Journal#5

“Technically an EL”: The Production of Raciolinguistic Categories in a Dual Language School

NELSON FLORES, JENNIFER PHUONG, AND KARLA M. VENEGAS University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Discourses of languagelessness that suggest that Latinxs are not fully proficient in either English or Spanish have a long history in the Uni- ted States. These discourses produce raciolinguistic categories that frame the bilingualism of Latinxs as deficient and in need of remedi- ation. In this article, the researchers examine one such raciolinguistic category: students in dual language programs who are classified as both English learners and first language (L1) users of English. The authors offer case studies of three students who fit this linguistic pro- file. They examine the ways that teachers working with these students struggle to make sense of this raciolinguistic category and often resort to discourses of languagelessness as an explanation. The researchers document the ways that these discourses negatively impact the educational supports provided to the students. The authors end with a call for developing new conceptualizations of the language practices of Latinx students in these programs that resist discourses of languagelessness and, instead, frame the fluid bilingual- ism of these students as a resource for learning.

doi: 10.1002/tesq.577

In the United States, the typical image of an English learner (EL) isa relatively new arrival who is dominant in a language other than English. Yet, the majority of students classified as ELs were born in the United States and likely had exposure to English before entering school (Zong & Batalova, 2015). As stated in federal guidelines, when students from bilingual homes enter school educators must determine whether they require language support. The primary mechanism for this determination is a language proficiency assessment. Unfortunately, such assessments have historically been used to pathologize the bilin- gualism of Latinx students (MacSwan & Rolstad, 2006; Pray, 2005). Specifically, such assessments have often identified these students as

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not fully proficient in either English or Spanish, continuing a long his- tory of discourses of languagelessness that suggest that Latinxs lack profi- ciency in any language (Rosa, 2016).

Dual language education programs that have the explicit goal of having students become bilingual and biliterate are often positioned as efforts to counteract these discourses of languagelessness. While cer- tainly a laudable goal, research has illustrated how the power dynamics that emerge in such contexts can inadvertently marginalize the bilin- gualism of the very students that they purport to support. For exam- ple, a key component of these programs is for students to be categorized as dominant in either English or Spanish so that students can be strategically paired across language groups (Christian, Howard, & Loeb, 2000; Gort, 2008). Yet, designating students as first language (L1) users of either English or Spanish often erases the fluid bilingual- ism of many Latinx students by forcing them into a box of English- dominant or Spanish-dominant that may not map on to their lived experience as bilinguals (Fitts, 2006; Freeman, 2000; Garc�ıa-Mateus & Palmer, 2017; Sayer, 2013). Latinx students who do not fit neatly into these boxes are sometimes even denied the right to enter these pro- grams (Dorner, 2010).

A primary mechanism for identifying students’ primary language is a home language survey, which caregivers fill out when registering stu- dents for school (Bailey & Kelly, 2011). Although providing a glimpse into the languages that may be used in the home, these surveys are typically unable to capture the full complexity of the lived experience of Latinx children from bi/multilingual communities (Brooks, 2016). This can pose a challenge for dual language programs that seek to designate students as either L1 users of English or Spanish. A conver- sation that Jennifer (second author) had with a teacher at a dual lan- guage school that our research team has been working with for several years illustrates some of these challenges. The teacher described how “the parents will say they speak English at home as their first language, but then they come into kindergarten, and we realize that they don’t actually speak English or maybe it wasn’t really their home language.” She also noted that “there’s also a ton of kids who their home lan- guage is Spanish but their parents talk to them in English all the time.” For this teacher, the designation of L1 user of English or Span- ish simply did not line up with the fluid bilingualism that character- ized the lived experiences of her primarily Latinx students. The misalignment between the relatively static categorizations of the home language survey and the fluid bilingualism of the students at the school led to seemingly contradictory designations.

The focus of this article is Latinx students who are classified simulta- neously as ELs and L1 users of English. These students’ caregivers

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reported that Spanish was spoken at home, meaning that they were assessed for and classified as ELs. At the same time, these students tested at a higher reading level in English than Spanish and were, thereby, considered L1 users of English by many of their teachers and on many school documents.1 In attempting to make sense of this dis- crepancy, teachers often resorted to discourses of languagelessness. This can be seen in comments by another dual language teacher, who described students who were ELs and L1 users of English in the fol- lowing way: “Sometimes they get put into these programs and maybe they’re just low in general or maybe they’re low in their dominant lan- guage, which might be English, but it looks like their dominant lan- guage is Spanish.” In short, this teacher made sense of the seeming contradiction between students being classified as ELs while also being L1 users of English by suggesting that they were low in both lan- guages. A reliance on these discourses of languagelessness, in turn, created a dilemma for the dual language teachers working with these students. On the one hand, an explicit goal of their school is to affirm and build on the home language practices of Latinxs. On the other hand, school assessment policies and practices required labeling stu- dents as dominant in one language, which often didn’t match their fluid home language practices.

