resembles the EH/GHC framework shift we are proposing. Da Silva, McLaughlin, and Richards (2007) make similar arguments in a book chapter edited by Heller. Heller (2002) found that French immersion programs in Canada were being re-rationalized away from heritage preservation for French Canadians toward the economic benefits of English–French bilingualism.

In the U.S. context, there exists a broader literature that critiques the instrumentalization of multilingualism for the benefit of dominant groups, such as Ricento (2005), but only two U.S.-focused articles thus far have taken up themes similar to Heller’s (2002) focus on the neoliberalization of DL in particular. Petrovic (2005) and Varghese and Park (2010) argue that neoliberal discourses are infiltrating the discourse of those seeking to defend BE from a recent legal backlash. Varghese and Park’s article is a commentary on the trend away from BE toward two-way immersion programs (where English-dominant students join traditional BE students to learn their first language) and questions its interface with discourses of neoliberal globalization, the dilution of equity concerns, and the consequences for Latina/o students. Petrovic’s commentary goes farther toward naming a larger pattern of what we call gentrification³ (Valdez, et. al., 2014), where if educators continue to “capitalize” language education by adopting neoliberal discourse to defend it, then “the process by which proficiency” is gained “will be in the hands of those in power” (Petrovic, 2005, p. 410).

The general consensus of the literature cited thus far is that discourse related to neoliberal globalization tends to posit the need to become multilingual to compete “globally” both as a nation and as an individual entrepreneur or job-seeker. Human capital is an emblematic concept within neoliberal discourse’s tendency to see social realities as markets. It originated in economics as a conceptualization of how education pays off in income for individuals and in gross domestic product for nations, but it has since grown to hegemonic status in the common sense of education policy and globalization (Peters, 2001). From a critical perspective, the key impact of this filtering of all social concerns through economic logic is that it ultimately privileges the interests of those with the most access to wealth. Despite promises to the contrary, policies based in neoliberal discourse have led to a “huge escalation” in wealth inequality over the last quarter century (Olssen et al., 2004, p. 246). We named the emergent framework via the concept of human capital because this discourse asks actors to reconceptualize schooling and learning primarily or solely as a form of investment by the nation in its economic future and investment by individuals in their own market( )ability, if you will. We added “global” to the framework name to indicate the involvement of globalization discourses that often rely on the narrative of an out-of-touch United States in danger of losing its competitive edge or in danger of cultural isolationism. We thus propose here a theory that U.S. language education policy is currently experiencing a framework shift toward GHC. What this new framework is working to eclipse has to be understood via the history of U.S. language education policy.

Two Lineages Within U.S. Language Education Policy

This history is best understood as being comprised by what we call the BE and foreign language lineages, which create the context within which the new GHC framework comes to compete with a longer standing EH framework. In the foreign language field, the term foreign persists in the discourse despite efforts to shift to the replacement term world language. The foreign language lineage is essentially what survived of language education after a period of xenophobia following the First World War when state policies restricted foreign language classes until Grades 6 to 8, thus hampering the development and maintenance of bilingualism (Wiley, 2014; Wiley & Wright, 2004). Policies in favor of language education and discourses of language tolerance did not resurface until the 1957 Sputnik satellite and other successes attributed to the Russian educational system (Hornberger, 2005). Thus, the foreign language lineage emerged as a policy response that saw education as a key route to national security and international competitiveness (National Defense Education Act of 1958). Despite increases in language teaching through the 20th century, the foreign language lineage was restricted to high status European languages conceived of as “foreign” (as opposed to the cultivation of family language skills). In time, the search for better language acquisition outcomes led foreign language educators in the United States to look toward Canada’s language immersion models, which primarily served the needs and interests of the English-dominant children (Genesee, 1998).

The BE lineage arose with a conception of teaching and learning that sought to add the retention of local languages and cultures to schooling in the United States. The BE lineage grew to serve the needs of EL students specifically. It received its original impetus from the Cold War when the Cuban Revolution culminated in 1959 with the arrival of a Cuban community to Miami, which opened Coral Way elementary in 1963. This school is seen as the earliest successful BE model because it was a means of facilitating the maintenance of Spanish (Ovando, 2003). The possibilities offered by Miami’s newly permitted BE programs were then seized by advocates of the less economically privileged Mexican American language communities. Through the 1960s and into the 1970s, their civil-rights-based activism began to topple legal hurdles to bilingual instruction across the country (Kontra, Phillipson, Skutnabb-Kangas, & Várady, 1999; Rodríguez, 2013; Rossell, 2009; San Miguel, 2004). The year 1971 saw the opening of the first recognized two-way program in the United States, Oyster bilingual elementary school in Washington, D.C., the same year as the first foreign language immersion program (Cohen, 1974). In the 1970s and 1980s, there were a great variety of program models going by the name of BE. These models served as an opportunity to counteract monanglicization, to close the achievement gap for ELs and Latina/os, and to help ELs develop literacy in English and the home language simultaneously (Lindholm-Leary & Borsato, 2006).

