Donna Nevel2013-06-19T23:28:35-04:00Donna Nevelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=donna-nevelCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Donna NevelGood old fashioned elbow grease.Organizing for Educational Justice Rooted in Communitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.30378512013-04-09T17:51:16-04:002013-06-09T05:12:01-04:00Donna Nevelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-nevel/
I have been involved with parent organizing for many years and would like to highlight two groups whose ongoing work and commitment to justice in education reflect a model of organizing that I believe is truly transformative.
The work of each group -- La Union in Brooklyn and the Parent Leadership Project (PLP) in uptown Manhattan -- is based on principles of popular education and Participatory Action Research (PAR), which are rooted in the belief that communities organizing for justice, in this case, low income parents of color, bring with them the knowledge, wisdom, and expertise to effect meaningful and sustained change.
I spoke with Leticia Alanis from La Union and Ujju Aggarwal from the Parent Leadership Project about their work and their visions for the future, and I share some of their reflections below.
What is the most inspiring thing about the work you do?
Leticia Alanis: Building community! Discovering that we are not alone and that we share hopes and struggles and also the collective power to transform our lives and our society in a way that responds to our best aspirations and values.
Ujju Aggarwal: There are so many things! One is the dedication -- seeing the daily dedication that low-income mothers of color have to demanding good educations for their children, especially when they are holding down so many other areas of life. It is work that they should not have to do -- but they do, day in and day out. Another inspiration is the community that we build. We work for justice in education -- but the community that sustains us is a community of love, of support.
How do you decide what issues to work on? How do you think about organizing?
Leticia: We decide it as a group, listening to each other and seeking the voices of members of our community. We know now that we can't do the work that needs to be done if we don't listen. We have adopted the motto: caminar preguntando, which reflects the need to have our ears and minds, but mostly our hearts, open to the learning that comes from listening to everyone with whom we interact. Organizing is bringing people together to build community, to decide as a collective what we want to do for the good of our community, and to then fulfill our commitment and review as a group what's happening in the process. It's a circular process.
Ujju: Our work is based on popular education -- so we work on issues that emerge out of our stories. As we shared our stories, we realized a common thread that wove our different stories together had to do with public education -- our hope for it, but also the segregated and unequal reality of our schools. So we talked and learned more and our work became targeted at dismantling the structures of segregation in Community School District 3, and working for schools that reflect, respect, and serve the communities they are part of.
Who are your partners, and why?
Leticia: All parents who want to be part of a change in education, students, conscious educators, schools trying to serve families and communities as best as possible, advocates of parents and children, the community at large.
Ujju: We partner with a number of different groups. Working in coalition is critical. One group we're dedicated to organizing proactively with is teachers, and we've worked closely with the New York Collective of Radical Educators (NYCORE) for a number of years.
What do you see as the power of the kind of organizing your groups do?
Leticia: When the seed is planted with care, and you also take care of the conditions that allow a plant to grow, the results will be beautiful. I feel our seed may be small and take time and lots of nurturing, but I'm sure the fruits are coming. I start to see them in our own transformation, in the slow transformation of relationships between parents and schools, and in the children knowing that their parents and allies are working for them, for their future. And more positive and broader changes will surely come if we keep building -- from the ground up -- the kind of education we want in our communities."
Ujju: PLP is a bit of an experiment. We grew out of more than a decade of collaboration between the Center for Immigrant Families and the Bloomingdale Family Head Start Program. We combined our resources and are building a project that links popular education, community organizing, and advocacy with much-needed services. So that is powerful to be part of. Another thing that is powerful is that the struggle to dismantle segregation in our community is also linked to a larger struggle that has to do with gentrification. So when we work to make sure the schools reflect and respect all of the families in the district, it's a fight that is at once about the schools, about the immediate educations of low-income children of color, and about the collective future of the communities that have been here and are struggling to stay.
Both La Union and PLP embrace imaginative and life-affirming processes at each stage of their work. With little funding and few resources, they don't take short-cuts but remain true to their commitment to making visible and central the voices and leadership and collective vision of their members as they organize for a just public education system and society.