In this article we examine how teachers worked to make sense of these contradictions. We begin by providing an overview of the social view of bilingualism and biliteracy that informs our analysis. We use this as a point of entry for historicizing the discourses of languageless- ness that inform contemporary depictions of the bilingualism of Lat- inx students in U.S. schools. We then situate case studies of three students who are classified as ELs and L1 English users within this broader history, pointing to the ways that teachers inevitably fell back on discourses of languagelessness to make sense of this seemingly con- tradictory labeling and how these discourses, in turn, had negative educational impacts on these students. We end with calls for develop- ing alternative discourses that can counteract these discourses of lan- guagelessness by framing the fluid bilingualism of these students as resources for learning.

1 Prior to 2019, the school referred to L1 and L2 designations, but without one central location where these data were kept, leading to a lack of consistency across documents and confusion among teachers as to the official designation of many of the students. In 2019 an administrator was charged with maintaining language data about the students. Rather than L1 and L2, the administrator decided to shift to a primary language designa- tion and to develop consistency around this designation across school documents. Because our data are from prior to 2019, we have decided to utilize the previously used L1 designation in our description.

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A SOCIAL VIEW OF BILINGUALISM AND BILITERACY

In this article we adopt a social view of the bilingualism and biliter- acy of Latinx students and their communities. In contrast to autono- mous views of biliteracy that conceive of literacy practices as universal skills that can be objectively evaluated, this social view seeks to docu- ment and understand these practices from the perspectives of the communities who engage in them on a daily basis (Street, 1984). Hornberger (1989) used this social view of biliteracy as a point of entry for developing the continua of biliteracy, a heuristic for under- standing the complexities of these biliteracy practices and the many factors that go into their development. From this perspective, biliteracy is not a skill but rather a dynamic process embedded in complex social relations that can only be understood and evaluated within the context of its use (Hornberger & Skilton-Sylvester, 2000). This perspective has been used to illustrate the complex home language and literacy prac- tices of Latinx communities and to develop pedagogical approaches that build on and extend these home language practices in school (de la Luz Reyes, 2012; de la Piedra & Araujo, 2012).

Following the lead of Hornberger and Link (2012), we connect the continua of biliteracy with the concept of translanguaging. Translan- guaging was originally coined to describe a bilingual pedagogical approach in which one language is used for receptive skills and another language used for productive skills (Williams, 1994). Garc�ıa (2009) extended the concept to encompass the “multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage in order to make sense of the world” (p. 45). Rather than foregrounding named languages as the primary point of entry, translanguaging offers a conceptualization of bilingualism that takes as its point of entry the meaning-making pro- cesses of bilingual people (Garc�ıa & Wei, 2014). Scholars have used translanguaging as a lens to further document the complex linguistic and literacy practices of Latinx students and their communities and to develop pedagogical approaches that build on these rich linguistic and literary practices (Gort & Pontier, 2013; Palmer, Mart�ınez, Mateus, & Henderson, 2014; Velasco & Garc�ıa, 2014).

By beginning from the perspective of actual bilingual people living in bilingual communities, the continua of biliteracy and translanguag- ing offer a coherent framework for valorizing the language and literacy practices of Latinx students and their communities (Hornberger & Link, 2012). Specifically, by taking as a basic fact that all bilingual communities engage in complex language and literacy practices that serve important functions within their communities, this perspective exposes any discourse that calls into question these practices for what

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they are—ideological. By adopting this social view we do not need to prove the discourses of languagelessness being used to describe Latinx students are inaccurate but can begin from the premise that they inherently are. Instead, the focus of our article will be to understand how and why these discourses have emerged and the impact that they have on the students participating in our study.

This social view of bilingualism and biliteracy does not often align well with the autonomous view typically associated with mainstream schooling and, in particular, the language assessments that are typi- cally used to evaluate the bilingualism of Latinx students. Instead, schools typically at best ignore the perspectives and experiences of bilingual Latinxs and at worst see these perspectives and experiences as a barrier to teaching and learning. Yet, even dual language pro- grams that have the explicit goal of valorizing the bilingual and biliter- acy practices of Latinx students may inadvertently frame the fluid practices of these communities as a barrier to learning. Typically, this occurs through the dichotomous framing of a range of factors that the social view treats as continua; such framings, in turn, suggests that bilingual Latinxs have one dominant language and that the most effec- tive way of developing both of their languages is through strictly sepa- rating them for instructional purposes (Garc�ıa, 2009). Below we examine the historical processes that have produced these dichoto- mous framings.

NATION-STATE/COLONIAL GOVERNMENTALITY AND DUAL LANGUAGE EDUCATION

Contemporary dichotomous framings of language have their roots in the rise of nation-states and the European colonial project. Extend- ing Foucault’s concept of governmentality, Flores (2013) introduced the concept of nation-state/colonial governmentality as a general frame- work for analyzing the production of governable national and colonial subjects that fit the political and economic needs of modern society. At the core of nation-state/colonial governmentality were three inter- related metadiscursive regimes “that drew on assertions regarding the nature of language in regulating linguistic conduct and imbuing some ways of speaking and writing with authority while rendering other modes a powerful source of stigma and exclusion” (Bauman & Briggs, 2003, p. 32). First, at the most abstract level, nation-state/colonial gov- ernmentality is informed by a language-as-entity paradigm, which abstracts language from the practices in which people engage into an entity that people can possess (Park & Wee, 2012). From this

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perspective, people “have” language rather than “do” language. Within this language-as-entity paradigm lie monoglossic language ideologies that position monolingualism as the norm to which all should aspire (Garc�ıa, 2009). From this perspective, the mixing of two or more named languages is framed as a problem that threatens the integrity of the languages and must, therefore, be eliminated. Finally, these monoglossic language ideologies are infused with raciolinguistic ide- ologies that co-construct language and race in ways that depict racial- ized communities as engaged in language practices that deviate from the monoglossic ideal (Flores & Rosa, 2015). From this perspective, the language practices of racialized communities are always heard as deficient regardless of how close they may adhere to monoglossic norms. In the case of Latinxs, one such raciolinguistic ideology is the discourse of languagelessness that suggests that Latinxs lack profi- ciency in both English and Spanish (Rosa, 2016).