The EH framework is essentially what grew out of the BE lineage, but they are by no means the same thing. For example, there is a sector of the foreign language field focused on heritage language education that draws on the EH framework. Likewise, GHC and foreign language are not one and the same, though GHC is essentially the newest logic by which foreign language has gained the extra resources it has needed to fuel its growth, just as it drew on Cold War discourse of Russian technological advances to fuel an earlier growth. Yet, as the literature shows, participants within BE and heritage language education can and do draw on GHC. Since the 1990s, when BE came under intense attack through ballot initiatives in California [1998], Arizona [2000], Massachusetts [2002], Colorado [2002], and Oregon [2008] (Mora, 2009), the BE lineage and the EH framework have been experiencing a decline in influence and the foreign language lineage has essentially filled this power vacuum. As alluded to in the introduction, both transitional BE and developmental BE programs are in decline whereas two-way immersion and foreign language immersion are growing rapidly. We argue that GHC is working to obscure this process of gentrification (Valdez, et. al., 2014) by directing attention away from EH concerns via discursive erasure (Delavan, Valdez, & Freire, 2014).

Utah-Specific Evidence of a Shift to GHC

The state-level policy that funds the Utah DL boom created a standardized statewide model and invoked “the importance of students acquiring skills in foreign languages in order for them to successfully compete in a global society; and the academic, societal, and economic development benefits of the acquisition of critical languages” ( Utah Senate Bill 41, 2008). Note that in this self-definition of Utah’s DL policy, the GHC themes of “compete in a global society” and “economic development” open and close a list of value discourses with only two other items.

As evidence of the centrality of neoliberal and human capital concerns in the governmental elites backing the policy, consider this excerpt of an interview with the Utah State Office of Education (USOE) official in charge of the DL program.

How did the Chinese language initiatives begin in Utah? What was the inspiration? Utah is a small state, so for us, economic development and participation in the global community are vital. With this in mind, we realized that developing global citizens is a requirement for Utah students. We selected Mandarin Chinese, French, and Spanish because they are three really important international business languages.

Why Mandarin Chinese? Then Gov. John M. Huntsman, who is fluent in Mandarin and now serves as the Ambassador of China, really wanted Utah to focus on economic development with China. To accomplish this, we realized that we need[ed] to create a workforce that is proficient in Mandarin Chinese. Three and a half years ago, I was hired by the Utah State Office of Education to lead world language programs into the twenty-first century. During my initial meeting with Gov. Huntsman, he looked me straight in the eye and said, “One of the very first charges I am giving you is to get Chinese language programs into our secondary and elementary schools as soon as possible.” We discussed effective ways we could bring Chinese into the Utah public school system, and he then put me in touch with State Supervisor Howard Stephenson (now Senator Howard Stephenson), who was the chairman of the education appropriations committee in Utah. We initiated the “Critical Languages Program” in 2007. (Conley, 2009)

The consistent series of keywords marked in bold unmistakably points to the primacy of GHC discourse as the policy framework which this USOE official is testifying to having witnessed in action.

GHC themes also appear to dominate non-governmental elite sponsorship of and interest in the new policy. According to The Salt Lake Tribune’s reporting on a meeting of the Salt Lake City Chamber of Commerce,

The chamber sees downtown taking advantage of the international exposure the city gained during the 2002 Winter Olympics by becoming a “world city.” One idea is to build a World Trade Center to help businesses gain international work. Another is to become a “language capital” with English-immersion programs to capitalize on the many Mormon missionaries who have served overseas and speak other languages. (May, 2006)

The proposed World Trade Center Utah did become a reality, and it was one of the sponsoring organizations listed in the USOE DL materials along with the Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development that is quoted by the USOE and the media on the value of the programs (Delavan, et. al., 2014).

In similar fashion to the above quotation, media coverage of Utah’s DL boom and Utah’s governor (Healy, 2013) have also suggested some amount of connection or continuity between GHC interpretations of language education policy like the above examples and the missionary work of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (LDS), whose members comprised 62.2% of the state’s population in 2011 (Canham, 2012). An article in the New York Times (Healy, 2013) reads,

For generations, Mormon missionaries from Utah have crisscrossed the globe and returned home speaking Tagalog and Xhosa. Now, with hopes of preparing students for a competitive world economy, the state is building one of the largest and most ambitious school-language programs in the nation.

