running head: impact of legislation on arizona’s english

Running head: IMPACT OF LEGISLATION ON ARIZONA’S ENGLISH LEARNERS 1

Education Politics in Arizona:

The Impact of Legislation on Arizona’s English Learners

Clifton Smith

American Public University

Master’s Thesis

Dr. Roger Cusick

April 26th, 2019

IMPACT OF LEGISLATION ON ARIZONA’S ENGLISH LEARNERS 2

Table of Contents

Abstract ........................................................................................................................... 3

Acknowledgments........................................................................................................... 4

Political and Societal Impacts of Education Policy in the United States and Arizona ... 5

Methods......................................................................................................................... 10

Overview of English Education, Legislation, and Legal Challenges in the United

States ............................................................................................................................. 11

Overview of Spanish-Speaking Immigrants in the United States and Arizona ............ 17

Arizona, English, and Immigration ........................................................................... 23

Hispanic Education in the Southwest and Arizona ....................................................... 27

Overview of Structured English Immersion ................................................................. 31

How Initiatives Work in Arizona .................................................................................. 33

Who English Learners Are............................................................................................ 34

How English Learners Are Educated in Arizona .......................................................... 35

How EL Education is Funded in Arizona ..................................................................... 38

Recent History of Legislation Impacting English Learners in Arizona ........................ 38

Recent Data Regarding Arizona’s Relationship with English Learners ....................... 43

Arizona High school Graduation Rates, 2010–2016 ................................................. 45

High School Graduation Rates in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada, 2010–2017 ...... 55

Two Mysteries in the Data ........................................................................................ 57

Explanations for the Sharp Decline of Arizona’s EL Population/Proportion ....... 58

Explanation for Arizona’s Low English Learner Graduation Rates ...................... 63

Possible Solutions to the Problem of Low EL Academic Success ............................... 66

Discussion ..................................................................................................................... 67

References ........................................................................................................................I

A–E...............................................................................................................................I

F–J .............................................................................................................................. V

K–O ........................................................................................................................... IX

P–T .......................................................................................................................... XII

U–Z....................................................................................................................... XVII


Abstract

The most recent available data nationwide show that Arizona has the lowest

high school graduation rate for English Learners (ELs) in the United States. There are

many possible explanations for this, but explanations such as parental involvement in

early education do not adequately explain why states, especially ones with very similar

demographic profiles, perform better on this metric than Arizona. To better understand

this phenomenon, EL policy in Arizona and other Southwest states is compared.

Special attention is given to the Arizona policy of Structured English Immersion (SEI)

introduced after the passage of the English-only voter initiative Proposition 203.

The chief findings are that SEI has not had an obvious impact on EL student

success but that a state-mandated 4-hour block of instruction likely is to blame for

Arizona’s comparatively poor EL student graduation rates. Perhaps more concerning,

analysis of data surrounding Arizona’s EL population suggests that Arizona may be

misclassifying roughly 70,000 EL students per year. Recent legislative changes may

ameliorate the effects of the 4-hour block, but many students may still not have access

to an education plan best suited to them due to the apparent miscategorization.


Acknowledgments

This paper owes an enormous debt to the many researchers who compiled the

many reports and analyses cited below. It also owes a great debt to my long-time

friend and roommate Trevor Helminski for being a sounding board for my various

ideas throughout the writing process and for invaluable feedback at every stage. I

would also like to thank the Internet for teaching me that, in a Word-created

document, after clicking and following a link, you can hold the Alt key and tap the

back arrow to return to your previous location in a given document.


Political and Societal Impacts of Education Policy in the United States and

Arizona

Education policy is one of the most consequential policies that affect societies

generally, but it may not be self-evident that education policy is a valid topic for

scrutiny in political science. While education policy may not appear as directly

political as, for example, voting policy, education policy, nevertheless, is intimately

related to political policy, both directly and indirectly. The fact that ELs, the

educational subgroup that is primarily analyzed here, are more likely to be immigrants

or children of immigrants has further political implications and invites analysis of state

and federal immigration policy.

One way in which education policy and political policy are directly related is in

the impact of educational attainment on individuals’ likelihood of political

participation. Berinsky and Lenz (2011) wrote that the positive correlation between

educational attainment and political participation is “[o]ne of the most consistently

documented relationships in the field of political behavior.” Ojeda (2018), in turn,

recently confirmed the body of evidence demonstrating the positive correlation in the

United States between wealth and likelihood of participating in politics. As wealth is

also positively correlated with educational attainment (Figure 1), it is perhaps not

surprising that educational policy impacts political participation.


In some cases, education policy can be even more profoundly shaped by the

legislative policies of a given U.S. state. In Arizona’s case, the state is, per the

Initiative and Referendum Institute1 (2019), one of a minority of states that allows

legislation to be passed or vetoed via direct vote (i.e., ballot initiative). A key piece of

legislation that will be explored in this analysis (primarily in its effects), Proposition

203, was a result of such a ballot initiative passed in 2000 (IRI, 2019). This English-

only legislation dramatically altered the education of English learners in the state.

Education policy can affect the economic health of societies which in turn

affects the physical health of individuals. Per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

(BLS) (2018), educational attainment is highly-correlated with unemployment rate and

income (Figure 2). At the same time, the Associated Press Health & Science

1 The Initiative and Referendum Institute of the University of Southern California is a non-partisan

educational organization that studies initiatives and referenda, the key expressions of direct democracy

(IRI, 2019).

Figure 1. Percentage of children under age 18 in families living in poverty, by child’s

race/ethnicity and parents’ highest level of educational attainment, 2016 (NCES, 2018)


Department (2018) recently reported that 1.5 years of life expectancy were lost for

each 10 percentage point increase in unemployment rate. This supports similar

research by Singh and Siahpush (2016) showing that unemployment is highly

correlated with adverse health outcomes.

Figure 2. Unemployment rates of people 25 years and over, by educational attainment, seasonally

adjusted, 1992-2017 (BLS, 2018)

In U.S. classrooms, there are currently around 5 million English learner (EL)

students (NCES, 2018). Officially, Arizona’s ELs comprise about 7.3% of the total

population (80,000 out of the roughly 1.1 million total K–12 students), though the

following analysis (see Two Mysteries in the Data) suggests that this official figure is

probably wrong and that the actual number may be closer to 150,000 (Smith, 2019).

While Arizona does not have the largest EL population in the country, it does see the

lowest portion of those students, 30%, graduate high school (NCES, 2018).


Figure 3. Total ELs by State, 2016–2017 (Smith, 2019)

Given the known negative outcomes to individuals who do not graduate high

school, this low educational attainment rate among any large group should be seriously

addressed. This large population of non-high-school-graduates is also likely to

adversely impact Arizonans generally. It will, for example, negatively impact

employers because they will not be able to as readily find educated workers.

According to data from Georgetown University (2019), there were only about 44,000

good jobs2 in Arizona in 2015 available to job-seekers with less than high school

education (Georgetown University, 2019).

Low educational attainment among a large group of people in the state is also

likely to have a negative impact on individual poverty and the state’s overall poverty

rate. As Figure 1 illustrates, higher educational attainment has a strong positive

association with reduced rates of poverty. The largest group of ELs in Arizona is

Spanish speakers who, in 2014, comprised 87% of the state’s EL population (Milem,

2 Per the report, “good jobs” provide earnings of $35,000+ annually for those under age 45 and earnings

of $45,000+ annually for workers age 45 and older (Georgetown University, 2019).


Salazar, and Brown, 2016). The relatively poor educational outcomes for ELs in

Arizona, most of whom are Spanish speakers, may explain, in part, why the poverty

rate among Hispanics in Arizona was 25.1% in 2017 and 14.8% among the group

classified as “whites”3 for the same year (University of Arizona, 2017).

As low educational attainment is a strong correlate of unemployment, there are

also many adverse health outcomes associated with low educational attainment.

Antonisse and Garfield (2018) reported that unemployment is strongly associated with

such negative mental health outcomes as depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem.

They further reported that negative physical impacts such as hypertension and

increased mortality are also moderately associated with unemployment (Antonisse and

Garfield, 2018). Proctor, Wilson-Frederick, and Haffer (2018) also reported directly

on the strong association of suboptimal health outcomes among the U.S. population of

individuals with limited English proficiency. Among those suboptimal health

outcomes were higher rates of disability, poor self-rated health, and higher rates of

psychological distress and mental illness (Proctor, Wilson-Frederick, and Haffer,

2018).

As with education and immigration policy both in the United States and in

individual states, EL policy in Arizona in 2019 does not exist in a vacuum; it is the

culmination of roughly the entire history of the United States and of Arizona. There

are many moving parts comprised of federal, regional, and state policies regarding

education and immigration, and these policies may not always agree.

3 “White” is a nebulous term and more so when comparing this group to Hispanics. Ennis, Rio-Vargas,

and Albert (2011) noted that, per the U.S. Census Bureau, people of Hispanic origin may be of any race.

As of the 2010 Census, 53% of the Hispanic population identified as White and no other race. However,

when “white” is referred to in this analysis, it is used to mean “non-Hispanic white.”


Methods

This analysis uses existing education and demographic data to compare

educational outcomes and draw population inferences in Arizona after various policies

were enacted. This entails analyzing roughly two decades of educational outcomes in

Arizona to attempt to discern policy impacts. This analysis also uses existing data to

compare educational outcomes in Arizona to higher-performing states in the region,

especially California, Colorado, and Nevada.