Nation-state/colonial governmentality provided the foundation for the institutionalization of bilingual education in the post–Civil Rights era. This can be seen in the accountability systems that were associated with the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) passed in 1968, which pro- vided federal funds to states and districts to develop bilingual pro- grams (Sinclair, 2018). These accountability systems were informed by (a) a language-as-entity paradigm that presupposed that language is an object that can be separated from its social context and objectively evaluated and (b) monoglossic language ideologies that privileged standardized forms of English and Spanish and advocated their strict separation for assessment purposes. The result was the creation of a raciolinguistic ideology that framed many Latinxs participating in bilingual programs as not fully proficient in either English or Spanish (Heath, 1984). These students were originally described as semilin- gual. The consensus that gradually emerged was that they were profi- cient in Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) but struggled with the Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) that was necessary for school success (Cummins, 1980). While this dichotomous framing has since been critiqued for oversimplifying lan- guage and perpetuating deficit perspectives (Edelsky, Flores, Barkin, Altweger, & Jilbert, 1983; MacSwan, 2000; Martin-Jones & Romaine, 1986), BICS and CALP, along with the related and often interchange- ably used terms social and academic language, have remained a com- mon framework for explaining the academic challenges confronting bilingual Latinx students in U.S. classrooms.

As a product of this history, dual language programs have typically developed from a language-as-entity paradigm that is based on the assumption that people “have” bilingualism rather than “do” bilingual- ism—that is, bilingualism is understood as mastery of two linguistic

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systems that can be objectively assessed using standardized assessments. Indeed, a big selling point for these programs has typically been the positive impact of these programs on the standardized test scores of participating students (Collier & Thomas, 2002; Rolstad, Mahoney, & Glass, 2005; Willig, 1985). In addition, these programs have typically been informed by monoglossic language ideologies that suggest that the two languages should be strictly separated to ensure that students “have” full competency in both languages (de Jong, 2016; Garc�ıa, 2009). Finally, raciolinguistic ideologies typically inform the founda- tion of these programs through discourses that suggest that these pro- grams ensure that bilingual Latinxs will have the opportunity to develop academic language in their home language that they will then be able to transfer to English (Spener, 1988; Cummins, 2000). These raciolinguistic ideologies have resulted in the construction of raciolin- guistic categories that pathologize the language practices of bilingual Latinxs. These raciolinguistic categories include non-nons (Valadez, MacSwan, & Mart�ınez, 2000) and long term English learners (Olsen, 2010) alongside a range of other socioinstitutional categories that sug- gest these students lack full proficiency in any language as determined by standardized assessments (Kibler & Vald�es, 2016). We explore another such raciolinguistic category in this article: students in a dual language program who are institutionally designated as English learn- ers (ELs) but have higher literacy scores in English than in Spanish and, as a result, are often considered L1 users of English by their teachers and on school documents.

THE RESEARCH STUDY

The findings presented in this article are derived from a longitudi- nal ethnographic study of 10 focal students at Dual Language Charter School (DLCS),2 a K-8 school located in a predominantly Latinx neighborhood in Philadelphia. In the 2018–2019 school year, the school student population was 88% Latinx, 7% African American, and 5% Other. In addition, 74% of the student population was designated as economically disadvantaged, 24% of the students were officially des- ignated as English learners (ELs), and 20% of students were classified as having a disability. The stated mission of the school was to graduate bilingual students who can read, write, and speak in both Spanish and English. In line with this goal, the dual language program was imple- mented schoolwide and students spend half of their daily official instruction in Spanish and half of their daily official instruction in

2 Pseudonyms are used throughout this article.

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English. Although the school technically described itself as a two-way program, the reality is that the students were coming in with a range of bilingual competencies and were typically placed into classrooms without any concerted effort to balance L1 Spanish and L1 English users, though often students who were officially designated as ELs were clustered together into specific classrooms to make EL support easier to deliver. As is the case with many dual language programs, English was the primary language that students used in their daily interactions with one another. In an effort to increase the status of Spanish, students often received additional Spanish instruction from a language specialist teacher as a way to support their Spanish language development. In addition, they received regular Spanish literacy assess- ments that paralleled their regular English literacy assessments and took Spanish language proficiency assessments in fourth and eighth grade to monitor their growth in Spanish. In line with the dual lan- guage model, half the teachers consistently identified as bilingual in English and Spanish over the many years we have been at the school. In addition, half the teachers consistently identified as Latinx or Afri- can American.