A key LDS tradition is for young adult members 18 years of age and older to serve on 18-month to 2-year proselytizing missions in more than 120 countries throughout the world well prepared to speak local languages. In preparation for this service, the LDS church runs 14 institutions around the world called Missionary Training Centers (Taylor, 2011). The largest is in Provo, Utah and offers a 12-week curriculum that includes their well-known language teaching program for missionaries “called to serve in foreign lands” (Missionary Training Center, 2012). Utah’s large LDS population thus gives the state an unusually strong interest in multilingualism. However, there is no evidence that the LDS church per se has been part of the implementation or promotion of the 2006 DL program expansion trend or that it has been involved in the choice of languages for these programs. Still, the LDS church’s international outreach and social ethic along with the state’s strong economic environment has created a steady influx of immigrants and resettled refugees from countries all over the world, though immigrants from Spanish-speaking countries, particularly Mexico, remain the largest immigrant group in the state. For all these reasons, Utah has impressive collective language skills, a fact that has been exploited by federal intelligence institutions, which recruit heavily in Utah (Wyler, 2011) and recently selected Utah as the site of a new National Security Agency (NSA) data center. Thus, it is not surprising that the state’s DL boom has gained the attention of these federal agencies with the Deseret News reporting, “NSA representatives from Washington” visited the Chinese immersion program at Provo’s Wasatch Elementary School in 2011 (Fidel, 2011). GHC discourses are clearly present in both the Utah DL policy itself and media coverage of local elites’ interest in the policy during its planning.

Further evidence for the theory of an EH-GHC framework shift came from our own research of the Utah DL policy and the boom in DL programs. First, using a critical language policy lens, we asked whether a shift in language policies (from BE to DL) and related discourses was having the material effect of equitably distributing DL programs in terms of Whiteness, wealth, and English privilege. Looking at data from 2005 through 2011, we found what we call a gentrification process in which new Utah DL programs during this time period tended to be housed in schools serving more privileged students (Valdez, et. al., 2014). We then conducted a critical discourse analysis of the DL informational and promotional materials produced by the USOE, where we found that these documents discursively silenced any ethnic or heritage reasons for participating in the programs in favor of portraying the normal and desired participant of DL as a White, monolingual speaker of English who stood to benefit from the program for GHC reasons (Delavan, et. al., 2014). Given the history of DL programs in Utah pointing to the early creation and implementation of Spanish DL programs in schools with a high number of ELs with Spanish as their first language, it was striking that, after 2006, new Spanish DL programs were discursively promoted to monolingual English speakers for GHC benefits whereas local heritage priorities were neglected.

Overall, we read the shift in Utah DL policy as including a discursive strategy that links language learning values of the LDS church to a neoliberal globalization agenda that centralizes U.S. interests. The result is a growing discourse in the public sphere in which language becomes not just a cultural skill but also a valued form of human capital, leaving Utah to set the stage for the national spread of the EH-GHC framework shift.

Research Design

We used content analysis (Krippendorff, 2012) with a critical theoretical frame of Fairclough’s (2010) critical discourse theory to analyze our data. Thus, what makes our approach to content analysis “critical” is not the methodology but the use of Fairclough to think about how we code for, interpret, and explain the value discourses contained in the newspaper texts we examined. In other words, we used our theoretical position to define the object of research we used to guide our in-depth reading and coding of the content of the newspaper articles utilized to identify value discourse patterns. The object of research we constructed for this study was a theory of a shift in language education policy discourses related to DL/BE education in Utah. Theorizing that values are clues to the ideologies or frameworks in operation, we judged that value discourses related to DL/BE would best demonstrate whether the two frameworks we conceptualized were indeed the most important relative to other discourses and how they might be shifting over time. We used the five daily newspapers in Utah with the largest circulations: Standard-Examiner, Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, Daily Herald, and The Spectrum. The only article that was church-owned or that acknowledged any type of religious affiliation was the Deseret News, which is wholly owned by the LDS church (Deseret News, 2013a). Despite this, we did not find any differences in coverage of DL/BE issues between the Deseret News and the other newspapers. Geographically, one paper, The Spectrum, serves the southern cities around St. George; one serves the northern cities (Standard-Examiner), and three serve the central Wasatch Front that is the state’s population center (Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, Daily Herald).