Overview of English Education, Legislation, and Legal Challenges in the

United States

English instruction in the United States has a long history, in day-to-day

education and in legislation. As previously noted, Spanish is the language most widely

spoken by ELs in Arizona and more broadly in the United States. However, this was

not always the case for either. Ovando (2003) wrote that, in the 18th Century, several

states passed legislation that authorized bilingual education. A plethora of languages

coexisted with English during this period:

German in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri,

Nebraska, Colorado, and Oregon; Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish in

Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and

Washington; Dutch in Michigan; Polish and Italian in Wisconsin; Czech in

Texas; French in Louisiana; and Spanish in the Southwest. (Ovando, 2003)

The push for English only legislation began in the late 19th Century and was

targeted at “civilizing” Native Americans. Up to that point, educators of Native

Americans, usually Christian missionaries, received a federal appropriation (beginning

as early as 1819) from what was known as the “civilization fund” (Ovando, 2003;

Bartelt, 1992, p. 137). However, Bartelt (1992) noted, this effort at “civilizing” Native

Americans was generally accomplished via communication in the students' native

language in earlier stages while English was gradually introduced over time. This

began to change with a Congressional English-only recommendation for Native

American education in 1868 (Bartelt, 1992). Then, in 1887, the Commissioner of

Indian Affairs issued a proclamation:


Instruction of Indians in [their] vernacular is not only of no use to them but is

detrimental to the cause of education and civilization and will not be permitted

in any Indian school over which the government has any control.... This

language which is good enough for a white man or a black man ought to be

good enough for the red man. It is also believed that teaching an Indian taught

in his own barbarous dialect is a positive detriment to him. The

impracticability, if not impossibility of civilizing Indians of this country in any

other tongue than our own would seem obvious. (Bartelt, 1992)

As waves of European immigrants came to the United States in the late 19th

Century (Figure 4), existing settlers, concerned about competition of other languages

and cultural influences the new immigrants might bring, helped pass the Naturalization

Act of 1906 (Ovando, 2003). This act stipulated that one’s ability to speak English was

necessary to become a naturalized U.S. citizen (Ovando, 2003). After the United

States declared war on Germany during World War I, education in German was

abolished in most states. Within 6 years, 34 states had passed laws dictating English-

only instruction (Ovando, 2003).


Figure 4. U.S. Immigration Flows by Country (% of U.S. Population), 1820s–2010s

(Galka, 2016)

After the period of English-only sentiment, and until the 1960s, English

immersion was the dominant method of education instruction of minority students

(Language Proficiency Assessment Committee4, 2011). For the most part, students

who did not master their coursework were simply held back until they had achieved

mastery of both the new language and of the subject (LPAC, 2011). A change would

come in 1963, however, after Florida experienced a large influx of Cuban refugees.

To help absorb and integrate the new population, Floridians in Dade County

successfully implemented a bilingual education program whose success would be

emulated in other schools across the country (LPAC, 2011).

In 1964, Lyndon Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act into law which “prohibits

discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in programs and

activities receiving federal financial assistance” (LPAC, 2011). (This will factor

prominently in court cases discussed later involving English-only education.) Four

4 The Language Proficiency Assessment Committee is a statutorily-formed committee of the Texas

Education Agency charged with overseeing instructional programs for limited English proficient

students (LPAC, 2011). The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is the state agency that oversees primary

and secondary public education in Texas (Texas Christian University, 2019). Texas has the second-

largest EL population in the country (Figure 3).


years later, he would also sign into law The Bilingual Education Act, Title VII of the

Elementary and Secondary Education Act (LPAC, 2011). This would establish federal

guidelines regarding bilingual education and allocate funding for economically

disadvantaged language minority students (LPAC, 2011).

Between 1968 and 1994, minor changes were made to Title VII of the

Bilingual Education Act (LPAC, 2011). Over this period, eligibility of students who

have limited English proficiency (LEP) for access to bilingual programs was expanded

(LPAC, 2011). Funding was also provided for LEP students with special needs as well

as for family English literacy programs (LPAC, 2011). Revisions in this period also

placed a three-year limit on access to programs for English learners (LPAC, 2011).

Increased funding to state education agencies was implemented, expanding

funding for “alternative instructional programs” (primarily those where only English

was used) from 4%–10% in 1984 to up to 25% in 1988 (Stewner-Manzanares, 1988).

This was largely a result of a general advocacy of English-only education by Ronald

Reagan’s Secretary of Education William Bennett who argued that bilingual education

was a failure (de Jong, 2011).

In 1994, provisions were added to Title VII that reinforced professional

development programs and increased attention to language maintenance and foreign

language instruction (LPAC, 2011). In 7 more years, George W. Bush would sign the

No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) into law (LPAC, 2011). This law

reauthorized the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and allocated funds

to states to improve educational outcomes for English learners (LPAC, 2011).


Over this period, as Wright (2010) reported, there were various state and

district legal cases where parents sued school districts. One major case was

Independent School District v. Salvatierra (1930). This suit was brought by parents in

Del Rio, Texas at a time when Texas routinely segregated students into white, black,

and Hispanic groups (Orozco, 2016). Parents learned that the Del Rio School Board

was planning to segregate Mexican students from their non-Mexican classmates in a

planned expansion of school facilities (Orozco, 2016). Jesús Salvatierra and several

other parents filed suit charging that students of Mexican descent were being denied

benefits afforded “other white races” (Orozco, 2016). A District Court ruled in favor

of Salvatierra, but the decision was overturned by the Court of Appeals of San Antonio

(Orozco, 2016).

Other important legal cases of the period included Roberto Alvarez vs. the

Board of Trustees of the Lemon Grove School District (1931) and Méndez v.

Westminster School District (1947). Alvarez began after the Lemon Grove school

board attempted to prohibit the Mexican-American student population from attending

class in the regular quarters and instead forced them to attend school in a hastily-

constructed barn-like structure that the Mexican-American families would come to call

la caballeriza (the stable) (Stratton, 2016). In the case, heard in San Diego Superior

Court, Judge Claude Chambers ruled in favor of the parents, arguing that “separate

facilities for Mexican American students were not conducive toward their

Americanization and retarded the English-language development of the Spanish-

speaking children” (Stratton, 2016).


Méndez, a case heard by the U.S. District Court for the Central District of

California, was another California case challenging the segregation of schools for

Mexican-American students (Macías, 2014). The Central District court ruled on behalf

of the parents, the school districts appealed, and the Central District’s opinion was

upheld in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit (Macías, 2014). Within two

months of the ruling, California’s governor Earl Warren signed the country’s first bill

officially ending segregation in public schools (Macías, 2014). Warren would use

arguments presented by the Ninth Circuit seven years later when ruling in the Supreme

Court case Brown v. Board of Education (Macías, 2014).

Another important case regarding and affecting the education of minority

students was Lau v. Nichols. In Lau v. Nichols, heard by the U.S. Supreme Court in

1974, the Court unanimously ruled,

The failure of the San Francisco school system to provide English language

instruction to approximately 1,800 students of Chinese ancestry who do not

speak English, or to provide them with other adequate instructional procedures,

denies them a meaningful opportunity to participate in the public educational

program and thus. (LPAC, 2011)

Further clarification of Lau v. Nichols occurred with the Southern District

hearing of Castañeda v. Pickard in 1981. In response to this case, the Fifth Circuit

Court of Appeals outlined a three-step test (now commonly referred to as the

“Castañeda Test”) for determining whether school districts were behaving

appropriately in assessing programs serving ELs:

(a) The school program must be anchored in sound educational theory,


(b) adequate resources and personnel must be evident in the school program,

and

(c) the school program must reflect sound practices and results, not only in

language but also in such content areas as math, science, social studies, and

language arts. (Ovando, 2003)

In 1982, the Fifth Circuit ruled that Texas could not deny children of

undocumented citizens education conforming to the Castañeda Test because this

would severely disadvantage the children. The court ruled that this was not permissible

under a provision of the Fourteenth Amendment which states “nor shall any State …

deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The

majority in the 5-4 decision ruled that children are people and that Texas could not

prove a “compelling state interest” for treating these children differently from other

children (Oyez, 2019).

Overview of Spanish-Speaking Immigrants in the United States and Arizona

To understand the history of English learners in Arizona, it is useful to first

understand the demographics of Arizona. To understand the demographics of Arizona,

it is, in turn, necessary to understand immigration in Arizona. In case it is not obvious,

EL education is intimately tied to immigration from predominantly non-English-

speaking countries. ELs in Pre-K–12 are overwhelmingly native born, with 85% of

Pre-K–5th-graders being native born and 62% of 6th to 12th-graders being native born

(Zong & Batalova, 2015). However, while EL students are overwhelmingly native

born, 81.3% of adults in the United States with limited English proficiency are foreign


born (Zong & Batalova, 2015). Among all people with limited English proficiency

nationwide, Spanish is the most common language spoken (Zong & Batalova, 2015).

As with other states sharing a border with Mexico, Arizona has among the

largest proportions of Hispanics and Spanish-speakers in the United States (Figure 5).

This comparatively high proportion is not historically high, however. As Krogstad and

Lopez (2014) noted, in 1870, the proportion of people in the Arizona territory of

Hispanic or Latino heritage was 60.9% (Figure 6). This high proportion stemmed, in

part, from the fact that, until 1848, most of the Southwest was controlled by the

Spanish or by Mexico. By the time Arizona became a state in 1912, its proportion of

Hispanics had fallen to about 35%. The slow and then more rapid decline thereafter

corresponds roughly to a period of mass deportations discussed below.

Figure 5. Top Latino States in 2014, by population and Share

(Stepler and Lopez, 2016)


In 1846, the United States and Mexico went to war due to border disputes after

the U.S. annexation of Texas. Griswold del Castillo (2006) noted that, in 1848, as part

of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (which ended the war), interim Mexican president

Manuel de la Peña y Peña agreed to the terms of the new boundaries of the United

States and Mexico. The treaty resulted in roughly half of Mexico’s total land area

becoming part of the United States as present-day California, Nevada, Utah, most of

Arizona, about half of New Mexico, about a quarter of Colorado, and a small section

of Wyoming (Griswold del Castillo, 2006). It is easy to imagine this period being

dizzying for residents in the area, as the territory had belonged to Mexico since its

independence from Spain only 27 years prior (Stull, 2012).

