One recent move by the Trump administration was to remove yet another educational safeguard for students whose first language is not English. Jan Resseger explains what happened, and what it means. Reposted with permission.
The Trump administration has rescinded an important federal education guidance document released in 2015 by the Obama administration to protect the right to English language instruction for all public school students whose primary language is not English. The NY Times‘ Dana Goldstein explains:
“The Trump administration has rescinded federal guidance requiring schools to provide a broad range of services to students who are not proficient in English. Those services include language acquisition classes, supports for disabilities and access to grade-level curriculum materials. The guidance was issued in 2015 under President Barack Obama. At that time, the Education and Justice Departments told school districts that failing to provide such services would violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which seeks to prevent discrimination based on race and national origin. But under President Trump, the White House has pursued a near-reversal of the federal government’s interpretation of Title VI. Instead of using the law to seek support for racial and ethnic minorities, as it was established to do, the administration has often argued that efforts to help groups such as immigrant and Black children are discriminatory toward other students.”
For the Washington Post, Laura Meckler and Justine McDaniel provide context for the Trump administration’s move on August 19 to reduce federal protection of the rights of public school students learning English: “The rescission, confirmed by the Education Department on Tuesday, is one of several moves by the administration to scale back support for approximately 5 million schoolchildren not fluent in English, many of them born in the United States. It is also among the first steps in a broader push by the Trump administration to remove multilingual services from federal agencies across the board, an effort the Justice Department has ramped up in recent weeks. The moves are an acceleration of President Donald Trump’s March 1 order declaring English the country’s “official language,” and they come as the administration is broadly targeting immigrants through its deportation campaign and other policy changes. The Justice Department sent a memorandum to all federal agencies last month directing them to follow Trump’s executive order, including by rescinding guidance related to rules about English language learners.”
Meckler and McDaniel describe how, in a July memorandum, Attorney General Pam Bondi justifies the Trump administration’s cancellation of protection of students’ right to instruction in the English language: “Attorney General Pam Bondi cited case law that says treating people, including students, who aren’t proficient in English differently does not on its face amount to discrimination based on national origin. Other guidance related to language access for people using services across the federal government is also being suspended, according to the memo, and the Justice Department will create new guidance by mid-January to ‘help agencies prioritize English while explaining precisely when and how multilingual assistance remains necessary.’ The aim of the effort, Bondi said in a statement published alongside the memo, is to ‘promote assimilation over division.’ ”
Goldstein reports that the Trump administration is not forcing school districts to stop teaching English to students who need English language instruction: “School districts might not immediately change their practices in response to the rescission. Many are committed to providing these services. But experts cautioned that without federal pressure, some districts would weaken their supports for students learning English. Staff cuts at the Education Department have drastically reduced the number of employees who support local schools in the areas of language-acquisition and civil rights.”
The Obama administration’s 2015 guidance traces the legal history of the protection of public school students’ right to learn English. Meckler and McDaniel explain: “The requirement to serve English language learners in school is based on two federal statutes. The first is Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which bars discrimination based on national origin, among other traits. A landmark 1974 Supreme Court case, Lau v. Nichols, interpreted this law to include a mandate for English-language services in schools. The second federal law at issue is the 1974 Equal Educational Opportunities Act, which requires public schools to provide for students who do not speak English. A 1981 case decided in federal appeals court, Castañeda v. Pickard, laid out a test to determine whether schools were properly providing services to English learners in school. In 2015, the Justice and Education departments published their 40-page guidance document, explaining how schools can properly comply with these laws and avoid potential federal investigations and penalties.”
ChalkBeat’s Kalyn Belsha explains further why the guidance for the education of English language learners seems so complicated: “Unlike students with disabilities, whose rights are clearly spelled out in the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, the rights of English learners stem from multiple Supreme Court cases and federal laws that prohibit discrimination based on national origin, which courts have interpreted to mean schools must take steps to help children overcome language barriers so they can obtain a meaningful education. The… (2015 guidance just rescinded) was groundbreaking when it was released under former President Barack Obama and remained a critical resource, according to educators who relied on the guidance. It gathered various case law, legal precedents, and federal requirements regarding English learners in the same place and provided clear examples about how students should be served.”
Meckler and McDaniel quote a former official from the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights describing the injustice likely to ensue now that the 2015 guidance protecting the right to instruction in the English language has been cancelled: ” ‘The Department of Education and the Department of Justice are walking away from 55 years of legal understanding and enforcement. I don’t think we can understate how important that is,’ said Michael Pillera, an attorney who worked at the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights for 10 years and now directs the Educational Opportunities Project at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights. Without pressure from the federal government to comply with the law, it is possible that some school districts will drop services, Pillera said, particularly as many districts struggle with financial pressures. ‘It’s going to ripple quickly… Schools were doing this because the Office for Civil Rights told them they had to.’ ”
Goldstein quotes an extremely troubling statement from an official at the Trump administration’s Department of Education who explains that the 2015 guidance document, “was overly prescriptive and micro-managing of how states implement federal English language programs… States have vastly different needs for this important population of students and are best equipped to determine how best to educate these students while following all applicable federal laws.”
I wonder how this official defines the purpose of education. While most of us define public education as a right whose purpose is to help each child fulfill her or his promise, this official appears to consider it each state’s right to prepare children for a particular role in the social and economic structure. Is the official from Trump’s Department of Education imagining the kind of “manual labor” training that was often provided for former slaves after the Civil War or the domestic and manual labor training that was the purpose of the “outing program” in many American Indian boarding schools? Is this Education Department official imagining that learning English is unnecessary for some children who will never be part of mainstream American life?