The initial review and selection of articles was done in two steps. First, an initial review of 48 articles of the first four papers was conducted. The Spectrum was not part of this beginning stage because of access issues; for the same reason only four articles could be accessed from the Standard-Examiner. This first review allowed us to determine access and coding logistics and to shape the precise form of the research questions’ temporal and discursive range. The data collection and analysis for this research was conducted from Spring 2012 to Summer 2013.

In delimiting the time period we used for analysis, we chose to begin January 1, 2005, for three reasons. One, employing complete years from January 1 to December 31 would allow for more reliable multi-year comparison. Two, our prior work identified the 2006-2007 school year as constituting the beginning of the boom because of the dramatic increase that year in DL programs—a 300% increase from the flat growth rate seen previously (Valdez, et. al., 2014). Finally, the archive for The Spectrum claims to only go back to 2006 yet yielded its first reference to “immersion” programs on April 26, 2005. In addition to this, The Spectrum’s archives do not provide access to the time period prior to 2005. The 2005 Spectrum article was an editorial endorsing the district’s plans to start a two-way immersion program in St. George. This program became operational in the boom-inception year of 2006-2007 as the only one of four begun that year to be located in a school with more than 75 linguistically diverse students. Based on these circumstances, it thus seemed appropriate to choose the temporal range of 2005 to 2011 to capture reporting on the planning of these programs.

To facilitate keyword searching and data transfer, the versions of the articles in the papers’ online archives were used for this study rather than paper versions. We excluded any archived articles that were explicitly marked as having appeared exclusively on the web and not in the print version of the articles because we assumed that articles that appear both online and in print are still the most noticed by the Utah public. For similar reasons, we did not look at online comments attached to articles. We then used two broad selection criteria to cast a wide net for articles in search of what we term “DL/BE values.” First, we used keyword searches in each of the newspapers’ online archives: (a) “immersion”; (b) “DL”; (c) “bilingual program”; and (d) “bilingual” and “education”—different terms that might refer to the phenomenon of elementary programs offering content instruction in English and another language (either in the abstract or concretely located inside or outside Utah). Next, the search results were then limited to articles whose reference to these elementary programs explicitly associated a value (conceptions of “the good” related to the topic focus) with them. Thus, excluded were several articles that referred to the Dual Immersion Academy charter school, often as a location for events, without reference to the value of dual immersion. A counterexample that was included in our count is an article with similar brief mention of an elementary program but within a context that invited the reader to associate it with a particular value, such as the news notice (Deseret News, 2005) announcing a Utah Bilingual Education Association conference titled “Using a Child’s First Language to Help Close the Achievement Gap.” We read this instance, though brief, as attributing to BE the value of helping close the achievement gap.

The 164 articles meeting the selection criteria were saved as individual text files and grouped by newspaper. They were then coded in order by publication month regardless of year because of how the files had been named. This procedure helped assure that any unintended inconsistencies in how data were coded would have been spread more equally across publication years making it less likely that these inconsistencies be mistaken for discourse trends over time. Next, we took a coding and analysis approach to the selected 164 articles from the five mentioned newspapers. Our basic units of text for analysis were individual words and phrases to account for multiple expressions of DL/BE value discourses within a given newspaper article. Using an iterative open coding process of a subset of newspaper articles for all possible value discourse statements resulted in (a) the identification of five major DL/BE value discourse categories: equity, heritage, globalization, human capital, and general program benefit values and (b) the development of a DL/BE value discourses code dictionary that contained the list of words and phrases associated with each of these five value discourse categories that was used to code. The category of “general program benefits” was found to reflect a general valuing of DL/BE programs that crossed the EH-GHC policy framework distinctions and thus were not included in our analysis of trends in the value discourses conducted on all 164 articles. These general program benefits included statements about the program’s cognitive, educational, social, cultural, and linguistic benefits that were attributed to the program no matter what values were espoused toward DL/BE. Table 1 (offered in the next section) therefore only includes the remaining four value discourse categories and the codes associated with each one. Counts of value discourses were aggregated in Excel by type and year and converted to relative frequencies. Relative frequencies of each value discourse by year served as the data points to develop time trends based on the percentage of change in the relative frequency of expression of the respective DL/BE value discourses from 2005 to 2011. Our main working hypotheses in this study were that (a) DL/BE related value discourses had shifted higher or lower over the study periods, and (b) differences existed between the trend lines of EH value discourses and the trend lines of globalization/human capital value discourses.

Table 1.

Percentage of Utah Newspaper Articles (n=164) Citing Equity, Heritage, Globalization, and Human Capital Value Discourses, 2005-2011.

