Mind the Gatekeepers: A Critical Look at Access to Dual Language Education for Students With Disabilities

Introduction

The history of bilingual education in the United States dates back before the nation's founding (Kloss, 1977). Speakers of hundreds of languages have inhabited the country since its early days, affected by policy and sentiment toward the land’s inherent diversity. Periods of expansion and contraction and exclusive and inclusive trends have alternated in relation to shifting political, xenophobic, and colonizing momentum (Mora, 2014; Okamoto & Mora, 2014; Ovando, 2003). California has reflected these historical tensions and, as shown in this chapter, recent developments in policy and practice towards inclusiveness have failed to encompass the needs of Emergent Bilinguals with Disabilities (EBwDs). As with many other issues regarding historically marginalized populations in the context of California’s demographics, the reflections and suggested next steps in policy and practice that can be derived from this chapter bear the promise of supporting transformative developments across the nation.

Recent linguistic trends and research, along with current interest convergence recognizing the benefit of learning multiple languages, have shifted the educational multilingual landscape across the country. The United States continues to expand in numbers of emergent bilingual learners, with over 20% of all school-aged students speaking a language other than English at home (US Census Bureau, 2018). English language instruction policies and pedagogical linguistic practices have evolved organizationally over the past decades, leading to the proliferation and popularity of Dual Language Immersion (DLI) programs (Valdez, Freire, & Delavan, 2016). DLI programs intentionally serve populations of diverse linguistic backgrounds and, in doing so, aspire to fulfill the promise implied by their three pillars: bilingualism and biliteracy, academic achievement, and sociocultural competence (Howard et al., 2018).

Such growth has not been without long-standing criticism of the unevenly distributed benefit for different linguistic groups (Chavez Moreno, 2021; Valdés, 1997) or the toxic economic mindset and neoliberal framing of these programs (Flores 2013; 2019). California's new bilingual era came in 2016 through the passing of Proposition 58, a policy almost exclusively predicated on economic benefit terms (Katznelson & Bernstein, 2017) which included no reference to primary beneficiaries. However, as Flores, Subtirelu, and Tseng (2021) posit, who do these changes benefit?

In her 2020 article “Bilingualism for students with disabilities, deficit or advantage?: Perspectives of Latinx mothers,” Cioé-Peña describes the role of educators as gatekeepers. Using parent testimonies, she illustrates the process in which EBwDs are kept out of bilingual programs through decisions made by educators without family consultation. In this chapter, we illustrate this phenomenon from the perspective of insiders (e.g., teachers and administrators) with different degrees of criticality in regard to outcomes for EBwDs. Thus, when this chapter refers to gatekeeping, we operate from the assumption that labels, rather than an internal condition existing within the student, curtail learning opportunities and create a barrier to accessing DLI programs. Gatekeeping is and will be a systemic issue so long as the process for admission and support of EBwDs in DLI programs remain asystematic.

EBwDs face higher barriers with regard to both access and support in DLI compared to peers without disability labels. While DLI programs provide many cognitive (Bialystok, 2018) and socioeconomic (Gándara, 2018) benefits to both emergent bilinguals (EBs) and English-dominant speakers, research indicates that students with disabilities (SwD) are often precluded from participation in bilingual education programs (Marinova-Todd et al., 2016). Unfortunately, this exclusion is often based on unsupported deficit ideologies that assume that inclusion in these programs would be detrimental to SwD (Castro & Artiles, 2021). This is evidenced in statements such as “It might be easier if he goes to an English-only program…”, a remark made by one participant in the research presented in this chapter. However, exclusion from bilingual programs limits opportunities for SwD who live in environments of increasing cultural and linguistic diversity. When SwD have an opportunity to develop a bilingual skillset, especially when they have prior knowledge of the non-English language being taught in the DLI program, their exclusion further limits their ability to access quality education.