Figure 6. Hispanic Share of Population in Arizona, 1870–2012

(Krogstad and Lopez, 2014)

Although Mexico lost a huge portion of its land in the Mexican-American War,

Mexicans living in U.S. territory previously belonging to Mexico were granted

significant property rights under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Griffin (1992)

noted that, as part of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the United States granted


citizenship to all Mexicans living in territories acquired from Mexico. Article VIII of

the treaty states the following:

Mexicans now established in territories previously belonging to Mexico …

shall be free to continue where they now reside, or to remove at any time to the

Mexican Republic, retaining the property which they possess in the said

territories, or disposing thereof, and removing the proceeds wherever they

please, without their being subjected, on this account, to any contribution, tax,

or charge whatever. (Mintz and McNeil, 2018)

Mexicans could elect to cross the newly-created U.S.-Mexico border into

Mexico to claim Mexican citizenship, or they could elect to stay and claim U.S.

citizenship. Those who elected to stay but did not claim U.S. citizenship would

automatically become U.S. citizens by default after one year. The treaty further

stipulated that Mexicans electing to stay on what, after February 1848, would be the

U.S. side of the border, would have inviolable rights to their existing property, as

would their heirs or any other Mexican-Americans acquiring the property by contract

(Mintz and McNeil, 2018).

However, as Lunda (1998) noted, promises in the Treaty were, by no means,

reliable guarantees that Mexican property rights were secure. Two major pieces of

1860s legislation that, intentionally or unintentionally, challenged Mexican property

rights were the Homestead Act, which granted 160 acres of public land to settlers, and

the Morrill Act, which defined that eligible states receive 30,000 acres of federal land

for each member of congress the state had. Where disputes arose between Mexican-

American land owners and those wishing to take advantage of land grants under the


Homestead and Morrill Acts, judicial rulings generally favored the non-Mexican

settler or U.S. government officials (Lunda, 1998).

By 1900, Griffin (1992) noted, there were about 500,000 Mexicans living in

the United States due, in part, to labor needs in building the railroad system. However,

within three decades, public opinion would turn against Hispanics living in the United

States. During the Great Depression, mostly by buses or even on railroad systems they

may have helped build, between 1 million and 2 million Hispanics were deported to

Mexico with around 60% of them being U.S. citizens (Balderrama & Rodríguez,

2006). Public support for these deportations stemmed from the exploding

unemployment rate that accompanied the Depression and desires of the majority non-

Hispanic population to occupy those jobs (Balderrama, 2015).

As Martin (2003) would note, the Bracero Programs of the 1910s and of the

1940s would bring roughly 2 million guest workers from Mexico, mainly for

agricultural work. However, because there were no penalties for hiring workers

outside of the program, and workers found to not have documentation were swiftly

given documentation, the population of undocumented Braceros quickly outgrew that

of the documented Braceros (Martin, 2003).

As with the formation of the Know-Nothing Party to oppose the influx of

German and Irish immigrants in the 1840s, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, and the

Gentleman’s Agreement of 1907 to limit Japanese immigration, this influx of Mexican

immigrants also resulted in backlash (Bryant, 1999). This backlash culminated in

Operation Wetback in 1954 in which U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Services

removed 1.1 million Mexicans in fiscal year 1954 (Martin, 2003).


While people south of the border continued to be invited and then deported,

immigration across the United States continued from around the world. The National

Academy of Sciences (2015) noted that the most recent period of mass immigration

was a result of the Immigration Act of 1965. This legislation replaced the quota system

of the 1920s with an immigration system open to every country in the world (NAS,

2015). This led to a large increase in immigration from Asia, Africa, Latin America,

and the Caribbean, but also limited the number of legal immigrants from the Western

Hemisphere (NAS, 2015). As most such immigrants come to the United States across

the southern border, the Immigration Act of 1965 also set the stage for the increase in

undocumented border crossers (NAS, 2015).

Figure 7. Share of Total Immigrant Population in the Southwest, 1975–2014

(Smith, 2019)


Arizona, English, and Immigration

The 2000 initiative Proposition 203 (“English for the Children”) mentioned

above, would not mark the first time that Arizonans voted on an English-only

mandate. In 1988, Arizona voters narrowly passed Proposition 106 which would make

English the official state language (Del Valle, 2003). The law read as follows:

(1) The English language is the official language of the State of Arizona.

(2) As the official language of this State, the English language is the language

of the ballot, the public schools, and all government functions and actions.

(3) (a) This Article applies to:

(i) the Legislative, Executive and Judicial branches of government;

(ii) all political subdivisions, departments, agencies, organizations and

instrumentalities of this State, including local governments and

municipalities;

(iii) all statutes, ordinances, rules, orders, programs and policies;

(iv) all government officials and employees during the performance of

government business. (Del Valle, 2003)

Schmid (2001) noted that the law was argued to be the most restrictive Official

English law in the country up to publication of his report. Schmid (2001) further noted

that the Arizona Supreme Court overturned the law unanimously, making Arizona the

first state since 1920 to have an Official English law overturned. The Court held that

the law violated the First Amendment and the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause

in the Fourteenth Amendment (Schmid, 2001).


Téllez, Sanidad, and de la Fuente (2011) noted, however, that this also would

not be the last attempt to make English the official state language. In 2006, voters

approved Proposition 103, (“English as the Official Language Act”) (Téllez et al,

2011). The law requires that all “official state business” such as in courts and in

agencies such as the Arizona Division of Occupational Safety and Health, state Equal

Employment Opportunity Commission and the State Department of Labor (DOL) be

conducted in English (Téllez et al, 2011). Following passage of the proposition,

Spanish language complaint forms, instructions, and information were removed from

the DOL website (Téllez et al, 2011).

A year after the successful passage of the “English as the Official Language

Act,” Arizona passed the Employer Sanctions law (or “Legal Arizona Worker’s Act”)

(Téllez et al, 2011). The law was ostensibly made to penalize employers for hiring

undocumented workers, allowing the state to legally suspend or revoke the licenses of

businesses for employing undocumented immigrants (Téllez et al, 2011). However, in

one study of the law’s effects, only one employer was found to have been prosecuted

under the law’s authority while hundreds of undocumented workers were arrested

(Téllez et al, 2011). This law is discussed further below in the section “The

Introduction of E-Verify.”

In 2004, Arizonans passed Proposition 200 (“Protect Arizona Now”), a bill

modeled on a similar one in California meant to deny public services to undocumented

residents (Hendricks, 2005). One organization that supported the bill was the

Federation for American Immigration Reform which claimed an economic burden of

undocumented immigrants to the Arizona education system of $820 million annually


(Hedding, 2004; Hendricks, 2005). Hendricks (2005) reported that, at the time of

passage, 44% of Arizona’s 750,000 foreign-born residents were estimated to be

undocumented compared to 26% in California. Hendricks (2005) further reported that,

in 2004, U.S. Border Patrol arrested more undocumented immigrants crossing the

Sonora-Arizona border illegally than in Texas, New Mexico, and California combined.

Two decades before members of the Arizona legislature tried to determine

which languages could be used for public discourse and attempted to discourage

undocumented immigration to the state, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of

Plyer v. Doe. In that 1982 case, the Court ruled that all children, regardless of

immigration and legal status, are guaranteed access to public K–12 education (Biswas,

2005). While Proposition 200 could not affect K–12 education due to Plyer v. Doe, the

Arizona Senate would nevertheless entertain a bill that would appear to be in direct

conflict with that decision. Williams (2011) noted that, in 2011, the Arizona Senate

Appropriations Committee passed SB 1611, which included a provision requiring that

parents of K–12 students provide schools proof of legal status. Williams (2011) further

noted that the bill was voted down within three weeks after, first, hundreds of students

marched at the state capitol in protest and, second, 60 Arizona chief executives sent a

letter to the legislature to suggest that the legislation would be bad for business.

In April of 2010, the Arizona legislature passed SB 1070 and HB 2162 (Morse, 2011).

The former, titled “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act,”

instituted penalties to immigrants 18 years of age or older who fail to produce proof

that they are in the country legally if asked for such proof by law enforcement (Morse,

2011). It also mandated that law enforcement officers attempt to establish legal status


during a lawful stop, detention, and arrest (Morse, 2011). The Arizona state legislature

ostensibly attempted to address concerns that the law might result in racial profiling by

passing HB 2162 which stipulated that law enforcement “may not consider race, color,

or national origin” when implementing the law “except to the extent permitted by the

United States or Arizona Constitution.” Of this stipulation of HB 2162, Miller & Chin

(2012) wrote,

This sounds like a ban on racial profiling, but in fact it authorizes it. The U.S.

Supreme Court in Brignoni-Ponce (1975) and the Arizona Supreme Court (in

State v. Graciano (Ariz. 1982) and State v. Becerra (Ariz. 1975)) permit race to

be used as a factor in immigration enforcement.

President Trump’s October 2018 announcement of his intent to end birthright

citizenship by executive order echoes legislation introduced again by the Arizona

Senate in 2011 (Arthur, 2018). The Arizona bill, SB 1308, would have resulted in the

state issuing a different birth certificate to children born to undocumented parents

compared to children born to at least one permanent resident or naturalized citizen

(Beard Rau, 2011). This was in addition to the failed SB 1405 which would have

required hospital staff to request documents proving a patient’s legal status before

administering non-emergency medical services (Beard Rau, 2011). These bills, along

with three others, were ultimately rejected by the Arizona Senate (Hing, 2011).


Hispanic Education in the Southwest and Arizona

The story of Anglo-Hispanic relations and education in Arizona begins before

Arizona was a state. Ring (2013) noted that Arizona and New Mexico acquired their

distinct shapes after Abraham Lincoln signed legislation dividing the New Mexico

Territory into their modern forms in

1863. Prior to that, the southern part of

the territory was dominated by a largely

Anglo population (perhaps unexpected as

one might assume the larger Hispanic

population would be closer to the

border). When the Civil War began, the

Arizona Territory seceded as the

southern portion of what is now Arizona

and New Mexico. After the Confederate

defeat, Union officials decided to

separate the territories along a north/west

plan to create a political border between

a large group of Confederate

sympathizers (Ring, 2013).

Stull (2012) noted that, in 1906, a plan of joint statehood between the Arizona

and New Mexico Territories was proposed by the U.S. government. Delegates of the

Arizona Territory, led by the Arizona Territorial Teachers Association, vehemently

opposed joint statehood, arguing that the education system in the territory would be

Figure 8. Geography of Arizona and New Mexico

1845–1912 (Ring, 2013).


disrupted by the union (Stull, 2012). Arizona Territory school instruction at the time

was conducted exclusively in English by statute, and ability to speak English was

required to serve in local government; the New Mexican Territory, by contrast, had a

roughly 50% Spanish-speaking population and conducted bilingual courts and

legislation (Stull, 2012).

