“I Used To Know That”: What Happens When Reform Gets Through The Classroom Door

Abstract

This article places Proposition 227 in the context of the policy web formed by a series of legislative acts and policies at the national, state, and local school board levels; federal judicial decisions; state and local elections; changes in the local school district board and superintendent. We draw on our ongoing ethnographic study of a fifth-grade classroom to illustrate what happens when policies get through the classroom door. Through this analysis, we illustrate how policies constrained the bilingual teacher's ability to make learning opportunities available to her linguistically diverse students in 1998–99.