Themes by Value Discourse	Articles Over Time
	2005 (n = 16)		2006 (n = 25)		2007 (n = 29)		2008 (n = 13)		2009 (n = 22)		2010 (n = 23)		2011 (n = 36)
	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%
Equity (Value Discourse 1)	13	81	16	73	18	69	9	64	9	41	8	35	15	71
Explicit mention that linguistic diversity needs to be met	9	56	14	64	18	69	8	57	8	36	6	26	11	52
Explicit mention of asymmetrical power differential	3	19	6	27	2	8	1	7	1	5	3	13	3	14
Program primarily planned to serve English Learners	3	19	4	18	1	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	3	14
Educational equity strategies and outcomes (comprehensible input, educational equity, close achievement gap, involve English learning parent)	8	50	9	41	9	35	4	29	4	18	3	13	10	48
Heritage (Value Discourse 2)	5	31	4	18	12	46	4	29	2	9	3	13	2	10
Value of maintaining language & culture	4	25	4	18	7	27	4	29	1	5	3	13	2	10
(Re)gain, maintain heritage (cultural) language, avoid language loss	4	25	3	14	6	23	4	29	1	5	3	13	2	10
Appreciate one’s self and own culture/heritage; confidence	2	13	1	5	2	8	2	14	0	0	0	0	1	5
Community benefits	2	13	0	0	12	46	0	0	1	5	0	0	1	5
Local cultural understanding; unite the community	2	13	0	0	5	19	0	0	1	5	0	0	1	5
Revitalization of their neighborhood	0	0	0	0	1	4	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
Globalization (Value Discourse 3)	2	13	6	27	6	23	5	36	8	36	13	57	21	100
Tool for global citizenship	1	6	4	18	5	19	1	7	5	23	8	35	10	48
Global citizen, subjectivity, more global American	0	0	0	0	2	8	0	0	0	0	4	17	3	14
Up to date “21st century,” the world NOW, the future, “ever-changing”	0	0	2	9	5	19	0	0	4	18	5	22	7	33
“World (is calling/getting smaller)” no clear economic spin	1	6	2	9	0	0	1	7	1	5	3	13	3	14
“Global . . . ” no clear economic spin or subjectivity call	0	0	0	0	1	4	0	0	0	0	1	4	1	5
Tool for religious spread globally	1	6	0	0	1	4	0	0	0	0	1	4	0	0
Religious prosletyzing potential	1	6	0	0	1	4	0	0	0	0	1	4	0	0
Global communication	1	6	2	9	2	8	4	29	5	23	10	43	12	57
Language is widely spoken	0	0	0	0	2	8	0	0	2	9	4	17	4	19
Bridge communication gaps; get past language barrier	0	0	1	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	4	1	5
Abstract “cultures” or global understanding; general diversity	1	6	2	9	0	0	4	29	3	14	8	35	9	43
International relations/security	1	6	1	5	1	4	1	7	0	0	2	9	5	24
Diplomacy	0	0	1	5	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0
National security, military, etc.	1	6	0	0	1	4	1	7	0	0	2	9	5	24
Human Capital (Value Discourse 4)	5	31	9	41	10	38	5	36	10	45	12	52	21	100
Business competitiveness	3	19	8	36	6	23	5	36	9	41	10	43	18	86
“Global” or “world” with economic spin, “flat world”; international business	1	6	1	5	4	15	3	21	4	18	5	22	8	38
Workforce; need for multilingual workers; people filling markets; business world	0	0	1	5	2	8	0	0	1	5	1	4	7	33
America’s competitiveness (or other nation)	2	13	1	5	2	8	3	21	5	23	4	17	5	24
Utah’s economic competitiveness, development	0	0	1	5	0	0	0	0	4	18	2	9	3	14
“Economy” without specified actor to benefit	0	0	5	23	1	4	0	0	5	23	3	13	2	10
Individual Competitiveness	3	19	1	5	7	27	4	29	5	23	7	30	13	62
Personal competitiveness, exclusiveness, economization, “asset” not explicitly job	0	0	0	0	2	8	4	29	3	14	5	22	6	29
Personal employability	3	19	1	5	6	23	1	7	2	9	3	13	8	38

Note. Value Disources 2-4 had themes and subthemes emerge. These distinctions are noted by italicizing the theme names.