Arizona delegates noted opposition of what they estimated to be 98% of the

state’s population to the merger in a document titled “Protest Against Union of

Arizona with New Mexico” (Patterson, 1906; Stull, 2012). In the document, which

they submitted to Congress on February 12, 1906, they wrote that their own population

was “distinctly American, composed of people from all parts of the United States and

the best type of immigrants from other countries” (Patterson, 1906). They continued

that their own “ideals of social conditions, Christian civilization, modern progress, and

future development are of the highest” (Patterson, 1906). Among their reasons for

eschewing the merge were,

The decided racial difference between the people of New Mexico, who are not

only different in race and largely in language, but have entirely different

customs, laws and ideals and would have but little prospect of successful

amalgamation….

The objection of the people of Arizona, 95 per cent of whom are Americans, to

the probability of the control of public affairs by people of a different race,

many of whom do not speak the English language, and who outnumber the

people of Arizona two to one…. (Patterson, 1906)


This foundational streak of uneasiness with Mexicans and Spanish speakers

would appear to still be active in the state nearly 65 years later as Arizona, along with

other Southwest states, would struggle to assimilate and educate their sizeable

population of people not proficient in English. In 1972, the U.S. Commission on Civil

Rights (USCCR)5 released a report on the state of Mexican-Americans in the U.S.

education system titled “The Excluded Student.” Among the Commission’s findings

were that a majority of schools and districts in the Southwest exclude Spanish speakers

from the education process by failing to provide adequate Spanish language materials

and parental access to teachers (USCCR, 1972). Arizona and Colorado reported the

worst rates with Arizona reporting that it failed to send notices home in both English

and Spanish 82.4% of the time and failed to conduct PTA meetings in both languages

98% of the time (USCCR, 1972).

The USCCR (1972) further reported that, as part of the Bilingual Education

Act of 1968, the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare allocated $7.5 million

to 76 bilingual education programs. Highlighting the Southwest’s unique history with

large populations of Spanish-speaking English learners, the Commission noted that 65

of those 76 programs (86%) were for Spanish-speaking programs while 51 of the 76

(67%) were in the Southwest. What became of the $7.6 million allocation is not

entirely clear given the Commission’s reported data showing the low percentage of

schools offering bilingual or ESL services (Figure 9 and Figure 10). It is difficult to

imagine that the figures could have been worse, but it is possible that the numbers

5 The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was created by the Civil Rights Act of 1957. The Commission

is still operational, having been reauthorized most recently by the Civil Rights Commission

Amendments Act of 1994 (USCCR.gov, 2018).


would have been even lower without the federal allocation. Arizona fared the worst

with less than half a percent of schools reporting that they offered bilingual education

(USCCR, 1972). Arizona was second-worst of the group in terms of percent of its

schools offering ESL services, with only 9.3% of its schools offering such services

(USCCR, 1972).

Figure 9. Percent of Schools Offering Bilingual

Education and the Percent of Mexican American

Pupils Enrolled in Bilingual Education Classes by

State (USCCR, 1972)

Figure 10. Percent of Schools Offering ESL and

the Percent of Mexican American Students

Enrolled in ESL classes by State (USCCR, 1972)

The federal allocation mentioned above is of some importance as it invites the

consideration of how schools and districts fund education of ELs. Federal allocations

only account for about 11% of funding for primary and secondary education which

means that states must decide how much to invest in the education of English learners

(Sugarman, 2016). However, this endeavor can be far from straightforward. Although

most English learners, especially in Arizona, are Spanish speakers, even ELs in this

group do not all require the same type of education plan. For example, some may have

little formal education in any language while others may be entering the U.S.

educational system with varying amounts of formal education in their native language

and at varying grade levels (Sugarman, 2016). Teachers of ELs may also require

special certifications, and some educational models may require multiple teachers

within the same classroom (Sugarman, 2016).


In some cases, funding may be further complicated by an especially wide

variety of languages spoken in a given district. While Spanish is the dominant

language among ELs, it is not the only language spoken by them. In a 1988 report on

20 years of the impacts of the first Bilingual Education Act, Stewner-Manzanares

noted the difficulties of schools with a highly multilingual student population. One

school reported that it would simply not be feasible to implement bilingual education

programs because there were 21 different language groups represented in its student

population (Stewner-Manzanares, 1988).

A bilingual solution in this case would seem to require the employment of 21

different teachers all proficient in both English and the student’s native language.

Aside from the funding involved and depending on the languages involved, it may be

difficult for districts with such challenges to find teachers proficient in both English

and the student’s native language. It may also be difficult to find appropriate learning

materials in all of the students’ native languages.

Overview of Structured English Immersion

One answer to the various issues involved with bilingual education is English-

only education, and the form that English-only education has taken in Arizona is

known as Structured English Immersion (SEI). Moore (2014) noted that, broadly, SEI

may refer to either Structured English Immersion or Sheltered English Immersion,

though Arizona refers to it as the former. It first appeared in academic literature as

simply Structured Immersion or SI. Its first advocates, in a 1981 and follow-up 1983

report for the Office of Planning, Budget and Evaluation (OPBE), were sociologist

Keith Baker and management intern Adriana de Kanter. Baker and de Kanter, Moore


further noted, were tasked with examining the efficacy of transitional bilingual

education programs and their alternatives. Baker and de Kanter reviewed a total of 39

programs over both reports and determined, based on the success of SI in four of the

studies, that it was the most effective program for helping learners acquire a new

language (Moore, 2014).

Moore (2014) noted that three of the four studies Baker and de Kanter based

their support of SI on were French-Canadian models. This was a serious leap, Moore

(2014) contends, because those models were meant to teach English speakers French

while Baker and de Kanter used them to conclude that the same models would be

better-suited than existing ones for getting Spanish speakers proficient in English.

A further distinction between the Structured Immersion model outlined by its

originators and its implementation in Arizona is that Baker and de Kanter expected

that the teacher would be proficient in the EL's first language. They wrote, “The

immersion teacher understands L1 [the student's first language], and students can

address the teacher in L1; the immersion teacher, however, generally replies only in

L2” (Moore, 2014). However, as outlined below, this is not, overwhelmingly, how the

process has been interpreted and administered in Arizona.

Figure 11. Overview of Arizona’s 4-Hour Block of EL Instruction (ADE, 2019)


How Initiatives Work in Arizona

As previously noted, Arizona’s English acquisition program for ELs was

instituted after passage of Proposition 203 in 2000 by ballot initiative. Because of

Arizona’s peculiar history of ballot initiatives, any changes that might need to be made

to the law can be very difficult. This makes an overview of Arizona’s history of

initiatives of potential use. According to the Initiative and Referendum Institute at the

University of Southern California (2019), 24 U.S. states allow voters to enact new

laws or constitutional amendments or repeal existing laws or constitutional

amendments via ballot initiative.

In a 2013 analysis, Berman found that, of the 425 initiatives proposed in

Arizona between 1970 and 2013, only 16% made it to the ballot with only half of

those becoming law. This means an overall approval rate of 8% of all proposed

initiatives. Initiatives have been with Arizona since the state’s first and only

constitution was adopted in 1910 (Berman, 2013). The initiative process in Arizona

and throughout the United States is a form of direct democracy that allows voters to

circumvent legislators they believe are defying popular opinion (Berman, 2013).

Per Berman (2013), for most of the state’s history, there is little record of the

state legislature trying to alter legislation passed by voters in initiatives. This changed,

however, in the mid- and late-1990s, as the state legislature was charged by the public

and media with tampering with ballot initiatives (Berman, 2013). This came to a head

in 1997 when the state legislature gutted a medical marijuana measure (Berman,

2013). This led to the successful passage, in 1998, of the “Voter Protection Act” (HB

2244) which established the requirement that three-fourths of both chambers of the


Arizona state legislature are required to change or overturn laws passed via initiative

and then only to “further the purpose” of the law (Berman, 2013).

Who English Learners Are

According to Debrandt and Gaquin (2007), prior to 2001, English learners

were popularly referred to as Limited English Proficient (LEP) students. Both terms,

along with the currently-favored English learner (EL) were and are, the writers note,

used to describe students who are served in specific programs of language assistance

such as English as a Second Language, High Intensity Language Training, and

bilingual education (Debrandt & Gaquin, 2007). This group of students is not

homogenous, as ELs come from a variety of backgrounds. Among ELs are students

newly-arrived in the United States who fluently speak a language other than English,

students who have had formal education in any language that has been interrupted,

students who are refugees, and students who are international adoptions (Colorín

Colorado6, 2019).

This group of mostly children has been described using a dizzying array of

terminology over the years. Besides the aforementioned EL, ELL, and LEP, Webster

and Lu (2012) reported on many of the other competing terms: Language Minority

Student (LMS), English as Second Language Learner (ESL), English as Additional

Language Learner (EAL), Culturally Linguistically Diverse Student (CLDS), (person

with) Limited English Speaking Ability (LESA), and Second Language Learner

(SLL). Webster and Lu (2012) settled on Learner of English as an Additional

6 Colorín Colorado is an educational service of the Greater Washington Educational

Telecommunications Association that provides free English learning information, activities, and advice

to parents, schools, and communities around the United States (Colorín Colorado, 2019).


Language (LEAL) as an ideal term as it is “a politically and culturally appropriate and

respectful term that utilizes person first language while also acknowledging existing

language competencies.”

These are also students having a PHLOTE (Primary Home Language Other

than English) (Center for Student Achievement, 2016). Arizona Revised Statute 15-

756 stipulates that the primary or home language for all new students be identified as

outlined by the superintendent of public instruction. This is accomplished by

furnishing parents with the PHLOTE home language survey which, according to a

note on the current form, has been in effect since April 4, 2011 (ADE, 2019).

