This article focuses on teachers’ key role as implementers of language policy. It looks at how teachers uphold, modify, or even reject language policy through their teaching practice. First, we touch on the English-only movement in the United States, which influenced the creation and implementation of the 4-hour English Language Development (ELD) model in Arizona. Next, we present the components of the 4-hour ELD model (i.e., Discrete Skills Inventory, Super SEI Strategies, time allocations). We turn to Ricento and Hornberger’s piece (1996), which discusses how policy formation and implementation consists of many layers; teachers’ roles are often underemphasized. We then describe the methods and purpose of the Lillie et al. (2010) study and explain how the present study emerged from it. We move on to present three vignettes that capture the varying ways in which teachers enact the 4-hour ELD model. Key findings were that although the 4-hour ELD model was prescriptive, teachers ultimately shaped curriculum in their own classrooms, thereby playing a pivotal role in language policy implementation.

In the Horne v. Flores Supreme Court decision of June 25, 2009, the Court wrote that one basis for finding Arizona in compliance with federal law regarding the education of its English learners was that the state had adopted a "significantly more effective" instructional model for EL students, that being Structured English Immersion (SEI). This paper reviews the extant research on SEI, its definitions, origins, strategies. The paper concludes that there is no research basis for the court's conclusion, that at best SEI is no better or no worse than other instructional strategies when they are both well implemented and the goal is English acquisition. However, SEI as implemented in Arizona carries serious negative consequences for EL students stemming from the excessive amount of time dedicated to it, the de-emphasis on grade level academic curriculum, the discrete skills approach it employs, and the segregation of EL students from mainstream peers. Moreover, the paper argues that there are, in fact, strategies that can ameliorate these problems as well as provide an additive, rather than a subtractive, educational experience for English learner and mainstream students alike.

Also available at http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu

This study examines the implementation and organization of the state mandated curriculum in the 4-hour SEI block in 18 K-12 classrooms in 5 different districts. We focus on the effects of grouping by language proficiency, the delivery of the structure-based ESL curriculum, the provision of resources and limiting of access to grade-level curriculum, and problems of promotion and graduation for ELLs. In each of these areas, the implementation of the SEI 4- hour block raises concerns with regard to equal educational opportunity and access to English. Key among the findings of this study are: ELLs are physically, socially, and educationally isolated from their non-ELL peers; they are not exiting the program in one year, raising serious questions about the time these students must remain in these segregated settings; reclassification rates are a poor indicator of success in mainstream classrooms; and the four-hour model places ELLs at a severe disadvantage for high school graduation. The only means for these students to graduate with their peers appears to be through after school and summer school programs that either did not exist or had been cut.

Also available at http://civilrightsproject.ucla.edu