The focal students were chosen in kindergarten because of their varying linguistic experiences with Spanish and English. They were selected based on the information provided in the home language sur- veys their families filled out on their admission to the school. Reflec- tive of the community demographic, most of the home language surveys indicated that both English and Spanish were spoken at home with smaller amounts selecting only Spanish or only English. In line with this we chose focal students that reflected this division with the majority of the students selected having English and Spanish spoken at home with one focal student reporting only Spanish and another focal student reporting only English. Within the bilingual households group we also sought to have gender balance (see Table 1 for demo- graphic information).

Beginning in 2013, teams of two to five researchers per year have conducted weekly classroom observations at DLCS to see how these focal students were negotiating the bilingual space and making sense of particular language ideologies that emerged in the classroom. Researchers have paid particular attention to instantiations of teacher and student metacommentary which are explicit or implicit comments made about language and language

use (Rymes, 2014). We adopted a hybrid inductive-deductive scheme for the coding and analysis of this observation data (Fereday & Muir-Cochrane, 2006). We began by limiting the focus of our field notes to metacommentary. In the first year of the study we developed an inductive coding scheme that categorized the different types of

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metacommentary we observed in the classroom. We then used this coding scheme deductively, while continuing to include an “other” cat- egory that allowed us to continue to develop new codes as appropriate. We used the themes that emerged from an analysis of this metacom- mentary to develop semi-structured interview protocols that we began to conduct annually with focal students beginning in 2016 focused on their perspectives related to their bilingualism and their experiences in a bilingual school. Furthermore, to understand how the teachers viewed and evaluated the language and academic practices of their stu- dents, research team members conducted semi-structured interviews and focus groups with all participating teachers at least once during any year in which they worked with focal students.

The summer after the fourth year of data collection a member of the research team aggregated and integrated multiple sources of infor- mation (e.g., coded classroom observations, the teacher interviews, and the student interviews) in order to compose exploratory case stud- ies for each of the focal students involved in the project. The intent of the case studies was to understand how students had been making sense of their dual language schooling experience and how teachers had been discussing the students’ language and academic practices since kindergarten. Through a holistic analysis (Yin, 2014) of the case studies, the research team identified salient themes in the data that provoked further inquiry. A striking pattern arose across the case stud- ies when teachers were asked to describe the linguistic practices of their students and then subsequently asked to describe why certain stu- dents had certain institutional labels. Teachers were able to describe the practices of their students in the classroom but had a difficult time explaining why certain students had certain institutional labels. This became particularly challenging when teachers were asked to describe why certain students were officially designated as English learners

TABLE 1

Demographic Information for Focal Students

Home Language(s) L1 Designation EL Special Education Pronouns

Adriana English and Spanish English No No She/her Alejandra English and Spanish English Yes No She/her Amanda English and Spanish English Yes No She/her Angel English and Spanish English No No He/him Cesar English and Spanish Spanish Yes Yes He/him Cristina Spanish Spanish Yes No She/her Damaris English and Spanish English No No She/her Dominic English English No No He/him Jamilet English and Spanish English No No She/her Javier English and Spanish English Yes Yes He/him

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(ELs) but had higher literacy scores in English than in Spanish and were, therefore, described as L1 users of English on many school doc- uments. Out of the seven current focal students remaining in the pro- ject through the 2018–2019 school year, five of them had this designation. According to official school assessments, one of these stu- dents was considered to be reading at grade level in both Spanish and English with the other four reading below grade level in both. Two of these four were also special education students. We, therefore, decided to do a multiple case study that more closely examined one student from each of the three groups: (1) a student reading below grade level in both languages who was not a special education student, (2) a stu- dent reading below grade level in both languages who was a special education student and (3) a student reading at grade level in both lan- guages. The multiple case study (Yin, 2014) design offered the mem- bers of the research team a tool for understanding how teachers working with the focal students made sense of the contradictions and why they often invoked discourses of languagelessness as a way to make sense of realities that starkly contradicted institutional cate- gories.

THE RACIOLINGUISTIC CONSTRUCTION OF ENGLISH- DOMINANT ENGLISH LEARNERS

The school’s stated mission to build and further develop the bilin- gualism of its students sometimes clashed with the metadiscursive regimes associated with nation-state/colonial governmentality that lie at the foundation of language education policy in U.S. schools. As mandated in Pennsylvania, DLCS begins the EL identification process when students enter the school through a home language survey, on which families are asked to identify the language that is spoken at home, what language a student communicates in, and what their first language is. Generally, if a family identifies a language other than Eng- lish on the survey, the family is interviewed by a staff member at the school, who then decides whether to evaluate the student using a state-adopted screener. If the student is given the screener and scores below a state-adopted threshold, the student is officially designated as an EL. This process also informs the school’s process of sorting stu- dents into L1 users of either English or Spanish. This designation has a significant impact on the academic benchmarks laid out for students. Specifically, at the time of the study, students were expected to have a higher reading level in their L1 compared to their L2 as determined by the Developmental Reading Assessment (DRA) in English and Eval- uaci�on del desarrollo de la lectura (EDL) in Spanish.

