ABSTRACT
News media are potential sources of insight into the relevant beliefs, ideologies, and discourses in local contexts. To the extent that news media discuss and debate educational language policies, they provide a window into opinions and arguments circulating about those policies. Preliminary policy analysis revealed that Iowa's official language policies bear more intertextual and interdiscursive connections to monoglossic language ideologies than to heteroglossic ideologies, but educators may choose a variety of programs to serve English learners. Some research identifies Iowa as a site of the New Latino Diaspora. Iowa's Official English law (SF 165) draws on the monoglossic discourse of academic and social success through English and identifies social and economic achievement as reasons for upholding English proficiency in Iowa. Iowa's educational language policy guidance for educators, Educating Iowa's ELLs, is based on Iowa Code 280.4. This guidance document identifies English mastery as the main goal of language programs, but bilingualism and biliteracy are listed under bilingual education subheadings.