How English Learners Are Educated in Arizona

Lillie et al (2010) noted that the 2006 Arizona House Bill 2064 created an

English Language Task Force (Arizona Revised Statute 15-756.01), removing EL

oversight from the Arizona Department of Education (ADE) and placing it in the

hands of the state legislature. This legislation was instituted to dismantle and replace

bilingual education in the state for grades K–12 and replace it with a version of

Structured English Immersion (SEI), a method of English-only instruction discussed

above (Lillie et al, 2010).

Lillie et al (2010) visited 18 different schools chosen to be representative of

Arizona’s schools generally. The researchers sought schools with both high and low

proportions of ELs as well as schools in rural and metro areas to capture as many

school types as possible. The researchers focused their assessment on four main areas:

classroom environment, materials/resources, SEI practices, and promotion/graduation

(Lillie et al, 2010).

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1IlEivQ-dOCfEqRVN8IDmiQd_ha35I8S1


In terms of classroom environment, Lillie et al (2010) found that it was, for the

most part, no different from that in non-SEI classrooms. Students sat at tables,

primarily in groups or in pairs at the elementary level and primarily in rows of desks at

the upper grade levels. The primary difference the researchers noted were that the EL

students were separated from their English-speaking peers for 4 hours of English-only

instruction mandated by the English Language Learner Task Force as part of their

English Language Development (ELD) program. These students, Lillie et al (2010)

further noted, became socially isolated from the broader school community.

Moore (2014) noted that students are grouped together by grade level,

proficiency level, or both, according to performance on the state’s language

assessment, the AZELLA (previously SLEP). This means, Moore continues, that

students are first grouped according by grade level and proficiency level. If there are

not enough students to make a class, students within the same grade but at different

levels of proficiency may be mixed within the same class to increase the class size

(Moore, 2014).

Lillie et al (2010) found that, in classrooms with a mix of EL and non-EL

students, the “otherness” of ELs would still be emphasized as EL policies and different

EL curricula were posted prominently on boards for all students to see. The

researchers further reported that many teachers “looked down” on the EL population,

assuming they were not, in fact, ELs but simply had behavior issues (Lillie et al,

2010). Meanwhile, some students referred to ELs as “wetbacks” and refused to

associate with them (Lillie et al, 2010).


In terms of materials/resources, Lillie et al (2010) found that materials were

often not appropriate for the students’ age, grade, or interest levels, a violation of

Arizona School Board Rule (SBR) R7-2-306, F.3 which states, “The curriculum of all

English language learner programs shall incorporate the Academic Standards adopted

by the Board and shall be comparable in amount, scope and quality to that provided to

English language proficient students.” Lillie et al (2010) found that students often felt

that the materials were unengaging and tailored for a younger audience. Teachers often

tried to compensate for the inappropriate, outdated, or nonexistent materials by

creating their own materials or purchasing them with their own money (Lillie et al,

2010).

In terms of SEI instruction practices, Lillie et al (2010) found a variety of

teaching methods used, with some better-attested than others. One questionable

practice was that of interrupting the EL student in the middle of a sentence in order to

have the student correct a grammatical or pronunciation mistake (Lillie et al, 2010).

This generally had the effect of emphasizing the correctness of the language being

used and often embarrassing the student while discouraging natural communication

(Lillie et al, 2010).

In terms of promotion/graduation, Lillie et al (2010) noted that, per ARS §15-

752, students will ideally become proficient within one year of beginning SEI, while

five to seven years is a very common timeframe given in academic literature regarding

child and young adult language acquisition. Lillie et al (2010) noted a widespread

sentiment expressed by teachers that former education in the students’ home country

typically meant that they would be out of the program in three to four years.


Meanwhile, students with no education in their home country would often have

difficulty ever moving out of the program (Lillie et al, 2010).

How EL Education is Funded in Arizona

An important aspect of any program is whether it is adequately funded. While

no resource appears to exist comparing per-pupil EL expenditures, it may be useful to

consider how Arizona determines funding and how the state has funded the program in

the past. As stipulated in Arizona Revised Statute §15-756.03(A), educational

institutions may apply for EL funding using the state’s SEI Fund Application. The

funding application process is accomplished in three phases:

Phase I: Average Class Size Survey

Phase II: The Incremental Teacher Spreadsheet, used to calculate the

incremental cost of implementing the models.

Phase III: The Budget Application. Approved salaries/benefits are documented

in the application for review by ADE. (von Prisk, 2018)

According to the Arizona Average Class Size Survey User Guide linked to by

von Prisk (2018), a local education agency (LEA) will use a portal on the Arizona

Department of Education website to report their expected EL class sizes for the current

school year. This information is used to determine funding and to determine how

many teachers will be allocated to a given school (ADE, n.d.; ADE, 2016).

Recent History of Legislation Impacting English Learners in Arizona

The recent history of legislation impacting ELs in Arizona begins with a legal

case involving an 8-year-old girl named Miriam Flores. Carroll (2006) wrote that


Flores, a resident of Nogales, Arizona, had received bilingual instruction in most

classes up to the third grade. When Flores entered third grade, however, all instruction

was in English, and Flores’s grades sank rapidly (Carroll, 2006). Southern Arizona

Legal Aid filed a class-action lawsuit in the Federal District Court on behalf of

Miriam’s mother (also Miriam) based on the Equal Educational Opportunities Act

(EEOA) of 1974 (Mahoney, MacSwan, & Thompson, 2005; Thomas, Aletheiani,

Carlson, & Ewbank, 2014). In the suit, Flores v. Arizona, the plaintiffs argued that

ELs in the district were taught by underqualified teachers, that the state lacked

adequate processes for identifying and monitoring ELs, and that the state lacked

adequate funding for EL instruction (Mahoney et al, 2005).

In 2000, Thomas et al (2014) noted, District Court judge Alfredo Marquez

agreed with the plaintiffs and ruled in their favor. Marquez ruled that Arizona’s EL

program was based on sound legal theory but that the state had not allocated adequate

funding for appropriate implementation. Marquez noted several deficiencies stemming

from this inadequate funding: an unfavorable EL-to-teacher ratio, too few classrooms

for the ELs, a lack of qualified teachers, too few teachers’ aides, insufficient access to

tutoring services, and inadequate teaching materials for both the ELs’ content areas

and their English classwork (Lillie et al, 2010).

The case, Flores v. Arizona, resulted in an August 2000 consent decree7

between the Arizona Superintendent Lisa Graham Keegan and the plaintiffs containing

five requirements: standardized methods of identifying LEP students; uniform

7 Per Pahre (2017), a consent decree is a legally-binding judgment that resolves a case without any party

admitting guilt or liability. The decree usually requires a party to complete a certain objective over a

given timeframe under supervision of the issuing court (Pahre, 2017).


performance standards for determining and reassessing English proficiency; alignment

of curriculum with academic standards and instructional strategies appropriate for

English learners; criteria on individual education plans (IEPs) for English learners; and

monitoring and compliance responsibilities by the Arizona Department of Education.

However, according to a 2013 report by the Arizona Senate Research Staff (ASRS8),

the decree did not specify or allocate funding.

The Arizona Senate Research Staff (2013) further reported that, in 2000,

Arizona voters approved Proposition 203 which replaced existing bilingual education

with a requirement that all classes be taught in English unless classified as English

Language Learners, in which case they would be educated separately via Structured

English Immersion (SEI) for a period of no more than a year (ASRS, 2013). SEI

programs require that all classroom instruction and materials be in English but that the

pupil’s native language may be used when necessary (ASRS, 2013). The thrust here,

in case it is not clear, was to get as many non-English-proficient students into SEI

programs as possible.

The possibility of bilingual instruction was not entirely precluded, as a waiver

could be requested by the student’s parent, exempting the student from the SEI

requirement (ASRS, 2013). In order to qualify for a waiver, the child must

demonstrate an appropriate mastery of English as measured by acceptable tests, must

be over 10 years of age and have the consent of the school principal and educational

staff, or must have special needs (A.R.S. § 15–573). Wright and Daniel (2006) noted

8 The Arizona Senate Research Staff is a division of the Arizona state government that “provides

nonpartisan, objective legislative research, policy analysis and related assistance to the members of the

Arizona State Senate” (ASRS, 2019).


that such waivers “were designed to be intentionally hard to get and easy for schools

and districts to deny.” Wright and Daniel (2006) additionally asserted that state

education leaders enacted further efforts that make it nearly impossible for any EL

under the age of 10 to participate in a bilingual education program.

The Arizona Senate Research Staff (2013) reported that, as no funding had

been set aside after the 2000 consent decree, the District Court hearing the Flores case

ordered Arizona to conduct a cost study. The Arizona Department of Education

released results of the study in May 2001 where an estimated price range of $0 to

$4,600 per EL student was given (ASRS, 2013). In December of 2001, the Arizona

legislature approved HB 2010 which increased per pupil spending from roughly $179

to $340 (ASRS, 2013). In April of the following year, plaintiffs in Flores challenged

the $340 amount as arbitrary (ASRS, 2013). The District Court ordered another cost

study to be completed by January of 2002 (ASRS, 2013).

If this cost study was conducted, no evidence of its existence could be found as

of publication of this report. However, as the Arizona Senate Research Staff (2013)

noted, the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL)9 began its own cost study

in August 2004 that was completed in February 2005. As a result, the NCSL

recommended funding ranging from $670 to $2,571 per pupil, based on grade level

and various at-risk factors (ASRS, 2013). In December 2004, the plaintiffs asked the

District Court to again intervene, and the District Court ordered the state to increase

EL funding by the end of the 2005 legislative session (ASRS, 2013). As a result, the

9 The NCSL is a bipartisan non-governmental organization that provides research and technical

assistance to its members which include legislators and staff across the U.S. states, territories, and

District of Columbia (Moody’s, 2019).


Arizona legislature passed HB 2718 which was vetoed by Governor Napolitano based,

among other reasons, on the claim that the bill illegally required supplanting, the

replacing of the funding of state obligations with federal money (Haver, 2018).