Note: I have had the privilege of experiencing the work of both groups first-hand through my current work with the Participatory Action Research Center for Education Organizing and, before that, the Center for Immigrant Families.]]>180 Days Well Spenttag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24862182013-01-16T18:01:35-05:002013-03-18T05:12:01-04:00Donna Nevelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-nevel/
Parents talked together about what makes a good school, met with resource people from across the city, and thought deeply about how to have schools that reflect and well-serve all our communities and children; that embrace children as creative and critical thinkers; and that incorporate students' cultures and histories into the curriculum and school community.
CIF organizer Perla Placencia and parent activist Lucidania Mejia helped coordinate a series of meetings and gatherings with parents to envision what these schools might look like. Together, parents decided to create a video that would explore these issues and what is possible as a critical step in the process of effecting meaningful change.
Many of the parents participating in these discussions were or had been parents in the Bloomingdale Family Program, a magnificent Head Start Center in uptown Manhattan. CIF also worked with (and PLP continues to work with) educators from the Center for Inquiry and the New York Performance Standards Consortium, which has developed a robust system of assessment that uses multiple measures and doesn't rely on standardized high stakes tests.
For the next several months, CIF parents worked with the Center for Inquiry, the Consortium, and Bloomingdale to create "180 Days Well Spent." Produced by CIF* and the Center for Inquiry, the video included hours of filming and editing by the film's cinematographer and editor, Michael Tyner, an educator and film-maker who had attended an elementary school similar to the ones featured in the video.
The video is only 12 minutes long and is meant to encourage discussion that can help shape and inform meaningful action. It is intended as an opportunity to reflect upon some of the issues, to enrich discussion, and to help parents and communities strategize together about what is possible -- and how to get there.
(*As a member of the CIF/PLP community, I participated in the making of the video.)]]>Admissions Policies That Embrace All Childrentag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.13642582012-03-27T11:22:30-04:002012-05-27T05:12:02-04:00Donna Nevelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-nevel/
We have seen countless examples of how school choice is about choice for some at the expense of others. One group I have been part of, the Center for Immigrant Families (now part of the Parent Leadership Project), has documented the ways low income parents of color have been denied access to our public schools (which I wrote about in an earlier post). In response to this organizing, parents have also been researching alternative admissions policies that are about embracing all children.
Parents are seeking an admissions system where families aren't privileged because English is their first language, or because they have wealth, are white, or are favored by the system in another way. We want the schools to be truly public and to reflect all our communities. When we say access, we don't mean access based on one's ability to buy a co-op near a particular school, but what we want and need are schools that serve all our communities.
Therefore, we have looked at what is known as "community controlled choice," which is a fair and equitable way to assign students to public schools. The process is not left in the hands of some free market system but, rather, offers meaningful choice within a framework that has as its foundation a commitment to equitable access and high quality education for all. The choice is controlled -- controlled for fairness, for equity, and to ensure genuine access. It does not permit one group to exploit another. It does not privilege one group over others.
Michael Alves, who has helped implement numbers of controlled choice plans, notes that these plans, which have been adopted by school districts across the United States, have proven to be equitable and fair. He also points to the fact that one of the things that consistently happens is that there becomes an investment by all families in all the schools, rather than in just some. That is, the success and well-being of all the schools become the responsibility of the larger community.
The community is a critical component of controlled choice. In fact, parents and families and communities, particularly those who have been most marginalized by the system, must be at the center so that what evolves truly reflects the needs of a community and is not some artificial construct designed to enable inequitable patterns and policies to flourish.
In New York City, parents in Districts 1 and 3 in Manhattan, who have been working on issues of equity and access in their separate communities for many years, have come together this past year to begin looking at how community controlled choice can contribute to strengthening our schools and our communities and lay the groundwork for equitable and accessible public education. As part of this organizing, parents have created the Community Controlled Choice Project. It's part of a larger movement that is about reclaiming public education, about reclaiming the public good, and about public education being inextricably linked to the larger movement for racial and economic justice. ]]>Participatory Action Research and Organizing for Justicetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.11913702012-01-10T19:40:05-05:002012-03-11T05:12:01-04:00Donna Nevelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-nevel/
Not since Fals Borda and Rahman (1991), Freire (1970), and Marino (1997), have I found a book on Participatory Action Research to be as reaffirming of the potential power of PAR as this collection of essays, Education, Participatory Action Research, and Social Change: International Perspectives , edited by Dip Kapoor and Steven Jordan. Both editors bring a unique, critical perspective and dimension to framing, understanding, analyzing, and reflecting upon PAR. The collection of essays they have assembled on PAR, education, and social change delves deeply into the possibilities for PAR to be truly liberating.
