When Language Policy and Planning Is a Missed Opportunity: Lessons Learned from a Proposed but not Implemented Dual Language Bilingual Education Program

When populations undergo demographic shift, as in Nebraska in recent decades, educational practices can establish or reinforce hegemonic practices through denial or legitimization of language, culture, and identity, or they can be counterhegemonic. The demographic changes in Nebraska have been defined by a growth in Latinx populations (Morales, et al., in press). As a result, there have been various efforts to explore dynamic shifts in educational programs offered to support students’ unique language acquisition needs, including growth in dual language bilingual education (DLBE). However, not all communities have responded uniformly. During a recent strategic planning process Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) also considered DLBE programs influenced by organized community advocacy. This bounded, instrumental case (Bartlett & Vavrus, 2018; Hamann, 2003; Stake, 1995), informed by ethnography of language policy (Johnson, 2009), examines the language policy and planning (LPP) process of LPS by exploring the conceptualizations embedded in community discourses related to the proposition of adding a DLBE program and the subsequent cultural scripts that emerged to shape the policies and goals set by the BOE and school district leaders. Data for the study were collected between May of 2016 and September of 2022 from bi-monthly board of education meetings, including the observation and transcription of narrative, video, and sound. Employing Ruiz’ (1984) triumvirate framework, findings revealed policy agents’ language-as-resource orientations generated cultural scripts of equity, academic success, and global capital. The more complicated discourse of policy makers espoused language orientations of language-as-resource and language-as-problem, resulting in cultural scripts of neoliberal globalization which put assertable language rights in conflict. While there existed some overlap in the data set of language orientations across policy agents and policy makers, the resulting dominant cultural scripts of policy makers prevailed. Advisor: Edmund T. Hamann