Arizona Senate Research Staff (2013) noted that two more bills followed, HB

2718 and HB 2002 that were also vetoed by Governor Napolitano citing issues with

tax credits for private investment and the likelihood that the provision still did not

satisfy the District Court’s requirements (ASRS, 2013). Napolitano allowed HB 2064

to become law in March 2006 without her signature10, predicting that the court would

find it inadequate (Jiménez-Castellanos, Combs, Martínez, and Gómez, 2013).

By this point, the Arizona Senate Research Staff (2013) noted, the District

Court had instituted a fine of $1 million for each day that the state failed to comply

with its funding requirement. By the time HB 2064 went into effect, the penalty had

reached $21 million (ASRS, 2013). In March and April 2006, the District court ruled

that the $21 million should be distributed to school districts and found that HB 2064

still did not satisfy 2000 District Court order (ASRS, 2013).

Jiménez-Castellanos et al (2013) noted that, among other stipulations of HB

2064, it created an English Language Learner task force. This group assumed a role

previously held by the State Board of Education and was to develop research-based

models of SEI (Jiménez-Castellanos et al, 2013). One outgrowth of this development

was the requirement that English learners receive 4 hours of English language

development daily for the first year of being in the SEI program (Jiménez-Castellanos

10 “The governor must sign or veto legislation within five days of the day after transmittal (excluding

Sunday), or it becomes law without his/her signature. If legislation is transmitted after the session

adjourns, the governor must act within 10 days of adjournment (excluding Sunday), or the legislation

becomes law without being signed” (StateScape, n.d.).


et al, 2013). In this SEI model, students were isolated from non-EL peers for 4 hours

out of a typical 6 to 6 ½-hour school day (Jiménez-Castellanos et al, 2013).

Jiménez-Castellanos et al (2013) further noted that, in August 2009, the

Arizona legislature passed SB 1096, which appropriated $40.7 million to fund

Structured English Immersion (SEI) programs in the state. Again, Napolitano allowed

the bill to become law without her signature, and again the plaintiffs complained to the

District Court that the state was still failing to comply with the 2000 judgement

(Jiménez-Castellanos et al, 2013).

Jiménez-Castellanos et al (2013) further noted that the case would eventually

go to the Supreme Court in 2009 as Horne v. Flores. Superintendent Horne argued that

Arizona’s changes to its EL program did satisfy the requirements of the consent decree

in Flores v. Arizona (Jiménez-Castellanos et al, 2013). In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme

Court ruled in favor of Horne, the majority arguing that the EEOA did not mandate a

funding requirement nor a funding source (Jiménez-Castellanos, 2013).

Recent Data Regarding Arizona’s Relationship with English Learners

To get an idea of possible issues with EL education in Arizona, it may be

useful to examine trends in this population of students nationally, regionally, and

compared to states with demographics similar to those of Arizona. To begin with,

below is an overview of high school graduation rates in the United States along with

some major demographic groups: Asian/Pacific Islander, white, black, Hispanic,

American Indian, and Limited English/English Learner:


Figure 12. U.S. High School Graduation Rates by Selected Groups, 2010-2016

(Smith, 2019 – “Graph – EL U.S. 2010-2016”)

Data for ELs were not available for all states prior to 2010, so that information

is not included here. The chart shows a general trend upward in graduation rates. The

group with the lowest high school graduation rate is ELs. Although their graduation

rate climbed over the period from 57% to 66%, even 66% is still 19 percentage points

lower than the overall average. This suggests that ELs generally struggle academically

compared to peers who are not categorized as ELs.


Now, the high school graduation rates for just Arizona high schoolers:

Arizona High school Graduation Rates, 2010–2016

Figure 13. Arizona High School Graduation Rates, 2010–2016

(Smith, 2019 – “Graph: EL AZ 2010–2016”)

Overall, Arizona falls short of the national average for every demographic

except for Asians/Pacific Islanders. Arizona falls especially short with respect to ELs.

Like the United States in general, and especially southwestern states, most of

Arizona’s ELs are Spanish speakers (Bialik, Scheller, and Walker, 2018). So, a

possible explanation for Arizona’s low EL graduation rates might be that Spanish

speakers with limited English proficiency struggle more than other groups with

language acquisition. To entertain this possibility, one might compare Arizona to other

southwestern states that have an equally high proportion of Spanish-speakers with

limited English proficiency.

To do this, it would be useful to find one or more southwestern states where

demographics are as similar to Arizona as possible while also having better EL


graduation rates than Arizona’s. For this analysis, the U.S. Southwest is defined as

California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Texas. The following

graph shows the total numbers of EL students enrolled in public elementary and

secondary schools for those states from 2000 to 2015:

Figure 14. EL Student Population in the U.S. Southwest, 2000-2015

(Smith, 2019 – “All Southwest”)

It should, perhaps, not be surprising that California and Texas have the largest

population of EL students as they are the two most populous U.S. states (Sawe, 2018).

Where these states are compared to Arizona in this analysis, it is with the caveat that

their large populations might be responsible for any differences between them,

Arizona, and other less populous states. If those states are removed, the following

chart results:


Figure 15. EL Population in Smaller/Less Populous U.S. Southwest States, 2000–2015

(Smith, 2019 – “Smaller States”)

What should be clear from this chart is that four of the five states are fairly

close in their overall population of EL students over the entire 15-year period captured

in this dataset. Arizona’s results show a precipitous decline between 2005 and 2010,

though, that invites further exploration. One might think that this decline is simply a

matter of the EL student population having been miscounted in 2000 and 2005.

However, the larger number is more in line, proportionally, with the other

southwestern states as shown in the following graph:


Figure 16. EL Student Proportion in the U.S. Southwest, 2000-2015

(Smith, 2019)

As this chart shows, Arizona’s EL student population was the same as the

mean between 2000 and 2005. After that, it plummeted until it was on par with Utah’s.

This invites the question of why Utah’s EL student proportion appears so far below the

mean, and that deserves further exploration. This probably stems partially from the

fact that Utah has a smaller Hispanic population and proportion of Hispanics than

other Southwest states along with having a larger white population (Figure 17). As

noted elsewhere, in the United States overall, a state’s EL population is strongly

correlated with that state’s Hispanic proportion. This may further invite the question of

why Utah’s racial demographics differ so much from surrounding states, but that is

outside the scope of this study.


Figure 17. Racial Demographics in the U.S. Southwest, 2017 (Smith, 2019)

Focusing exclusively on the Southwest may invite the criticism that an

intentionally-biased, small sample has been used in order to illustrate a non-existent

phenomenon. However, looking at the full dataset for all 50 states and DC points to

Arizona as the loan outlier. If one analyzes the full dataset of ELs as a percentage of

total enrollment for all 50 states, one finds an average decline of .05 percentage points

(Smith, 2019). Most states, 30 in total, saw an increase in the proportion of ELs, 18

states saw no change, and 18 states saw a decrease (Smith, 2019). Among the states

that saw a decrease, the average decrease was 1.78 percentage points, with the highest

decrease being Arizona at 10.9 percentage points, Montana at 4.1 percentage points,

and New Mexico at 3.5 percentage points (Smith, 2019).

While the average proportion of ELs in all states may help to illustrate to what

degree Arizona is an outlier, it may be helpful to also look at the total increases or

decreases in all states. This can be problematic, as the above cases of Montana and

New Mexico illustrate. While Arizona has a 2018 population estimated at roughly 7.2


million, New Mexico has only roughly 2.1 million and Montana just over 1.5 million

(U.S. Census Bureau, 2018). With the basic mathematical caveat that, the larger a

state’s population, the larger the change will need to be in order to be statistically

significant, the mean change in EL population for all 50 states between 2005 and 2010

was a decline of 303 EL students (Smith, 2019).

Obviously, this is a much smaller change than Arizona’s decline of 98,536

over the same period (Smith, 2019). However, the decline was very similar in

California at 97,213 (Smith, 2019). Here, though, one encounters the problem of

comparing states with significantly different population sizes. In absolute numbers,

Arizona and California saw the largest drop by far. The next closest decline was New

Mexico’s at 10,125, while the next largest overall changes were in North Carolina

(increase of 29,615), Texas (increase of 26,926), and South Carolina (increase of

21,991) (Smith, 2019).

While Arizona’s decline was close to that of California’s, the decline in

California represented only a 6.2% decrease compared to the 56.4% decrease in

Arizona, again the largest decrease of any state in the country (Smith, 2019). The next

largest percentage decrease was that in Montana, which saw a 50.8% decrease when

its EL population fell from 6,711 in 2005 to 3,300 in 2010 (Smith, 2019). While this is

clearly a large proportional change, it is a relatively small change in absolute numbers.

If one takes the overall mean percentage decline in all 50 states between 2005 and

2010, one finds a mean increase of 11.8%, an enormous 68 percentage point

difference from Arizona’s change (Smith, 2019). If one calculates the mean of only the

18 states that saw a decline in EL population over the same period, one would find a


mean decline of 17.3%, a difference of 39 percentage points compared to Arizona’s

change (Smith, 2019). There does not appear to be any way to look at Arizona’s EL

population decline between 2005 and 2010 as anything but anomalous.

Based on the demographics (i.e., size, population, Spanish-speaking

population) of New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado, these states stand out as being the

best basis for comparison for Arizona’s expected EL proportion. Of those states, the

state closest in overall population is Colorado:

Figure 18. Population History of Selected U.S. Southwest states, 1875-2025

(Wolfram Alpha/U.S. Census Bureau, 2019)

If the goal is ultimately to have EL education outcomes that are as a

comparable as possible to the best-performing states, it might be useful to know how

well the best-performing states are doing. The following chart shows how the top 10

states performed between 2013 and 2016:


2013-2014 2014-2015 2015-2016

State

EL Grad

Rate % State

EL Grad

Rate % State

EL Grad

Rate %

West Virginia 89 Arkansas 86 West Virginia 93

Arkansas 84 West Virginia 86 Arkansas 86

Iowa 83 Iowa 83 Iowa 81

Indiana 80 Kansas 77 Maine 78

Delaware 77 Maine 77 Kansas 77

Idaho 75 New Hampshire 77 South Carolina 76

Kansas 75 Rhode Island 77 Tennessee 76

New Hampshire 75 South Carolina 76 New Jersey 75

South Carolina 73 Alabama 75 Rhode Island 74

Figure 19. Top 10 U.S. States for EL High School Graduation Rates, 2013-2016 (Smith, 2019)

Given that some of the top states for EL graduation rates over several recent

school years were West Virginia, Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, and South Carolina, one

might wonder why one of those states should not be a guide state that other states

should try to emulate with respect to EL policy. The chief problem there is that West

Virginia also has among the lowest enrollment of EL students in the country. In the

2015 school year, the state enrolled a total of 2,812 EL students compared to

Arizona’s reported 67,195 and Colorado’s 104,289 for the same year (NCES, 2017).

