| This study explores bilingual education for Hispanics as it evolved from 1953 to 1983. A policy cycle approach is used to explore bilingual education as it goes through succeeding stages over time. The origins stage examines the inherited school practice prior to 1953, Submersion/Americanization, and the roots of cultural deprivation theory. The formulation stage describes how some local school districts began to put a new policy into practice to educate Spanish-speakers; and how this policy was nationalized by the federal government as the Bilingual Education Act. The administration stage looks at how bilingual education infrastructures developed at federal, state and local levels and at schoolhouse interactions among learners, principals, parents and teachers. A final chapter offers findings on the socioeconomic and demographic situation of Hispanics fifteen years after the federal initiative.; The study poses the question of whether bilingual education has been a major force to improve Hispanic educational and vocational opportunity. It also seeks to discover whether bilingual education has been a clearly articulated policy or a series of events. The data base is derived from history of education literature, studies of government involvement in education, ethnographic literature and primary sources. The study is based on the assumption that bilingual education has been socially constructed and that it can be disassembled, dissected and analyzed. |