The editors' introduction frames the book, which examines PAR within international contexts and describes the essays' common theme: how to engage in a process that is transformative, while, at the same time, recognizing and resisting the forces that tend to distort or co-opt PAR and thereby perpetuate the very structures that PAR is meant to oppose. Focusing particularly on indigenous communities and the global south, while also including Euro-American critical traditions, the editors achieve what they set out to do:
"By embracing indigenous conceptions, approaches and practices of PAR as a living praxis; by magnifying the role and contribution of PAR in the multifarious struggles of marginalized social groups in the regions of the global South (Africa, Asia, and Latin America); and by engaging critical Euro-American conceptions of PAR and its utility in a politics attentive to addressing ecological concerns, commercialization of education/research and the containment of democratic pedagogies and popular research/knowledge processes in formal education, it is hoped that this collection will return PAR to its anti and/or critical-colonial roots in living indigenous traditions (Smith 1999), to Euro-American critical traditions and to third worldist conceptions."
The book is divided evenly into a more theoretical section and a section of case studies, though both sections interweave theory and conceptual frameworks with examples of PAR in practice. The authors all share a commitment, as is clear from the titles of many of the essays, to opposing "neo-liberal appropriation" and "intellectual imperialism" and to supporting and participating in community-generated processes that foster liberation and self-determination. The sweep of the book is broad, with opening essays on North and South, India, and the Maoris, and nine case studies in the second section that focus on Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Ghana, South Africa, Algeria, Brazil, Chile, Bangladesh, and Canada.
Particular essays stand out, offering new perspectives and insights. Many of the projects and conceptualizations of PAR focus on indigenous communities, highlighting the ways in which some indigenous cultures "have managed to maintain and reproduce social relations and practices that effectively constitute organic forms of PAR that are specific to the indigenous cultures that generate them." Strong cultural spaces and locations within many indigenous communities can create a meaningful foundation for PAR to be nourished and for different kinds of knowledge to be generated.
In the book's opening section, Jordan recounts PAR's history and how some of what researchers have done in the name of PAR turned away from its radical origins. One example is the notion of creating "participatory" work environments that, in reality, have more to do with furthering capitalist production than meeting the needs of the workers. Jordan believes that part of reclaiming PAR involves drawing upon and integrating other methodologies, such as critical ethnography. Such integration will enable a process that builds alliances among a range of research communities and challenges the notion of "participation" to ensure that what evolves is emancipatory, rather than exploitative or compromised. Jordan describes how this process becomes particularly important as neo-liberalism has become an increasingly driving force for models of supposed "participation."
Much of the effectiveness of the essays in the opening section stem from the consistent way that the contributors ground theory in lived -- and often vividly described -- experience. In a superb and probing essay, Weber-Pillwax, for example, discusses the indigenous way of learning about the world that was central to her childhood but that she had to unlearn as she engaged in research in the context of the university and mainstream Canada. Realizing that she needed particular skills and approaches when she found herself "at the interface of Indigenous and non-Indigenous social realities," Weber-Pillwax used the principles from her own childhood learning and methodology "to find a methodology that was connected with the knowledge systems and historical experiences of mainstream Canada and yet could be grounded in the historical and contemporary realities of northern Cree communities in Alberta. That was PAR." Committed to the potential power of PAR, she recognizes the unpredictability of what will emerge from opening up and facilitating a process that is genuinely transformative, in which one is truly alive.
This piece, like others in the book, points to the power of the collective, holistic nature of PAR. Interweaving PAR with indigenous research, she elevates its essence in a beautiful expression of the power of experience: "Indigenous people tend to see all lived experience as sacred since the human is a sacred being, and it is impossible to isolate identity from lived experience."
Weber-Pillwax ends the chapter with a reference to a conversation her father had with her. He tells her how important the experience of fishing in a particular way ("to go out on the lake to pull the net") is for the children -- and the importance for them to experience it over and over again, which has a different impact from anything that could be said to them. As she notes, "Transformation is carried by intentions and commitment, and commitment includes emotions as well as intentions."