Findings

DL/BE Value Discourses

The value discourses associated with DL/BE from 2005 to 2011 fell into four overarching thematic categories: equity value discourses (n = 76), heritage value discourses (n = 50), globalization value discourses (n = 46), and human capital value discourses (n = 63). Table 1 makes transparent what codes emerged from the data and how they fit beneath the four broad value discourses of the framework shift theory. Equity value discourses highlighted the diverse population of students in public schools and the educational needs of ELs with a connection to fairness. However, the way fairness was represented varied similarly within each year examined based on two very different ideological perspectives: an assimilation perspective or a multicultural perspective. Equity value discourses that pointed to the needs of ELs but with a decidedly assimilative tone, included phrases such as,

We started this discussion because we need to make Spanish language-speaking students productive Americans speaking English. We’re not doing this to teach English speakers Spanish

helps non-English speakers learn their new language faster

we’re failing to assimilate non-native speakers into the English-speaking mainstream

whereas equity value discourses that pointed to the needs of ELs with a more multicultural tone highlighted the necessity for these needs to be addressed in ways that respected their cultural and linguistic backgrounds, included phrases such as,

board was looking to help the growing number of Spanish-speaking children, who often struggle to make it through the English-taught classes, be successful in school

one key to improving American Indian students’ achievement is to teach them more about their cultures and languages

some say we should not implement this (dual immersion program) at (this school), that we should do it with a more advantaged school. But who needs it the most?

(we are) using a student’s primary language to close the achievement gap.

Heritage value discourses were related to maintenance and fostering of local heritage community languages, cultures, interests, and relations and included phrases such as,

many of them have family who still speak Navajo, and the students are excited about being able to visit their relatives and greet them or carry on a short conversation in the family’s native language

their grandparents are the last link to China, and often like the idea of passing on their culture and language

enrolled her 11-year-old son and 8-year-old daughter in bilingual classes so they would also speak Spanish and not “feel ashamed of being Hispanic”

Globalization-related value discourses were associated with the exotic and broader need to understand people around the world. These value discourses were represented by phrases such as,

important for all Americans—regardless of their ethnicity—to be exposed to foreign languages to assimilate into the broader world

the world is too small not to be at least bilingual and to not offer your child that opportunity to develop bilingualism, you are really depriving them

helps children to succeed in a world that more and more includes languages other than English

Human capital-related value discourses covered the business and economic benefits of multilingual citizens with phrases such as,

To engage in commerce, we have to be able to speak the language of our customers

“The rest of the world’s kids are learning multiple languages,” said Caldwell, who is trying to learn Chinese herself “We are the only ones [who] expect everybody to speak English. We’re now catching on to the fact that we need to learn multiple languages to be able to compete in the world economy”

We asked businesses, “When these kids graduate, what do you want them to do with the language?” Talbot said, “They want them to be able to take that language and put it in a job comfortably”

Trends of DL/BE Value Discourses Over Time

Individual trend lines of the four value discourses from 2005 to 2011 were calculated. Table 1 shows numerically how frequently these were mentioned from year to year to illustrate the change over time of some value discourses over others in Utah newspapers.

Figure 1 illustrates in visual form the numerical trends in Table 1 providing the findings using a 3-year moving averages line graph. Moving averages were used to increase stability and “smooth” the data with minimal loss of information. Results found that trend lines for equity and heritage value discourses declined over time within the Utah newspapers examined whereas trend lines for the value discourses associated with globalization and human capital showed a steady increase over time that quickly overshadowed EH discourses.

Figure 1.

Three-year moving averages of Utah newspaper coverage of value discourses related to bilingual/dual language education themes in articles, 2005-2011.

In a study such as this where theory/method are integrated, it is important to revisit our theory as part of our findings. The object of research we constructed for this study was a theory of a broad shift in the dominance of particular value discourses from EH to GHC language education policy discourses related to DL/BE education. Thus, the trend we identify in Utah’s print media from 2005 to 2011 toward the shifting dominance of value discourses from EH concerns to GHC concerns adds to the evidence from our literature analysis and our prior Utah research on DL policy supporting this theory of a policy framework shift. However, it is important to note that despite most of the five newspapers’ alignment with this general trend toward a discursive dominance of the GHC framework, our in-depth content analysis of each newspaper’s collection of articles uncovered an important exception to this trend, which we discuss next.