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These L1/L2 official designations, along with the related EL classifi- cation, sometimes conflicted with teachers’ own evaluations of the lan- guage dominance of their students. It was common for teachers to disagree with each other about a student’s L1. It was also common for teachers to question the official school L1 designations when they were provided to them. A similar dynamic existed with the EL classifi- cation, with teachers describing processes for classifying students as ELs as imperfect and imprecise. Teachers pointed to the ways that stu- dents’ language practices, preferences, and proficiency changed over time, suggesting that the services they received in earlier grades may not be suited to their needs in later grades. In particular, teachers highlighted the fact some students are designated as ELs when they entered the school in kindergarten but gradually become more com- fortable engaging in their academic work in English, with many even- tually having higher reading levels in English than in Spanish. These teachers suggested that even though these students were “technically ELs” they required different kinds of support than the typical EL.

Teachers often relied on discourses of languagelessness to make sense of these students. Most pervasive was for teachers to depict these students as “low” in both English and Spanish. Next we offer three case studies to illustrate how teachers navigated and negotiated this label. As part of these case studies we seek to connect these discourses of languagelessness to the language-as-entity paradigm, monoglossic ideologies, and raciolinguistic ideologies that lie at the core of nation- state/colonial governmentality. In this way, our focus is not on cri- tiquing the deficit perspectives of the teachers, nor are we arguing that teachers are the source of these deficit perspectives. In fact, all of the teachers in our study have expressed strong desires to affirm their stu- dents’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds. Rather, we bring attention to the broader sociohistorical processes involved in the creation of schooling structures that converge into these raciolinguistic categories. For this reason, we do not name individual teachers and do not explore their racial, linguistic, or cultural backgrounds for each description. Instead, we simply refer to grade levels and language des- ignation in the hopes of further emphasizing’ their roles as institu- tional as opposed to individual agents, and how those roles rely on particular ideological listening subject positions and not necessarily their individual identities. In doing so, rather than simply arguing that teachers draw from deficit perspectives, we aim to highlight how edu- cational structures shaped the contradictory ways in which teachers dis- cussed their students’ language practices as the teachers themselves navigated the deficitizing discourses and structures available to them even in a school that has taken a strong stance in favor of bilingualism and biliteracy.

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“Made in Puerto Rico but Born in Philly”

Amanda was a self-professed “fully” Puerto Rican student who was “made in Puerto Rico, but born in Philly.” Amanda and her teachers reported that both English and Spanish were used at home. Amanda regularly brought these bilingual practices into the classroom, such as in kindergarten, where we observed her engaging in translanguaging practices that used features of both languages, especially during the time of the day when Spanish was the official language of instruction. The teacher would typically accept her answer while also trying to get her to rephrase them using only Spanish. This linguistic pattern con- tinued in later grades.

The bilingual reality of Amanda’s experiences outside and inside of the school made it difficult for teachers to place her language prac- tices into the dichotomous framing of “L1 English user” versus “L1 Spanish user” that form the monoglossic foundation of most dual lan- guage programs, including DLCS. The challenge in fitting Amanda into this dichotomous framing could be found in the seemingly con- tradictory institutional designations that were used to categorize her language practices. On the one hand, she was officially designated as an EL. This led several teachers to assume that her L1 designation was Spanish. Yet, some teachers insisted that this was not accurate, with her teachers in both first and third grades stating that her L1 designa- tion was, in fact, English. These shifting conceptualizations of Aman- da’s language proficiency was also reflected in Amanda’s own shifting conceptualizations of her Spanish language proficiency. For example, while Amanda’s self-assessment during a focus group with our research team was that she was “50% English, 50% Spanish,” her third-grade English teacher explained that Amanda was “adamant” that she wasn’t good at Spanish, a sentiment that we also observed Amanda articulat- ing at other moments.

Despite the shifting framing of Amanda’s relationship to English and Spanish, her EL status affected how the school tracked her bilit- eracy development. Students officially classified as ELs were expected to be at a higher literacy level (as determined by standardized assess- ments) in Spanish than in English. But this was not the case with Amanda, whose literacy level in English was actually higher than her literacy level in Spanish according to these assessments. When explaining this apparent discrepancy, teachers often resorted to dis- courses of languagelessness that framed Amanda as not fully profi- cient in either English or Spanish. As an example, her third-grade English teacher described her as an EL “from almost like a depriva- tion sense, like you didn’t hear enough this or you don’t know

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enough of this. Coming into and with Amanda, I think it’s really probably just a maturity and attention level.” A similar discourse emerged when her fourth-grade teachers attributed her seemingly contradictory designations to the fact that she was still reading below grade level in both languages, which could help explain why she was still “technically an EL” despite both teachers agreeing that she was more comfortable in all four modalities (i.e., reading, writing, speak- ing, and listening) in English.

Significantly, her being “technically an EL” also influenced the expectations that her teachers had for Amanda. Her fourth-grade Eng- lish teacher noted that because of Amanda’s EL status, she was not expected to end the school year at the same reading level as students who were designated as L1 English users. At the same time, her fourth-grade Spanish teacher described focusing on basic reading skills that matched the lower literacy scores that Amanda received on the Spanish literacy assessment. Neither her English teacher nor her Span- ish teacher expected her to meet grade-level literacy goals. That is, while the language-as-entity paradigm that shapes the school’s policies expected Amanda to “have” language as determined by standardized assessments, the monoglossic configuration of literacy created a situa- tion where Amanda was never offered the opportunity to engage in, let alone demonstrate mastery over, grade-level texts in either English or Spanish. This lack of opportunity likely hindered Amanda’s aca- demic development, thereby reinforcing the discourse of languageless- ness that suggested that she was not fully proficient in either language.