A number of case studies in the book's second section raise questions about the potential co-optation or distortion of the PAR process. Barua, for example, describes how NGOs in rural Bangladesh, often working with Western donors in pursuit of a neo-liberal agenda, have co-opted a process that is supposed to be participatory, resulting in exploitation and competition and ultimately ill-serving the people they claim to be working with. Walsh details the struggle to resist neo-liberal agendas that promote privatization and debilitate communities in post-apartheid South Africa. Growing out of his work with street kids in Salavador be Bahia, Brazil, Veissiere thoughtfully reflects upon the "politics and dangers of imagining, articulating, and facilitating conscientização on other people's behalf."
Each of these essays, as well as others, not only describes the conditions and challenges, but imagines and re-imagines what a different process could look like. In many instances, this metamorphosis is already in motion.
The articles in this book (and some of them more deeply than others) exhibit a sensitivity to the challenges of, and commitment to, being true to the potentially profound meaning of PAR. This inspiring book will enrich the thinking, envisioning, imagining, and future action of anyone engaged with PAR or any form of organizing for justice. It is a gem.
The original book review is in the "Development Review" of National Academy for Planning and Development, Volume 21, 2011, Ministry of Planning, Dhaka, Bangladesh
]]>Challenging a Segregated and Unequal School Systemtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7928882010-12-06T19:57:57-05:002011-05-25T18:15:22-04:00Donna Nevelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-nevel/
However, too often, that reality is not acknowledged. As education writer Jonathan Kozol makes clear: "Perhaps most damaging to any serious effort to address racial segregation openly is the refusal of most of the major arbiters of culture in our northern cities to confront or even clearly name an obvious reality they would have castigated with a passionate determination in another section of the nation 50 years before -- and which, moreover, they still castigate today in retrospective writings that assign it to a comfortably distant and allegedly concluded era of the past."
The denial of this obvious reality and the refusal to acknowledge it for what it is would seem surreal if it weren't so real -- and so destructive. In its report "Segregated and Unequal: The Public Elementary Schools of District 3 in New York City," the Center for Immigrant Families (CIF), a community organization of low income women of color and community members (of which I am part), speaks about the importance of breaking "the normalization of segregation, that is, the way that it has become accepted as 'just the way things are'."
The schools in the District where CIF is located in NYC offer an insight into the process of how segregation happens and becomes entrenched. District 3, located in an area that prides itself on its progressive values, is one of the city's most diverse school districts and also one of the most segregated. Students of color comprise more than 75 percent of the public elementary school population; some schools in the District are majority white while others are overwhelmingly children of color. For years, some of District 3's public schools have been quietly turned into quasi-private institutions to which admissions often depended on such factors as how much a family could contribute financially or who you were 'connected' to, as well as your ability to speak English.
After two years of documenting hundreds of parents' stories of exclusion from some of the District's public elementary schools, CIF demonstrated that "public school segregation in District 3 is no accident" and that "the system of segregation that we encounter today is just as pernicious and just as destructive as if it were mandated by law." Through an organizing campaign, parents and community members exposed the patterns of exclusion of low income and families of color, and a policy change was ultimately put in place to begin to provide more equitable access to our public schools.
However, over the next few years, inequitable admissions processes and policies again became the norm through a series of practices (some new and some that had already been in practice) that privilege white and middle/upper income families. Through the use and misuse of zone lines; the courting of, and outreach to certain families over others; the way decisions are made about which new schools get created and where those schools are located; and schools that accept students based on biased and unreliable test scores that have more to do with a family's income level than with what the child is capable of learning, it is made clear: White, wealthy families wanted.
We hear a lot of discussions about wanting to entice more middle/upper income families into the school system (deserving of a column in and of itself); but, like all families, middle/upper income families are a welcome part of the school system if they are truly part of it, not in separate, exclusionary enclaves that privilege some children over others.
