Contested Policy

Guadalupe San Miguel, Jr., is a professor of history at the University of Houston. He is the author of ""Let All of Them Take Heed"": Mexican-Americans and the Campaign for Educational Equality in Texas, 1910-1981; Brown, Not White: School Integration and the Chicano Movement in Houston; and Tejano Proud: Tex-Mex Music in the Twentieth Century.

"Contested Policy is a very reasonable book about a topic in which public discourse has of late been entirely unreasonable. It should be required reading for students of history, education, and public policy."--Southwestern Historical Quarterly "Contested Policy presents the rise and fall of federal bilingual education, which uniquely fits into the historiography of Chicana and Chicano or Latino education studies."--Southern Historian "In this book Guadalupe San Miguel Jr. provides important insights into the bilingual education debate at the federal level. This is a must read for anyone interested in understanding one of the most contentious and misunderstood educational policy issues in the United States."--Ruben Donato, School of Education, University of Colorado at Boulder "Contested Policy is a tour de force of the politically charged history of federal bilingual education in the U.S. In his outstanding treatise, San Miguel skillfully unravels the complex and turbulent contemporary history of bilingual education. Beginning with the 1960 origins of the 1968 Bilingual Education Act, and through its six reauthorizations from 1974 to 2002, San Miguel comprehensively examines the key actors, events, and developments that led to the rise and fall of federally sponsored bilingual education. Contested Policy stands alone as the most informed and incisively written history on federal bilingual education to date."--Richard R. Valencia, College of Education, University of Texas at Austin "Regardless of the reader's political affiliation, philosophical standing, or preferred method of language instruction, this historic account is useful to the policymaker, voter, or educator interested in bilingual education."--Harvard Educational Review "San Miguel provides the complete history of the rise and fall of federal bilingual education policy and details how the English-only movement defeated it at the federal level, only to continue the fight state-by-state. This is a clearly written, controlled overview of a complicated public policy debate that has extended over four decades and resides squarely inside the multiple ideological debates over American identity, the federal role in education, and multiculturalism and diversity versus Americanism. . . . An invaluable tool for researchers."--History: Review of New Books "This concise volume documents the 40-year history of bilingual education in the US and provides an extended bibliographical essay of materials pertinent to this history."--Choice