“We live in the age of choice”: school administrators, school choice policies, and the shaping of dual language bilingual education

Abstract

In the past 20 years, both school choice policies and dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs have proliferated across the US. This project examines the intersection of the two trends, examining how school choice policies have shaped DLBE at the district, school, and program level, through the eyes of 22 public school administrators in Arizona, California, and Texas. Prior work has shown how general neoliberal logic has shaped parents' desire for DLBE as well as how DLBE is marketed and who attends, but we argue here that school choice—itself a product of neoliberal logic—is a unique and powerful force shaping DLBE. We found that it spurred both the creation of new DLBE education programs (i.e., to help districts compete) and influenced existing programs (e.g., made principals hesitant to collaborate with those whom they see as competitors). We address the potential of these shifts to undermine goals of equity for Latinx and Spanish-speaking students. Yet, we also address the potential for administrators to co-opt the language and logic of school choice as a means to create programs that might ultimately serve the ends of social justice.