The long shadow of Tyson Foods headquarters and the chicken plants are not the first things you see when you drive into Springdale on a Tuesday morning. The bumper stickers are the cause. My son is bilingual. My kid speaks two languages. Twenty years ago, it would have been difficult to locate a single Spanish-language pamphlet in the front office of elementary schools where they are stranded on minivans parked outside. Here, something has changed subtly, almost without anyone in the rest of the nation taking the time to notice.
The majority of Americans do not associate Arkansas with bilingual education. Usually, that mental map ends in the vicinity of East Los Angeles or El Paso. However, the data reveals a more bizarre tale. The number of emergent bilingual students in Arkansas increased by more than 200 percent between 1990 and 2000, one of the biggest increases in the nation. In actuality, the growth never ceased. Together, Latino and Marshallese families account for the majority of new kindergarten enrollments in some districts in Northwest Arkansas. The schools have had to catch up, albeit slowly and unevenly.
The way they’ve accomplished it is intriguing. Districts are not required by a single state law to become bilingual. Rather, what has emerged appears to be more of a patchwork, sometimes school by school, district by district, and frequently led by a sympathetic superintendent and a small group of teachers. The dual-language program in De Queen, a small town close to the Oklahoma border, is now regarded as one of the most well-established in the South. To enroll, parents take their children from neighboring districts. No one may have really planned it this way. Like most real things in education, it just happened.
It’s difficult to ignore how different this appears from the earlier disputes over bilingual education in Arizona and California. There, the model has frequently been adversarial, characterized by English-only campaigns, ballot initiatives, and lawsuits. There has been opposition in Arkansas, but it has happened more subtly and locally. At school board meetings, some parents complain. A bill put forth by a state legislator never quite makes it out of committee. A six-year-old in Rogers is learning to count in two languages in the real classrooms, and he doesn’t find it odd at all.
Talking to teachers gives me the impression that they understand how delicate everything is. It’s like building a house in a tornado-prone area, according to one seasoned ESL coordinator. In any case, you construct. You simply construct with caution. The political environment surrounding immigration can change suddenly, teacher certification in bilingual education is still uncommon, and funding is still uneven. If there are any investors in long-term educational reform, they appear to think Arkansas is worth keeping an eye on.
As you watch this develop, you begin to question whether the most significant American education story of the coming ten years won’t originate from the coasts at all. It will originate from a state that most people associate with the Razorbacks and Walmart. The bilingual school in the South is no longer an oddity. It’s still unclear if it will endure the next political swing. However, the multilingual students in the Springdale elementary school cafeteria line aren’t waiting for permission. They’ve already arrived.
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