California School Principals’ Perceptions of the Effects of Proposition 227

Few studies provide insight into how California principals perceive Proposition 227 and its impact on bilingual education. The findings of a survey distributed to 100 randomly selected California principals with bilingual programs, indicate the law passed by California voters has not changed the perceptions of California principals towards bilingual education. It is now eight years since Proposition 227 passed on June 2, 1998, with a majority vote of 61 percent. On that day, Californians voted to end bilingual education and the use of languages other than English for instruction in the public schools. Proposition 227 became law in California on August 3, 1998, governing the education of language minority students in California. Specifically, Proposition 227 requires a one-year English immersion program rather than instruction in the student’s Principals’ Perceptions of Proposition 227 100 Educational Leadership and Administration native language. The proposition, also known as the “Unz Initiative” was the creation of Silicon Valley millionaire, Ron Unz, who personally financed $700,000 of the $1.2 million campaign cost. Throughout the Proposition 227 campaign, Unz blamed bilingual education for the increasing numbers of limited-English-proficient students in California. He claimed that the state’s bilingual programs had a “95 percent annual failure rate,” based on the percentage of English learners who “failed” to become fluent in English each year. In addition, Ron Unz promised that “structured English immersion”—an Englishonly program—would speed up the acquisition of English. Unz further insisted that Proposition 227 would eliminate bilingual education in California, assuring voters that language-minority parents would embrace English-only immersion programs. These claims became the basis for the mandates of Proposition 227 (Crawford, 2003, p. 1). Since then, numerous studies and reports have been undertaken to determine the effects of Proposition 227. The most recent report performed by the California Department of Education announced “significant” gains in the percentage of English learners reaching English proficiency over the last three years in grades 3-11. These gains, a total of 23%, are based on results from the annual (2005) California English Language Development Test (CELDT) taken by the state’s 1.3 million continuing English learners each year. On the other hand, the California Standards Test was measured against the CELDT. The results of this report show that only 10 percent of the English learners who took the CELDT in 2005 were proficient in the academic English (Rumberger & Gandara, 2005). It has also been suggested that at the present time there is no scientifically defensible way to compare districts that have implemented 227 and those that have maintained bilingual programs because there was no statewide English proficiency test in place before 2001 (Rumberger & Gandara, 2003; Thompson, DiCerbo, Mahoney, & MacSwan, 2002). In addition, proponents of bilingual education say that despite Proposition 227 language victory claims, the enrollment numbers and transient rates of English learners have not changed. Bilingual Education advocates such as Jim Crawford (2003), indicated that these trends are a reflection of immigration patterns and not an alleged failure of bilingual education programs as Ron Unz originally claimed. While many of these reports and/or studies provide useful information on English language development, bilingual education, and student achievement, very few provide insight into how principals perceive the law and its impact on bilingual education. After all, principals as school administrators, act as gatekeepers for reform policies, and their translation, interpretation, support, or neglect of these policies can make a Imelda Basurto, Donald Wise, & Ronald Unruh 101 Volume 18, Fall 2006 crucial difference in implementation efforts and thus, results (Pristine, 2002). With the importance of the perspective of school principals in mind, the purpose of this study was to determine how principals in California schools perceive the impact of Proposition 227 on the bilingual programs at their schools.