ABSTRACT
The voices of Latino teachers and researchers are curiously absent in the ongoing debate concerning early childhood reading instruction (Jiménez, Moll, Rodriguez-Brown, & Barrera, 1999; Reading Today, 2000; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). We believe that this marginalization is not unintentional and that it has significant ramifications for Latino students and the broader Latino community, particularly with respect to the formulation of state and national policies concerning language and literacy instruction. Nowhere was this connection made more explicit than in a recent editorial in a nationally circulated newspaper, in which the editorial writer argued that bilingual instruction be abandoned and replaced by allEnglish programs on the basis of a small increase in test scores for students in nonbilingual programs. The reported increase was 9 percentage points, and placed students at the 28th percentile, hardly cause for celebration or the formulation of national policy. Of concern, however, is that a mainstream, public discourse is growing that manipulates and distorts test-score results and appropriates the language of ‘scientific research’ to silence and marginalize the concerns of Latino students and the larger community. Keep in mind that the Latino community fought for decades
to establish bilingual education as a more socially equitable and culturally congruent form of schooling (San Miguel & Valencia, 1998).