In summary, Amanda’s positioning in relation to language domi- nance shifted informally, with teachers and Amanda herself alternating how they described her in relation to Spanish and English dominance. This shifting positioning was in tension with the institutional designa- tion of EL, which many teachers also took to mean that she should be an L1 Spanish user even as assessment data indicated that she had higher English literacy levels. Struggling to make sense of this appar- ent contradiction, teachers resorted to discourses of languagelessness that suggested that Amanda lacked linguistic competence even as they struggled to identify clearly what these linguistic competencies were and how she lacked them. This discourse of languagelessness influ- enced the types of supports provided to Amanda, which may have fur- ther exacerbated her poor performance on these assessments. This discourse of languagelessness left Amanda academically adrift, as she was not challenged to achieve grade-level standards in either Spanish or English.

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“A Spanglish Kid”

Similar to Amanda, Javier self-identified as Puerto Rican and as bilingual. In contrast to Amanda, who was variously described by her teachers as an L1 Spanish or L1 English user, teachers often described Javier as engaging in Spanglish, something that they attributed to his family. His second- and third-grade English as a second language (ESL) teacher described his “Spanglish” as “a predictable pattern of . . . simultaneous bilingualism,” while one teacher conjectured that his parents “go in and out” of the two languages themselves, which is reflected in their son’s language practices. His third-grade Spanish tea- cher described the “go[ing] back and forth a lot between Spanish and English” as “textbook bilingual.” In this way, Javier’s teachers often identified him as someone who could speak and understand Spanish. For example, he was known by his teachers and peers for befriending Joaquin in second grade, a student who had immigrated to the United States from Colombia and had only begun learning English when he arrived. This friendship, along with the language practices he was understood to have inherited from his family, served as markers of advanced Spanish language proficiency for his teachers. His second- grade English teacher also described him as a “super EL” and “not a typical EL,” highlighting what she believed to be a contrast between his EL status and his vast vocabulary in English. In this way, even when describing his language practices positively, teachers often anchored such discussions to his institutional designation as an EL.

Even though Javier’s “Spanglish” language practices led some teach- ers to position him as bilingual, teachers still discussed his bilingualism with a caveat. When asked to make sense of Javier’s bilingualism teachers described Javier as “mixed,” “tongue-tied,” “jumbled, “half and half,” having “a knot in his mouth” and as “very Spanglish.” His language sup- port teacher described him as experiencing “a lot of language interfer- ence.” This may be because, unlike Amanda, he also had an individualized education program (IEP) for speech, which helped to frame how teachers made sense of his bilingualism in relation to the fact that he was officially designated as an EL while also understood to be an L1 user of English. Teachers would sometimes make explicit connec- tions between his language mixing and his IEP, as was the case with his fourth-grade teacher, who openly pondered whether his language mix- ing was the result of a lack of English language proficiency, as his EL classification might suggest, or the result of a speech impairment, as his IEP might suggest. At other points, teachers would make more implicit connections between his language mixing and his IEP. For instance, his first-grade teacher suggested possible language processing challenges

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when she noted, “I can always see a million wheels spinning in his head, and I feel like they are like English and Spanish all spin together and that’s why [communication]’s harder for him.” As a result, Javier was typ- ically described by his teachers as confusing the two languages. That is, the discursive construction of Javier as “a Spanglish kid” was located at the intersection of the metadiscursive regimes of nation-state/colonial governmentality with discourses of disability that suggested that people with disabilities might not have the capacity to become fully bilingual. Javier’s disability raised more questions than in Amanda’s case about whether he can fully “have” any language. Compared to his peers, like Amanda, who also mix languages but are unmarked by disability, Javier was more strongly stigmatized. This stigma in turn amplified the dis- course of languagelessness that suggested he was not fully proficient in either English or Spanish.

The result of this discourse of languagelessness could be found in Javier’s second-grade English teacher’s description of him as not aware of language differences: “you can tell it’s a lot translating in his head, like there’s a difference between students that are truly bilingual and they are not thinking about one over the other.” In explaining why he performed below grade level in both English and Spanish, his second- grade English teacher suggested that it was because he was not “truly” bilingual. Similarly, while contemplating his struggles in “finding the words he means to say,” his fourth-grade teacher asserted that he “[knew] both languages but not to the point that he’s bilingual” and that he was not bilingual “yet.” In this way, even though he was posi- tioned as having knowledge of both languages, his bilingualism was per- ceived as not quite sufficient because of his literacy levels. Informed by a language-as-entity framework, teachers conflated language proficiency with performance on the purportedly objective measures of standard- ized assessments. These metadiscursive regimes converged and mani- fested in raciolinguistic ideologies that viewed his language practices as ultimately deficient due to his dual-identified designation.

In short, Javier’s translanguaging was frequently marked by his teachers as “jumbled,” “mixed,” or “tongue-tied.” Despite the fact that his language practices resembled those of many of his peers, including Amanda, they were discursively constructed by Javier’s teachers as more markedly mixed, due at least in part to his multiple institutional designations. This, in turn, seemed to impact how Javier described his own bilingualism. In evaluating his own biliteracy with a researcher in second grade, Javier stated, “I know write Spanish and read Spanish, I don’t know read English. Wait, I don’t know . . . I know read Spanish and English, I don’t read—I don’t know write in English, I know write Spanish.” Particularly striking about this comment is that Javier was reporting this as he was completing a written assignment in English.

