National Origin Minorities and Civil Rights
The evolution of Federal protection of the educational rights of language-minority students is traced in the following pages from the enactment of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the first steps of the then-Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW) to ensure local school district compliance through its Office for Civil Rights (OCR).
Enforcement of Title VI was also sought by parents of national origin minority students who applied to the Federal Courts for relief from school districts' practices which deprived their children of equal educational benefits. One such suit, brought by parents of Chinese ancestry against the San Francisco School Board, reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974 as Lau v. Nichols. The Court's unanimous decision in Lau established two very significant points:
(1) Equality of educational opportunity is not achieved by merely providing all students with "the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education."
(2) The Office for Civil Rights has the authority to establish regulations for Title VI enforcement which, among other things, prohibit "discrimination...which has that effect even though no purposeful design is present..."
This decision of the nation's highest Court was almost immediately followed by Congressional action reaffirming the right of language-minority students to equal educational opportunity. Passed within weeks of the Lau decision, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 (EEOA) imposed on state and local education agencies an affirmative obligation to take "appropriate action to overcome language barriers"confronting language-minority students.
Appropriate Action
Throughout the remainder of the 1970's, national origin minority parents and local school districts struggledÄoften against each otherÄto define the "appropriate action" which would produce the equal educational opportunity promised by Federal law. The OCR commissioned a task force of experts who formulated guidelines, known as the Lau Remedies, for school districts to follow. These guidelines, in effect, became the standards by which the OCR determined an education agency's compliance with Title VI.
Meanwhile, national origin minority parents challenged the educational and legal adequacy of programs provided by some local school districts. Here, in three significant cases (Serna v. Portales, Cintron v. Brentwood, and Rios v. Reed), the general legal protections of Title VI and the EEOA are applied by the Courts to concrete school issues, including language identification and assessment, student grouping and assignment, curriculum, staffing, and training.
Bilingualism-Biculturalism and the Constitution
Social and political controversy often marked discussion about the education of national origin minority students, especially those of limited English proficiency: a controversy that seemed to reflect two differing goals for U.S. society. For some, the goal was an America that shared uniformly the language, customs, values, habits, and knowledge of an Anglo "mainstream" culture; for others, the goal was a pluralistic society in which people of differing languages and cultures could co-exist using the English language and cross-cultural awareness as a national cement. In the view of some pluralists, the right of national origin minorities to the maintenance of their cultural and linguistic uniqueness is guaranteed by the Constitution. One unsuccessful attempt to gain judicial recognition of that claimed right is examined in Guadalupe v. Tempe.
Federal Policy in the 1980's and the 1990's: Toward A New Direction
The direction of Federal policy to protect the rights of language-minority students shifted in the early 1980's. Proposed new Title VI Lau Regulations, published by the Department of Education near the end of the Carter Administration, were termed inflexible and intrusive by the Reagan Administration, and were withdrawn by Secretary of Education, Terrell H. Bell, as his first official act.
Meanwhile, the Federal Courts developed flexible, non-intrusive standards for assessing a school district's compliance under the EEOA. In Castaneda v. Pickard (1981)* the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals set forth a three-part test for determining whether a school district has taken the appropriate actions to overcome the language barriers confronting language-minority students. The three tests are:
(1) Whether the school system is pursuing a program informed by an educational theory recognized as sound by some experts in the field, or, at least, deemed a legitimate experimental strategy.
(2) Whether the programs and practices actually used by the school system are reasonably calculated to implement effectively the educational theory adopted by the school.
(3) Whether the school's program succeeds, after a legitimate trial, to produce results indicating that the language barriers confronting students are actually being overcome.
By the mid-1980's, the Office for Civil Rights had redesigned its Title VI compliance standards for the education of language-minority students. The newÄand still currentÄOCR policy permits school districts to use any method, or program, that has proven successful or that promises to be successful. OCR's approach for evaluating the adequacy of a district's program for language-minority students under Title VI closely parallels the three-part test formulated in Castaneda v. Pickard to judge an education agency's compliance with the EEOA.
Court Decisions After Castaneda
Two Court decisions that followed Castaneda demonstrate the impact of that case on subsequent rulings regarding the legal responsibilities of education agencies serving national origin language-minority students. In Keyes v. School District No. 1 (1983), the Court utilized the three-part Castaneda test to judge Denver's programs for language-minority students under the EEOA. The Court found that Denver had failed the test's second element: for example, the school district had not adequately implemented the program it had chosen to meet the needs of its national origin minority students.
In a more recent case, the Court ruled in Gomez v. Illinois (1987) that a state education agency can be sued for failure to take the "appropriate action" required by the Equal Educational Opportunity Act. In remanding this case for trial, the Court ruled that the three-part Castaneda test was applicable to the issues.
In both Keyes and Gomez, the Courts strongly emphasized the responsibility of state and local education agencies to devote the resources necessary for actual and effective implementation of their planned programs.
Language-Minority Students and Special Education
The rights of national origin minority children under the Education of the Handicapped Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 are noted here and highlighted by a discussion of the recent consent decree obtained in Y.S. v. School District of Philadelphia. In this case, which was a class action suit representing Asian students in Philadelphia, plaintiffs claimed they had been denied their rights to equal educational opportunity byÄamong other improprietiesÄerroneous placement in special education programs. In March 1988, the District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania accepted an interim remedial agreement between the plaintiffs and the school district, by which the school district agreed to remedy the conditions which had caused the complaints. The terms of the agreement, as they are discussed here, provide an illuminating guide and precedent for the application of the Education of the Handicapped Act, as well as the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act, to the education of national origin minority students.
A Perspective for Educators
This review of Federal civil rights law concludes that state and local agencies have special responsibilities for serving the national origin minority students who are limited in their English language proficiency. The review also indicates that schools have a legal responsibility for designing and implementingÄwith the necessary and appropriate resourcesÄprograms that will enable such students to surmount language barriers, and that student academic performance is the ultimate criteria used by theCourts injudging whether or not an education agency is fulfilling its legal responsibilities for language-minority students.
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