As part of the national drive to secure equal educational opportunities for all American students, the three branches of the Federal government have acted during the last two decades to protect the rights of national origin minority students and those who are limited in their English proficiency. A substantial body of Federal law has developed establishing the rights of language-minority students and defining the responsibilities of school districts serving them. This body of law has been particularly dynamic; it has evolved substantially in its scope and sophistication, and it is still evolving. It is to this body of law and implementing regulation that those who are responsible for state and local educational policies and programs must turn for guidance and direction as they seek to ensure that the ever-increasing numbers of national origin minority students they serve are provided with the educational opportunities that our democratic society guarantees.
The development of legislation, judicial opinion, and administrative regulation that together make up the relevant body of law regarding language-minority students and the legal responsibilities of the education agencies that serve them are traced in the pages that follow. The information is meant primarily for school officials and parents. We do not critique the legal reasoning employed by the Courts in a particular case or series of judicial decisions, nor analyze the political or ideological significance of Congressional and regulatory action respecting language-minority students. Such matters are more appropriately left to law journals and other publications. Here, we merely hope to provide a guide to the relevant law and regulation as it has been established.
After a brief summary overview, the information is presented in a generally chronological order. A word should be said about the selection of Federal Court decisions for discussion and the manner of their presentation. The cases were selected primarily because they announce a significant legal holding or set forth an important or distinctive line of legal reasoning. Because judicial decisions involve the application of general laws to specific people and programs, we believe that information on the "educational facts" involved in the cases will be useful to educational planners. To minimize subjective interpretation of judicial rulings and inappropriate summarization of critical facts, extensive quotations from Federal judicial decisions have been set out as text.
In this 1992 edition, we have added materials which further clarify the obligations public school systems have to national origin minority students with limited English proficiency (LEP). These four sections include:
(1) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) Policy Update on Schools' Obligations Toward National Origin Minority Students with Limited English Proficiency (1991), which provides educators additional guidance on how to ensure better compliance of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, (pages 28-31);
(2) Checklist for Self-Evaluation of Compliance with OCR Regulations developed by the Mid-Atlantic Equity Center, which educators can use to see whether they are adequately complying with Title VI as well as subsequent Supreme Court and Federal Court rulings and administrative regulations, (page 32);
(3) an analysis which describes the significance of Plyler v. Doe (1982), a Supreme Court decision prohibiting states from denying a free public education to undocumented immigrant students, (pages 33-36); and
(4) a reproducible Equity Alert: Rights of Undocumented National Origin Minority Students, which provides sample policies and strategies that educators can implement to ensure compliance of Plyler v. Doe in their school systems, and a listing of organizations and materials for further resources, (pages 47-48).
We believe it was important to highlight OCR's policy update and Plyler v. Doe in this edition because of the increasing number of LEP students in our educational systems who are being deprived of the opportunity for an education. We would like to encourage educators, parents, and the community at large to utilize these materials to educate policy makers, school staff, and parents about schools' obligations to national origin minority students, as well as parents' legal rights concerning their LEP children. We wish you success in your efforts to improve the achievement of national origin language-minority students, and we invite you to contact us if we can assist you in your efforts.
Sheryl J. Denbo, Ph.D.
Executive Director/Senior Editor
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