An Important Exception

An interesting exception to the overall trend supporting the framework shift in Utah were the value discourses supportive of EH arguments within the southwest-focused paper, The Spectrum. Several things are unique to The Spectrum and its geographical context. First, the only bilingual program in its readership area up until 2011 was Spanish–English. This situation reflects the EH framework across the state prior to the boom where DL programs were located in schools with a high proportion of ELs (Valdez, et. al., 2014). The debate in The Spectrum paper remains very much centered on Latina/o ELs (either their needs or the threat they pose), though not wholly without the neoliberal elements. Despite this, the main argument in The Spectrum paper that comes to the fore in 3 of the 19 articles is that the St. George DL program is to serve ELs and that other students are receiving side benefits. To illustrate, we offer the following excerpts from the three articles,

The school district began looking at dual immersion as a way to reach non-English-speaking students, many of whom have difficulty adapting to American schools (DeMille, 2007).

Recognizing the number of students who speak English as a second language and other factors, the district decided to experiment by making one school, Dixie Downs Elementary, a dual immersion facility (The Spectrum, 2011, May 11).

“For the non-Spanish speaking kids to learn Spanish wasn’t the point of the experiment,” Superintendent Max Rose said, “It was an added benefit” (DeMille, 2011).

These statements by local educational authorities reinforce claims of the DL program being for EH purposes. In addition to this, an article by the Deseret News talks about the St. George program in the same lines. “We started this discussion because we need to make Spanish language-speaking students productive Americans speaking English. We’re not doing this to teach English speakers Spanish” (Perkins, 2006).

The two 2011 quotations above are the only two references that year to educational equity for ELs, suggesting that if the study were focused only on the central and northern areas of the state where the DL boom has moved beyond Spanish, the data would be even more supportive of the framework shift. Interestingly, however, these educational equity value discourses associated with the St. George program seem to be partly a means of the district and school protecting themselves from besieged-Whiteness-xenophobic and government-phobic accusations. Citizen letters to the editor and opinion articles depict the tone of these accusations such as one that warns the community that DL programs intend to “indoctrinate our children into the idea of becoming a multi-cultural community” (“Editorial: Require all students to learn English,” 2005), and another where an individual warns that those who need to assimilate are the immigrants and that DL programs and other non-English forms are not okay (Austin, 2009).

Hence, the next unique aspect to The Spectrum’s coverage is that there is much more backlash toward the programs (often explicitly racialized) or at least media attention to it and accommodation of it. Out of the 19 Spectrum articles, 58% either offered negative testimony on the type of education in question or cite the existence of such negative testimony. In the other four Utah newspapers only 28% of articles make these claims. St. George’s DL program is the only context where it is reported that guardians withdrew their children from the school in protest of the program (DeMille, 2007). The only incident beyond mere utterances of disagreement reported for other parts of the state was a flyer using discourses of besieged Whiteness distributed in opposition to a Spanish program in Brigham City in northern Utah (Macavinta, 2011). Three other papers editorialized in favor of the DL boom (the Tribune twice and the Daily Herald taking no position), yet none of these acknowledged community oppositions to the programs, which The Spectrum did in both of its positive editorials. In spite of this vigorous debate, St. George continues to implement a Spanish DL program for ELs and monolingual English speakers at their public school that serves a significant Latina/o student population—maintaining an EH value discourse in its expressed positive and negative incarnations.

Discussion

We have endeavored to show that critical content analysis of discourse can offer key insights on education policy and its impact on social power imbalances and injustices. We drew on the academic literature and our own research on the recent Utah policy shift in DL education to argue that a major framework shift is taking place from EH to GHC. We have endeavored to show how trends in news coverage are a key insight into the process by which policy shifts are made sensical. In all four value categories, our results matched our theoretical assumptions: Across the five most circulated newspapers in Utah, a shift in discourse dominance from EH to GHC value discourses is occurring.

We want to clarify that we are not opposed to market( )ability for any student as long as it does not overshadow equity. We also want to leave the reader with a picture of the full weight of what is lost in this shift from EH to GHC. This study shows how newspapers in Utah are helping to discursively demarcate social groups in relation to DL/BE through the value discourses associated with DL/BE discussions. These news articles show that media discourses on BE that include concern for cultural identification with schooling for language minoritized students or for preserving their heritage language are in decline. As our related research has found (Valdez, et. al., 2014), this discursive shift away from EH value discourses and toward GHC in Utah’s newspapers corresponds with a similar shift from language education programs established for language minoritized students with equity and heritage concerns in mind toward programs that prioritize opportunity to access DL programs for economic benefit to the already privileged. Because Utah has become a national leader in DL education (Valdez, et. al., 2014), other states within the nation instituting Utah’s model of DL education are likely to follow the GHC framework and allow it to overshadow equity and heritage concerns. The Spectrum exception offers us insight into the racialized discourses that continue to populate the EH policy framework and perhaps helps explain why the GHC framework seems like an attractive—less politically divisive—way to frame discussions of DL/BE. However, we argue that GHC concerns overshadowing EH concerns does not remove EH concerns; in fact, exclusive focus on GHC concerns guarantees continued educational inequality for ELs and other language minoritized students. For this reason, this article not only contributes to the language policy scholarship related to DL education but also serves as a cautionary note. We urge scholars and other readers to support the re-prioritization of an EH framework in U.S. educational language policy discussions that keeps the needs of ELs and the preservation of local heritage languages in mind and results in increasing access to DL programs for language minoritized students as a means to counter the overwhelming strength of discourses of globalization and human capital economics that are increasingly overpowering any other discourses surrounding DL elementary education policy.