As Figure 20 shows, West Virginia has a very low number of EL students (in

fact, second only to Vermont in the entire country). Four of the seven states with high

EL graduation rates that appear in Figure 19 two or more times have far fewer

numbers of EL students compared to the U.S. Southwest and to the smaller U.S.

Southwest states defined above:


Number of EL students

State 2000 2005 2010 2012 2013 2014 2015

Arkansas 11,850 20,709 31,537 33,889 35,961 37,799 38,376

Iowa 11,253 15,156 21,733 21,839 23,137 25,875 27,300

Kansas 14,878 24,671 39,323 42,590 45,530 47,209 52,789

Maine 2,410 3,353 4,792 4,980 5,201 5,177 5,091

New Hampshire 2,728 2,876 3,965 3,714 3,513 3,605 4,116

South Carolina 5,121 14,388 36,379 41,072 40,340 42,480 42,574

West Virginia 920 1,944 1,788 2,084 1,879 2,707 2,812

Figure 20. Number of EL Students in Top-Performing States in EL

High School Graduation Rates, 2000–2015 (Smith, 2019)

While Arkansas, Kansas, South Carolina, and Iowa have larger EL

populations, these states have significantly different demographic makeups compared

to those of Arizona and most other southwestern states:

Figure 21. Racial Distribution of U.S. Southwest States and Some EL Graduation Top-

Performing States (Smith, 2019)


Of these states, the two most similar to Arizona demographically are Colorado

and Nevada. South Carolina is somewhat close but has a much larger African-

American population. New Mexico does not have a large African-American

population, but it does easily have the largest proportion of its population that is

Hispanic. This leaves Colorado, Nevada, and Arizona as the three most similar states

overall by overall population, EL population, and racial demographics. This is not to

assert that different population makeups have a definite impact on a state’s education

or, more specifically, on a state’s EL population; it is simply an effort to reduce the

number of confounds in the comparison to the greatest degree possible.

To further demonstrate the strong relationship between a state’s proportion of

Hispanics and its EL population, one can perform a Pearson correlation. If one

performs this calculation using U.S. Census data for 2000 and NCES data for 2000,

one finds a strong, statistically significant, positive correlation between a state’s

proportion of Hispanics and its EL population: r = .87, p = < .01 (Smith, 2019). If one

performs the calculation again using 2010 data, one again finds a strong positive

correlation between a state’s proportion of Hispanics and its proportion of EL

students: r = 0.82, p < .01 (Smith, 2019).

Given this strong positive correlation, one might further attempt to discern

what a state’s total number of EL students should be in 2010 and other years by

looking at the state’s proportion of Hispanics in 2000. One can demonstrate the strong

correlation between the states’ EL proportion in 2000 and their EL student proportion

in 2010 with another Pearson correlation. When one performs this calculation, one

finds a strong correlation: r = 0.84, p = < .01 (Smith, 2019). Overall, states’ EL


proportion stayed very consistent between 2000 and 2010, making a state’s 2000 EL

student proportion highly predictive of what that state’s EL proportion would be in

2010. In fact, and this should be obvious looking at the raw data, changes in the EL

population greater than 2 percentage points over any given period are rare, making it

possible to predict, within a narrow margin, a state’s EL proportion for a given year

based on its EL proportion for any other given year.

The point of these comparisons is to try to better understand where Arizona’s

population of ELs could be, in terms of educational outcomes and population size, if

conditions for the students in the state were different somehow. Shifting back to

educational outcomes, considering that Colorado and Nevada are the most similar U.S.

states to Arizona, it might be useful to see a comparison of just those three states:

High School Graduation Rates in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada, 2010–2017

Figure 22. High School Graduation Rates in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada,

2010-2017 (Smith, 2019)


This chart includes only the overall graduation rate, Hispanic graduation rate,

and EL graduation rate for the specific years. The Hispanic graduation rate is included

because Hispanics and Spanish-speakers make up the majority of the EL population in

the United States and these states more specifically. Here, Arizona emerges as at or

near the top state for overall and Hispanic high school graduation rates. This may be

noteworthy as one might expect that, because most ELs in the United States and

Arizona are Hispanic, the low graduation rates of ELs in Arizona should lower the

graduation rate of the Hispanic population more broadly. This makes sense if ELs are

only counted for one group (the EL group) and not also for their various racial

subgroups.

Like the other two states, Nevada shows a generally upward trend. It generally

shows only somewhat better EL results than Arizona. Over the last year of reported

below, however, Nevada very suddenly exceeds many states in every category. Figure

23 more completely illustrates the unusually large jump in high school graduation

rates for most groups and the leap in EL graduation rates. While this appears suspect,

Figure 23. Nevada High School Graduation Rates, Select Groups, 2010–2016 (Smith, 2019)


it may represent the new normal for Nevada. However, even if the data are reliable, it

is probably still wise to wait for further data and explanations as to how Nevada has

made such significant improvements so quickly.

One possible explanation for the large difference in EL graduation rates

between Arizona and especially Colorado is that the latter state allows instruction in

the student's native language whereas Arizona requires that students be removed from

their regular classes for English-only language instruction (Milem et al, 2016).

However, Faltis (2011) noted that the leading paradigms, English-only immersion and

bilingual education, both have mixed outcomes in a variety of different studies.

Because the results have been so varied, the comparison to Colorado should be useful.

If Colorado, for example, uses a mixed model of immersion and bilingual education,

that could be useful for policy recommendation.

Two Mysteries in the Data

From the various charts and datasets presented above, two mysteries emerge:

First, the steep drop-off in Arizona’s EL population and EL student proportion (Figure

15 and Figure 16, respectively) between 2005 and 2010 and, two, Arizona’s

consistently low EL high school graduation rate. Because this analysis focuses on

outcomes of legislation on EL students, there are two primary types of legislation that

might impact EL students: legislation impacting education in the states and, because

most EL speakers in the United States and in Arizona are of Latin American origin,

legislation impacting Arizona immigrants. The following paragraphs address how

legislation has impacted this population in an effort to explore these mysteries.


Explanations for the Sharp Decline of Arizona’s EL Population/Proportion

Miscategorization

In 2011, the Arizona Auditor General’s Office reported on a decline of 38% of

the EL student population in Arizona between fiscal years 2008 and 2010. This meant

a decline in the EL student population of roughly 64,000 from 170,000 to 106,000. In

the report, it is asserted that the number declined because EL students became

proficient at higher rates, 15% withdrew from the program, and because there were

35% fewer new EL students (Arizona Auditor General, 2011).

These figures from the Auditor General appear problematic on close scrutiny.

What is interesting about the assertion that there were 35% fewer students is that, one,

that would represent most of the 38% decline. If 15% withdrew on top of the 35% who

did not enter, that would mean a decline of roughly 90,000 EL students or 47% rather

than the 38% decline initially cited. Although the report credits students becoming

proficient at higher rates for this decline, the same report also notes that nearly two-

thirds of districts had not implemented SEI programs (Arizona Auditor General’s

Office, 2011).11

Further deepening the mystery of the precipitous decline of the EL population

are conflicting numbers. While the Arizona Auditor General’s Office (2007) reported

138,449 EL students in fiscal year 2007, the National Clearinghouse for English

11 It may be worth noting that, if it is the case that ELs became proficient at higher rates during this

period while only a third of schools implemented SEI programs, this may be a discredit to the efficacy

of the state’s SEI program.


Language Acquisition and Language12 (NCELA) reported that figure as 166,571 for

the 2007-2008 school year, a difference of 28,122 (Smith, 2019). A similar

discrepancy of 29,680 students in an Auditor General report from 2010 seems to

suggest that the difference could be due to the Auditor’s office using fiscal year data

versus the school year. However, the 2007 federal figure is higher while the 2010

federal figure is lower than the Auditor’s (Smith, 2019).13

The only competing explanation is offered by the Arizona education analysis

organization Center for Student Achievement14 (2016) which wrote that the

precipitous drop in Arizona’s proportion of Arizona students being classified as ELs is

probably a deficiency due to too-lenient proficiency tests more than to an actual very

large change in that population in Arizona. The comparisons in Figure 16 suggest that

Arizona’s EL student proportion prior to roughly 2009 was more in line with the mean

proportion of the other, demographically similar southwestern states at roughly 15%.

Goldenberg and Rutherford-Quach (2010) further support this idea. In their

report “The Arizona Home Language Survey: The Identification of Students for ELL

Services,” they found that Arizona's method of determining EL status miscategorized

11–18% of students who should have been classified as ELs. Garcia, Lawton, and

Figueiredo (2010) reported that Arizona changed from a model employing multiple

12 Per Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB), NCELA supports the U.S. Department

of Education's Office of English Language Acquisition, responding to Title III educational needs

(NCELA, 2019). 13 The Auditor’s Office was contacted for clarification, but no response has been received as of April

25th, 2019. 14 As of 2017, the Center for Student Achievement was categorized by the Arizona Department of

Education as a School Improvement Supporting Partner and Professional Development Contractor

through the Arizona State Procurement Office. The Center for Student Achievement “provides

customized support for both districts and charter schools through its school improvement research, data

analysis, and professional development” (ADE, 2017).


proficiency tests in 2010 to the Stanford English Language Proficiency Test (SLEP) as

the sole measure of the English proficiency. This method, researchers found, had the

effect of prematurely reclassifying students (Garcia, Lawton, & Figueiredo, 2010).

While this may account for some of the decline in the EL population, it does not

account for the entire decline in question.