A number of years ago, an assistant principal at one of the "elite" public schools in District 3 in which low-income families of color have had difficulty gaining access told me that she and her colleagues knew that, while they wanted diversity, if they had less than a majority of white families, they'd have white flight from the school. That sentiment reveals a lot, of course, about racism, about classism, about privilege, but it also makes clear that schools were determining admissions policies based on how to maintain a largely white, largely middle/upper income student body in a district that is largely children of color.
And what are the consequences of these inequitable processes for those who are not white and wealthy? The result is that a two-tiered education system is in place.
In an eloquent and moving graduation speech at one of NYC's elite high schools (that requires high test scores to enter), Justin Hudson, a then Hunter College High School student, spoke about the consequences of this segregated and unequal system: "Hunter is perpetuating a system in which children, who contain unbridled and untapped intellect and creativity, are discarded like refuse. And we have the audacity to say they deserved it, because we're smarter than them." And Hunter is not exceptional in its practices.
While the mechanisms of exclusion may vary, the continuation of a segregated and unequal system continues. To challenge this system, we must repeatedly ask whether a particular policy or process furthers segregation and inequality, or, rather, promotes equity and fairness and the ability for all children to receive a high quality education. This, to me, is the fundamental lens through which these policy decisions must be made.
Every community has the right to be part of a school system that is able to answer the question "Whose interests are being served?" with the response that all our children's educational needs are being served. If it does not, then its policies should be vehemently opposed and the system enabling that inequity dismantled. Our school system must reflect a commitment to supporting and creating anti-racist, egalitarian, and equitable schools that value all our children's education and that make the word public have real meaning.]]>Inspiring, Student-Centered Educational Communitiestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7833772010-11-18T11:58:01-05:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Donna Nevelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-nevel/
While one is a federally funded pre-school and the other a part of the NYC public school system, I began thinking about what characteristics they share with one another that I have found so compelling and even exhilarating. These are some of the characteristics that immediately came to mind:
The needs and well-being of students are at the center of everything they do. No other considerations, political or otherwise, come before that.
They value and have tremendous respect for their students and families. Each community not only embraces their students, but their extended families as well. That is, students are most definitely not a mere number.
Both institutions believe in, and do what they can to support the ability of all children -- particularly those most often under-served by our system, such as low income and children of color, children with special needs, English language learners -- to develop intellectually and emotionally to their fullest potential.
They have an unwavering commitment to creating an environment where students develop a love of, and passion for, learning and an appreciation for the many strengths and abilities they bring with them.
Understanding that high-stakes testing and teaching to the test do not create critical and creative thinkers, they develop curricula and a learning community that provide a framework and foundation for life-long learning.
Those in leadership positions value and have a genuine respect for their teachers, and do everything they can to support the teaching staff and to enable them to flourish as educators. No measuring teachers by their test scores in these institutions.
When you walk into each of these buildings, everyone immediately feels welcome and at home. You don't feel as if you're a criminal who needs policing.
At the heart of both JREC and Bloomingdale is their emphasis on community and on devoting the time to building and nurturing their communities.
In both environments, the collaborative spirit is contagious. Parents, students, teachers, administrators, social service staff, security, and all other school staff interact with, and support one another throughout each day.
While I was a parent within these educational institutions (and I still am connected to each of them), I often saw the administration interacting with teachers and parents and students, and I got to see firsthand how every child and family and member of the school community mattered. I had the privilege of hearing the educators discuss their approaches to education, but far more compelling than that, I got to see it all in action. I sat in on classes that were magical; from pre-school to high school, I saw students excited about where they were and what they were learning.
According to current educational "reform" dogma, the education system needs to be revamped. Yet, if those setting educational policy were paying attention to, and concerned about schools that truly serve our children, they would recognize that we have these wonderful models to draw from, with a track record of students who are engaged learners.
Particularly at a time when testing and test prep trump all else; when we have a Mayor and Department of Education that value business and top-down corporate models that are not centered on the needs of our children and that exclude parents, educators, students, and community members from any decision-making; when students of color and low income students are too often marginalized and not getting the education they deserve; and when we are witnessing increased privatization of our school system, including a proliferation of charters, we need to make sure that public institutions like JREC and Bloomingdale are able to flourish.
We need to demand a school system that supports these institutions and others like them where creativity and imagination and meaningful learning and a commitment to all our children are part of the fabric of its everyday life. As part of that, we need to insist that schools are able to develop genuine ways to assess and evaluate school success, unlike the system we now have where "accountability" grows out of bureaucracies and not classrooms.