Recommendations

In closing, we restate the three most pertinent recommendations we offered in an earlier piece (Valdez, et. al., 2014). First, as varying groups of students and parents come to the education system with varying degrees of privilege and marginalization, all DL programs and related policies need to explicitly plan for how they will address these power differentials within their recruitment and admission processes as well as on an ongoing basis throughout all aspects of DL program implementation. Second, local marginalized language groups should be given a special opportunity to use DL programs to benefit the preservation or recovery of their languages. The states of Minnesota, California, and Texas as well as Utah’s Washington county schools offer examples of how these frameworks can work in a complementary fashion to advance equity. For example, Minnesota’s use of DL as a means of serving the EH needs of immigrant communities provides a hopeful scenario. In Minnesota schools, there are programs with students studying Arabic and Somali (Hechinger, 2011), as well as Ojibwe and Dakota; meanwhile, St. Paul public schools have two of the nation’s three DL programs in Hmong, the other being in Sacramento, California (Chang, 2013; Minnesota Advocates for Immersion Network, 2011). As in St. George, the EH discourses in Minnesota are hardly safe from contestation, yet in both contexts, their ability to survive backlash is a testament to their future promise. These programs are justified by EH discourses of meeting the needs of local language communities, yet they exist alongside DL/BE programs justified by GHC value discourses.

However, it is not merely in less conservative parts of the United States like the Twin Cities that EH policy discourses thrive. Texas is a shining example of a politically conservative climate in which EH-oriented DL and BE programs survive. Even in California, the epicenter of the 1990’s backlash against BE and the associated legal hurdles in the way of programs with strong EH missions, many DL programs survive by catering to local language communities, including five Korean DL programs and the inclusion of marginalized Cantonese Chinese alongside privileged Mandarin Chinese (California Department of Education, 2013). Utah has also witnessed the appearance of a couple of charter schools that are either implementing DL or have long-term plans to begin DL and are holding to EH value discourses focused on serving local Pacific Islander and Latina/o students with curriculum infused with their local cultural orientations to teaching and learning and their associated languages. Thus, we call on Utah and those emulating its DL model to counter the overpowering GHC value discourses by framing a GHC policy framework alongside rather than at the expense of an EH policy framework.

Third, the planners of DL policy and the media that cover such policy should reconceptualize the way the programs are talked about and promoted. Print media journalists, along with community members who participate in public opinion spaces and letters to the editor, are participants in the politics of competing value discourses. We make a call to everyone to use print media spaces to highlight the importance and benefits of returning to the EH framework, and to show stories of success, such as in the cases we have shown of Minnesota, California, Texas and places in Utah, such as in St. George. It should be possible to give EH concerns as much importance as GHC concerns rather than continuing to see the prior framework as an impediment to the second, or continuing to see the concerns of marginalized groups as a threat to the appeal of programs for the privileged. As major players in reflecting and shaping the value discourses that give logic and common sense appeal to education policy, newspapers and we as educational researchers who can contribute to these media discourses have a major responsibility to live up to the demands of educational equity and the promise of a society where all ethnic heritages are equally valued and where market( )ability does not overshadow equity.

Footnotes

Authors’ Note

The authorship of this manuscript is credited equally to all three authors. Each contributed equivalent efforts toward its conceptualization, data collection, analysis, and writing.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

Author Biographies

Verónica E. Valdez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Education, Culture, and Society at the University of Utah. Her research interests include language policy and planning and the language education efforts in families, schools, and communities of linguistically diverse students.

Garrett Delavan is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Utah. His research examines language policy and pedagogy with a social justice focus. His doctoral work focuses on the use of practitioner inquiry as a tool for applying critical approaches to teaching middle school Spanish.

Juan A. Freire is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at New Mexico State University. His research concentrates on critical issues in language education (bilingual education/TESOL), including the development of language education policy and issues in teacher education.

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