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That is, he identified as not being able to write in English even as he was writing in English. While at other points he did identify as bilingual, we can’t help but wonder if some of his hesitation to fully own his bilingualism had to do with the circulating discourses that framed his fluid language use as a sign of deficiency as opposed to complex lin- guistic practices worthy of celebrating.

“She’s Not Perfectly There Yet”

Of the three case study subjects, Alejandra was the most confident in asserting her bilingualism, stating that she is bilingual because of “where I live and also I have to talk Spanish cuz my grandma she doesn’t talk English so I have to talk in Spanish a lot.” Alejandra’s teachers also consistently praised her bilingualism and hypothesized how this might help to explain her high academic performance. Her first-grade Spanish teacher stated, “Alejandra is really amazing how, it’s [Spanish] clearly not her first language and she’s like on level.” Her second-grade English teacher reported that by the end of the school year Alejandra wrote and spoke like a “mini adult” because she simply had a “knack for language.” Her second-grade Spanish teacher went even further, saying that although Spanish is her second language she is “fully bilingual” because “she uses it every day, she’ll speak Spanish here, she’ll speak Spanish over there.” Continuing in third grade, her English teacher commended Alejandra on her ability to speak and use language to her advantage, which she said enabled Alejandra to read at an advanced level in English. In fourth grade her Spanish teacher described Alejandra as “a pistol” who “is clearly reading above grade level in Spanish” as well.

Because of Alejandra’s strong academic performance, her official designation as an EL did not emerge as a salient theme in the early years of her education. Instead, Alejandra’s teachers evaluated her lin- guistic practices in Spanish and in English very similarly. Alejandra’s English teachers used terms like “desire”, “knack”, and “advantage” to depict an image of a successful English student. Likewise, Alejandra’s Spanish teachers used terms like “fully bilingual” to describe a strong Spanish student. Her teachers’ evaluative remarks construed an image of a bilingual student who has equal competencies in both languages. However, their evaluative approach was nonetheless grounded in monoglossic language ideologies that affirmed Alejandra’s language practices insofar as her practices conformed to the idealized language practices of double monolingualism. The boundaries placed around the languages positioned each language as an entity that Alejandra was able to possess because she had a “knack” and “desire” to have

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both languages. This perspective was further reinforced by assessment data grounded in the language-as-entity paradigm, suggesting Alejan- dra “had” both languages.

Alejandra appeared to be able to overcome institutional designations because she performed the bilingual student role in ways that the teach- ers found acceptable or, as her first-grade English teacher put it, because she was part of a group of students “who just have the dual language kind of down.” However, the discourse of Alejandra as the idealized bilingual student who successfully “had” both languages shifted when her teachers attempted to make sense of why Alejandra was given the institutional label of EL. Alejandra’s status as an EL did not come up until our interview with her third-grade English teacher, who did not realize Alejandra was an EL until the end of third grade. She stated that after she became aware of Alejandra’s status, she began to notice that Alejandra would “mix up words because the word in English sounds sim- ilar to the word in Spanish, so she might substitute at times,” which she argued was characteristic of a “textbook” EL student. Here the teacher appeared to be creating new boundaries between the languages in order to explain the discrepancy between Alejandra’s strong academic perfor- mance in English and her designation as an EL. Whereas before these boundaries supported the notion that Alejandra was a high-performing student, these new boundaries shifted to a discourse of languagelessness based on her performance on the English language proficiency assess- ment that determined that she was an EL.

The fourth-grade team, when probed, likewise responded that stu- dents like Alejandra, who demonstrated high academic performance in both languages, remained ELs because they were unable to meet the cut- off scores on the English language proficiency assessment needed for reclassification. One teacher posited that the test was hard but that “it makes sense that she’s not perfectly there yet even though it’s Alejan- dra.” Another teacher speculated that Alejandra did not pass the test because it required a lot of inferential learning and “maybe she just wasn’t there yet in third grade but hopefully after this year she’ll be there for that? But I don’t know.” Alejandra’s teachers appeared to feel compelled to use deficitizing language to recast Alejandra in the role of the typical EL in order to explain her institutional classification.

The test that ELs took in order to test out of their institutional label acted as gatekeepers to language. Those who were able to pass the test were bestowed ownership of the language and those who did not pass the test were deemed deficient. These deficitizing narratives are a pro- duct of the language-as-entity paradigm that permeates the U.S. educa- tion system. Therefore, although Alejandra’s teachers acknowledged her academic ability, they were caught in a discourse that positioned them to listen for deficiencies. Alejandra was able to overcome some

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of the effects of the discourse of languagelessness because of her class performance. And yet the institutional marker that defined language as an entity and reinforced monoglossic language ideologies necessi- tated that her language practices be deficitized. This is the only narra- tive that teachers had available when discussing students like Alejandra who were institutionally categorized as EL and L1 users of English regardless of any evidence to the contrary.

