Abstract This article places Propo...

Abstract

This article places Proposition 227 in the words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following of the policy web formed according to a series of legislative acts and policies at the national, state, and local seminary board levels; federal judicial decisions; state and local elections; changes in the local train district board and superintendent. We draw upon our ongoing ethnographic study of a fifth-grade classroom to illustrate what happens when policies master through the classroom door. by the and of this analysis, we illustrate in what way policies constrained the bilingual teacher's ability to make learning opportunities available to her linguistically diverse pupils in 1998-99.

"I used to know that." This remark by Jose, a fifth-grade learner provides a local context for the discussion of what happens in the classroom when reforms achieve through the classroom door. While bookish mans in almost any classroom might make this illustration this particular child was referring to what he one time 'knew' in Spanish and what he believes he no longer 'knows' now that he is in a monolingual English environment in the post-Proposition 227 world. In this paper, we quick in emergencies a telling case (Mitchell, 1984) of the ways in which the policy adjoining matter in and outside of the classroom, shaped the opportunities for teaching, and in make go round learning, for Jose's teacher and her linguistically and culturally diverse learners in the fall of 1998 This case is designed to illustrate in a principled way for what cause policies become intertextually (Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993) tied across time, actors, and policy adjoining matters creating a larger environmental pres (Chrispeels, 1997) end this analysis, we show to what degree a series of policies at the national, state, district, and educate level, not a single policy (i.e., Proposition 227) formed an intertextual web that was, and continues to be, consequential for Jose's teacher and her close examiners

Our goal in taking this approach is to identify ways in which policies are consequential for the lived experiences of teachers and observers in classrooms, in ways anticipated or not. The compages web of policies that converg in the beginning of the 1998 exercise year (post-Proposition 227) established an environmental pres for potential change. We use the universal of potential change for three reasons. First, Stritikus & Garcia (2000 this issue) showed that districts and individual teachers have differentially taken up the implementation of Proposition 227 next to the first policy tracing research has shown that policies are oftentimes intertextually tied; that is, single builds on or is influenced according to others previously put into place (Chrispeels, 1997; McDonnell & Elmore, 1987) Third, Barr and Dreeben (1983) have argued that decisions at common point in a district are performances of the actions of nation at one level of a institute system, and along with time, become resources that the bulk of mankind at other levels use to accomplish their work. They argue that from this perspective, the classroom is the hand that the teacher is dealt; that is, who she/he will teach, what resources will be available to the teacher, and what is viewed as possible to be done are the arises of decisions of people at differing flats of a school system, not simply a decision by the teacher.

The Historical and Local Policy Contexts: Creating an Environmental Pres

To understand what brought about the changes we identified, we must examine the ways in which the actions of actors in the policy connected thought [i]or[/i] thoughtss shaped the learning opportunities for Jose and his contemporarys The fact that the policy actions in Jose's district varied from those in surrounding districts glance ated the need to begin our analysis by means of reconstructing the historical web of intertextual ties across a range of policies, rather than focusing solely upon Proposition 227. The analyses not awayed in this section are intended to be illustrative, not exhaustive, examples of component parts of the policy web in which Jose's teacher ground herself in 1998. We view the nexus of these policies as constituting a telling case, single in kind that makes visible both theoretical issues for meditation of policy impact and conclusions for practice.

To illustrate this proces and for what reason it influenced the policy words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following in which Jose and his teacher place themselves, we present a series of patterns that shaped what Jose and his comrades had access to. These patterns included shifts across time in policies and practices at the federal, state, and local of the same heights To identify the patterns of policy shift that were consequential, we drew upon ethnographic research data over a 10-year period in couple school districts on the central coast of California. Then, using a backward and forward mapping approach (Chrispeels, 1997; verdant & Meyer, 1991; McDonnell & Elmore, 1987; Tuyay, Floriani, Yeager, Dixon, & verdant 1995), we examined policies for respects to other policies or for tendency to meet with observed impact on the local classroom settings in 1998 from one side this approach, we identified five representations of policy activity (Chrispeels, 1997; McDonnell & Elmore, 1987) that l to changes in bilingual education at the local classroom of the same height These included court cases shaping policy directions, federal and state legislation, local and state institute board decisions, election results, and national reports. Each of these policies was the terminate of actions of groups of policy actors across potentially arrangements The intertextual web of policies, then, can be viewed as the ensue of policy actors' interpretations of past policies and what they saw as socially significant to their particular words immediately preceding [i]or[/i] following (cf., Bloome & Egan-Robertson, 1993)