With the recent resignation of the NYC Chancellor, I began to imagine what our school system would be like if we had educators like those at JREC and Bloomingdale at the helm. How lucky our children and all of us would be. And of course they would be doing it all collaboratively with the entire education community as partners in our children's education! Our children deserve no less.
]]>The Power of Language and Culture in Our Children's Educationtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2010:/theblog//3.7761692010-10-29T21:19:45-04:002011-05-25T18:10:25-04:00Donna Nevelhttp://www.huffingtonpost.com/donna-nevel/
Dual Language programs, a form of bilingual education, are one of the ways to preserve and honor students' languages and cultural identities. Such programs are more important today, not only because of the challenges we face in public education, but, also, given current realities of increased xenophobia, the push for "English only" in Arizona and elsewhere, and attempts to deny immigrant communities basic human and civil rights.
The power and importance of language is understood by both proponents and opponents of bilingual education. It is no accident that when societies, including our own, have tried to colonize or destroy its indigenous communities, one of the first things they have done was forbid the use of their native languages. And if we look at the rhetoric of the English-only movement in this country, we can see it has not only been about opposition to other languages, but also reflects contempt for the immigrant communities speaking those languages.
My children attended a Spanish Dual Language program, one of over 60 Dual Language programs in New York City. Dual Language programs are designed for students to become bi-cultural and bi-literate. Learning and a love of learning flourished in my children's classrooms. In addition to the benefit of learning two languages, children literally stood taller when their parents walked into the room because a deep respect for all children's languages, cultures, and families was integrated at the program's core. The creation of that type of community made a world of difference, yet is something we don't see enough of in our schools; instead, students are too often made to feel embarrassed or shamed if their parents don't speak English or seem too "different".
Bilingual education specialist Professor Ofelia Garcia* points to the research illustrating that, for students who are learning English, the use of children's home language supports their cognitive growth and long-range academic achievement in English. Shown by various assessments, students who graduate from Dual Language programs develop just as strong, if not stronger, English-language skills as those in monolingual programs. Professor Luisa Costa, another specialist in bilingual education, points out that, counterintuitive as it may seem, English language skills become stronger when the home language becomes stronger. In this way, both languages benefit from each other by building one upon the other.
Bilingual education programs, such as Dual Language, value and build upon the knowledge and skills children already have, in contrast to English only instruction, which often ignores students' already existing literacy and language skills and dilutes the curriculum to "match" their English ability. Rather than feeling valued for what they know, students in English only programs often end up feeling inferior or deficient. Professor Garcia aptly notes that students known as English language learners are, in fact, "emergent bilinguals," a term that more accurately reflects what students already know and who they are becoming.
Though Dual Language programs are widely recognized for their success in educating students to become bi-literate and bi-cultural, these programs are often criticized for creating "cultural enclaves," rather than providing students with the tools they need to participate as responsible citizens of our society. But where is the conflict between participating responsibly in our society and having Dual Language programs? The conflict that the critics assume between being responsible citizens and becoming bi-literate and bi-cultural does not exist; clearly, one's notions of "citizenship," as well as racial and class biases, inform discussions about what being a responsible citizen even means.
These critics are missing the profound relationship between pride in, and connection to one's culture, history, and language and how we learn and become intellectually, emotionally, and socially engaged individuals. They also ignore the fact that the language and background of students who are part of dominant American society are, in fact, already reflected in the public school curricula. There is no better way for all of us to connect with others and to feel part of the larger society than to be grounded in, feel the vibrancy of, and build from our own cultures, backgrounds, and identities. And students deserve to have public schools that enable them to do just that.
At a time when so many of us are fighting for a public school system that respects and serves our children, particularly students from immigrant and low-income families of color who have been severely under-served by our system, support for education that builds upon our students' languages and cultures is more important than ever. Our attitudes toward bilingual education speak directly to the kind of school system and society we want for ourselves and for our children.
*Garcia, Ofelia and Kleifgen, Jo Anne. 2010. Educating emergent bilinguals: Policies, programs and practices for English language learners. New York: Teachers College Press]]>