The Introduction of E-Verify

Kobach (2008) noted that, in 2007, Arizona became the first state to require

employers to verify the legal status of potential hires via the federal government’s “E-

Verify” system in addition to establishing that businesses found in violation would risk

suspension of their business licenses. Kobach (2008) argued that, because all Arizona

businesses were required to use the employment verification system, unauthorized

aliens would self-deport due to lack of employment opportunities. Kobach (2008)

continues that the law had the immediate impact of causing thousands of alien tenants

to vacate their residences. Kobach (2008) further asserts that this exodus of the

affected population resulted in a $48.6 million surplus in the Arizona public school

system for FY 2008.

Kobach does not make the claim that most English learners in Arizona are

undocumented immigrants. However, as noted above, there is a strong relationship

between a state’s Hispanic population and its share of English learners. If this is paired

with the fact that most undocumented immigrants are from Latin American and

predominantly Spanish-speaking countries (Figure 24), Kobach’s assertion invites

exploration of whether an exodus of the state’s undocumented population caused the

steep decline in the EL student population.


Figure 24. Source Regions of Undocumented Immigrants in the US, 2007

and 2016 (Smith, 2019; Cohn & Passel, 2018)

To address this question, one can look at how changes in the total student

population compare to changes in the EL student population. Looking at the

populations of total students and EL students in Arizona between 1995 and 2017

(Figure 25), it is not obvious that these two populations are related. For example,

between 1995, the total student population increased steadily, while the EL population

stayed fairly flat. While the total student population saw a brief, sharp decline in the

mid-2000s and then began a slight increase, the EL population, after its sharp decline

in the late 2000s, has stayed flat. As expected, if one performs a Pearson correlation

comparing the changes in the two populations between 1995 and 2017, one finds no

statistically significant correlation (r = .14, p < .10) (Smith, 2019).


Figure 25. ELs and Total Students in Arizona, 1995–2017

(Smith, 2019 – “AZ Changes Compared”)

Kobach’s remarks, taken with Arizona’s long battle to not fund EL education

as ordered by a previously-discussed consent decree, invite the question of just how

costly it is to educate immigrants and their children. In its 2017 report “The Economic

and Fiscal Consequences of Immigration,” the National Academy of Sciences

explored this issue. They found that, in general, immigrants have a net positive

economic impact on society in the long term. They noted, for example, that the steady

inflow of immigrants in the United States has helped prevent stagnation in the United

States such as that in Japan caused by Japan’s aging population (NAS, 2017). In terms

of budgets, though, they found that, while immigrants are a net positive to the federal

government, they are often a net negative with respect to state governments, namely

due to the cost of educating the children of immigrants (NAS, 2017). However, a

solution to the state fiscal burden appears in this federal surplus created by

immigrants, as it may be a simple matter of shifting federal surplus back to states to

help the states recoup the cost of educating children of immigrants.


Explanation for Arizona’s Low English Learner Graduation Rates

One possible explanation offered for Arizona’s poor EL education outcomes is

Arizona’s unique method of EL instruction: Structured English Immersion (SEI).

Lillie, Markos, Arias & Wiley (2012) analyzed the English immersion model as

implemented in Arizona. They were not critical of this method of language instruction

and efficacy of acquisition so much as they found its implementation in Arizona to be

lacking. They did, however, write that, in Arizona,

ELs do not have access to quality instruction, or a curriculum that is

comparable in amount, scope, and quality to that of non-ELs. Furthermore,

deficiencies in funding abound, limiting ELs’ opportunities for the

compensatory education needed to help them catch up academically. (Lillie et

al, 2012)

It is not possible to compare EL graduation rates in Arizona prior to and after

implementation of SEI in Arizona as a measure of the degree to which SEI has

impacted education outcomes for ELs in Arizona. This is due to a paucity of EL

graduation data prior to 2000. However, the interesting history of the implementation

may provide a useful basis of comparison. As previously mentioned, Arizona’s SEI

program came about after the passage of Proposition 203 by ballot initiative in 2000.

As Crawford (2001) noted, this initiative was championed by California businessman

Ron Unz, creator of Wall Street Analytics and publisher of The American

Conservative from 2007 to 2013 (Pioneer Press, 2015).

Unz first spent large sums of his own money to get an English-only ballot

initiative, commonly referred to as “English for the Children,” passed in his home state


in 1998 (Crawford, 2001). To get Proposition 203 on the ballot in Arizona, Unz

provided $186,886 of the $229,786 (81%) of the money spent on advertising and

signature-gathering (Crawford, 2001). However, a similar ballot initiative attempted in

Colorado was removed by the state supreme court which argued that, among other

reasons, the initiative was deceptive and misleading on the issue of parental choice

(Crawford, 2001).

The Arizona measure was more restrictive than the one passed in California

because the Arizona measure required more effort for parents to request exemption

(Crawford, 2001). Moore (2014) noted that, in contrast to the similar proposition

passed in California, the Arizona version also allowed parents to sue any school

personnel who used a language other than English. Yet another version of the initiative

was passed in Massachusetts in November 2002 as Proposition 202 (Moore, 2014). As

with the other initiatives, this one was engineered to almost completely eliminate

bilingual education in the state (Moore, 2014).

That English-only legislation passed in three states and failed in a fourth at

roughly the same time affords an opportunity to compare the EL graduation rates in all

four states to see the potential impact that English-only legislation might have had on

all four:


EL Graduation Rates in Arizona, Colorado, California, and Massachusetts,

2010–2017

If English-only education has impacted EL graduation rates in these four states,

it is not obvious how. If it had, one would expect Arizona, the state with the most

restrictive policy, to be at the bottom, which it is. One would then expect California to

have the next-worst record, as it also has a less-restrictive English-only mandate, but it

does not have the next-worst record. This apparent lack of impact in states with

English-only outcomes supports the results of an analysis by Griffin (2004) in which

he found that English immersion had no impact on the rate at which ELs were

reclassified as English proficient and no impact on their test scores.

That SEI is not clearly the problem leaves its specific implementation in

Arizona as perhaps the next most likely explanation for the state’s poor EL graduation

rates. The previous section of this paper “Recent History of Legislation Impacting

Figure 26. EL Graduation Rates in Arizona, Colorado, California, and Massachusetts, 2010–2017

(Smith, 2019).


English Learners in Arizona,” describes the creation by the Arizona State Legislator of

an English Language Task Force that, in turn, mandated a 4-hour block of English-

only instruction. This mandate causes students to be removed from their normal

coursework to receive English instruction for 4 hours per day while other students are

learning such subjects as math, science, and social studies, and is a reasonable

explanation.

Possible Solutions to the Problem of Low EL Academic Success

In their case studies in actual Arizona classrooms, Lillie et al (2010) noted that

it was rare for EL teachers to make use of the students’ “funds of knowledge,” their

existing cultural or linguistic knowledge. The researchers cite work by the National

Academy of Sciences that found that children learn most efficiently when they are able

to build on their existing knowledge. Lillie et al (2010), however, found that teachers

in 11 of the 18 classrooms studied actively discouraged student dialogue in a language

other than English. An example given is a child who shared his discovery of the

English-Spanish cognate “collar.” The teacher told the student, “You may think that is

a Spanish word, but it is not; we only have English words in this room” (Lillie et al,

2010). If students are permitted to use their existing knowledge more readily, they may

be more likely to succeed, though this might require a change to Arizona law.

A bill introduced in the 2018 legislative session by Representative Paul Boyer,

a Phoenix high school teacher, would have added greater flexibility to Arizona’s SEI

model (Flaherty, 2019; Stephenson, 2019). The bill would have kept the 4-hour rule in

place for the first year but would have allowed schools to reduce the English

instruction time thereafter to 120 minutes per day in grades K–7 and 100 minutes per


day for grades 7–12 (Stephenson, 2018; Arizona Legislature, 2018). While that bill

was not formally heard in the state senate prior to the close of the legislative session, a

senate version, SB 1014, with house approval was signed into law by the Governor

Ducey on February 14th of this year (Arizona Governor, 2019).

Discussion

Arizona has a long history of trying to suppress the Spanish language that goes

back to its foundation. While Hispanics overall do not fare significantly worse than the

national average in terms of graduation rates, Arizona clearly has a long way to go to

reach either the national average in terms of EL educational outcomes or to reach

regional educational outcomes for that group. The onerous 4-hour block of English

instruction wherein the student receives no instruction in such subjects as math,

science, and social studies is the most obvious problem that may be addressed given

recently-signed legislation. Future studies that analyze educational outcomes for this

group will want to focus on recent changes mentioned above that relax this 4-hour

block.

One hypothesis that may be of interest in further analysis is the degree to

which a student’s family’s region of origin might impact language acquisition and

scholastic outcomes over time. It may be possible that Arizona’s unfavorable EL

outcomes are a result of a population of Spanish-speakers particularly ill-equipped to

learn English that also happens to favor immigration to Arizona. Research from

Volker (2007) could potentially be used to discern regions of Mexico from which most

Spanish speakers in Arizona largely originate. Massey, Rugh, and Pren (2010)

provided a detailed look at Mexican migration origin over time that uses data from


Mexico’s Matrícula Consular Program. Such research techniques, combined with

research regarding Spanish-speakers from Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Central and South

America, could be used to shed further light on this question.

Regarding the likelihood that Arizona is miscategorizing perhaps tens of

thousands of students per year as English proficient who are not, this obviously also

requires further scrutiny. In the time since the 4-hour block was instituted,

miscategorized students may not have had access to EL services, but those services

may also have done more harm than good.

Regardless, there is good reason, at least superficially, to think that Arizona

can better use outcomes in surrounding states to improve outcomes for ELs in

Arizona. Such an analysis may require better comparisons using nationally

standardized tests to compensate for potential differences in graduation criteria

between different states. Future studies, one hopes, might also refine the methods used

above to support or refute the hypothesis of widescale miscategorization. As of

publication of this analysis, the Arizona Department of Education has not been able to

satisfactorily explain it despite multiple requests to do so.

IMPACT OF LEGISLATION ON ARIZONA’S ENGLISH LEARNERS Smith I

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running head: impact of legislation on arizona’s english

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