TOWARD NEW LISTENING SUBJECT POSITIONS

Dual language programs have often been offered as a tool for coun- teracting deficit perspectives of Latinx students. In many ways these programs create spaces for celebrating bilingualism and offer an important point of resistance to the hegemony of English that perme- ates U.S. society. Yet there are many ways that the idealized bilingual- ism that informs the assumptions and goals of dual language programs inadvertently marginalize the very students the programs were designed to support. Standardized assessments often create data that can be interpreted by dual language educators as suggesting that bilingual Latinxs are, in fact, not bilingual. In the case of our study, assessment data that suggested that students were simultaneously ELs (based on English language proficiency assessments) and L1 users of English (based on English and Spanish literacy assessments) led teach- ers to produce discourses of languagelessness that suggested that these students were not truly proficient in any language.

None of the students fit the idealized version of bilingualism that the teachers were using to interpret their assessment data. Amanda’s fluid bilingualism made it difficult for teachers to categorize her as either an L1 English user or an L1 Spanish user, with her designation shifting throughout her education. In contrast, Javier’s fluid bilingual- ism combined with his speech impairment led the general consensus to emerge that he was not fully proficient in either English or Spanish and, instead, lived in a “Spanglish” limbo. One might expect Alejan- dra, whom all teachers described as a strong student, to have her fluid bilingualism described in more positive and consistent ways. Although to some extent this was the case, the fact that Alejandra continued to be classified as an EL led teachers to point to supposed limitations in her bilingualism to explain the seemingly contradictory nature of her being a strong student who was also an EL. In the end, the bilingual- ism of all three of the students was questioned, and they were deemed not quite fully proficient in either English or Spanish.

These discourses of languagelessness were not the product of indi- vidual teacher ideologies. The immediate source of such discourses

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was the assessment data given to teachers to support them in meeting the needs of their students. The irony is that this assessment data may actually be negatively impacting these students as opposed to support- ing teachers in better meeting their needs. In particular, data that sug- gest that these students are both ELs and L1 users of English shape the institutional listening subject position of the teachers in such a way that they are listening for deficiencies to fix as opposed to assets to build upon, which impacts the types of educational supports that they provide to students. This listening subject position is a product of a long history that has framed the bilingualism of Latinxs as deficient. Individual teachers cannot be expected to counteract this long history, especially as agents of an institution that has been a primary mecha- nism for producing raciolinguistic categories that reify these deficit perspectives. Yet, teachers—alongside administrators and researchers— can work to develop alternative discourses that offer a counternarrative to these raciolinguistic categories.

The social view of bilingualism and biliteracy introduced at the beginning of this article offers an important point of entry into the development of this counternarrative. This social view begins from the actual language practices that bilingual Latinxs engage in on a daily basis. Doing so allows for a rejection of dichotomous views of language that suggest that people must have an L1 and an L2 and pays atten- tion to the fluid ways that bilingual Latinxs use English and Spanish in different contexts on a daily basis. More importantly, the social view can bring attention to the conflation of literacy skills (as measured by standardized assessments) and language proficiency, while also bring- ing attention to the many literacy practices that students engage in that are not captured by standardized assessments. This social view can be augmented with an explicit focus on the ways that race and lan- guage continue to be co-constructed in U.S. society in ways that frame the bilingualism of Latinxs and other racialized communities as defi- cient. This type of reflection might help shift the listening subject position that teachers, administrators, and researchers often inhabit, thereby facilitating the development of new listening subject positions that recognize and build on the fluid bilingualism of the Latinx stu- dents in their classes.

We have begun to engage in precisely this type of work with the leadership team at DLCS. We began the conversation by simply provid- ing quotes from teachers describing students who are classified as both ELs and L1 users of English. The leadership team agreed that these types of deficit perspectives were not aligned with the mission and vision of the school, which was to celebrate and build on the bilingual- ism of their primarily Latinx student population. Yet, rather than let the conversation move into the realm of teacher blaming, we grappled

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with the reality that it is, in fact, confusing to tell teachers that stu- dents were simultaneously ELs and L1 users of English without any further context for these designations or support for how to interpret them. We agreed on the importance of being more precise with what these categorizations mean, how they might be useful, and how we might move beyond these designations to capture the fluid bilingual- ism of Latinx students in ways that institutions have never been designed to do. While this work, in and of itself, will not fundamen- tally transform the discourses of languagelessness that shape the edu- cation of Latinx students across the country, our hope is that it can lead to new listening subject positions that can lead to new pedagogi- cal approaches that treat the bilingualism of all Latinx students as valuable regardless of what institutional categories might suggest.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

We would like to extend our deep gratitude to the teachers, students, and school leaders who made this research possible.

THE AUTHORS

Nelson Flores is an associate professor in educational linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. His research analyzes the historical origins of raciolinguistic ideologies and analyzes the ways that these raciolinguistic ideologies continue to be reproduced within contemporary bilingual education policies and practices.

Jennifer Phuong is a PhD candidate in educational linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. As a former high school special edu- cation teacher, she is interested in the intersection of race, language, and disabil- ity. Her dissertation is on teacher collaboration in bilingual special education.

Karla M. Venegas is a PhD student in educational linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Prior to pursuing her doctoral degree, she taught at a bilingual elementary school in Brooklyn. Her research interests include school leadership in bilingual education; critical leadership praxis; and the intersection of race, power, and language.

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