Teacher Placement Into Immigrant English Learner Classrooms: Limiting Access in Comprehensive High...

Teacher Placement Into Immigrant EnglishLearner Classrooms: Limiting Access in

Comprehensive High Schools

Dafney Blanca DabachUniversity of Washington

This qualitative study examined how secondary teachers were assigned toteach courses intended to expand English learners’ (ELs’) access to aca-demic subjects. Theoretically, this research extends the ‘‘contexts of recep-tion’’ framework from immigration studies into the educational realm byinvestigating how teachers—as one important contextual variable—enteredinto settings designed for immigrant-origin ELs. Analysis examined institu-tional processes, norms, and policies as well as participants’ practices.Findings suggest that novice teachers were most likely to be placed into sep-arate EL content-area classrooms, unless more senior teachers requestedthese assignments or administrators intervened. Ultimately, this article usesteacher assignment processes to illustrate how contexts for immigrant-originyouth are constructed and contested and how ELs’ opportunities to learnwere jeopardized in local settings.

KEYWORDS: English language learners, immigration, teacher staffing, educa-tional inequality, secondary schools

This article focuses on one concrete aspect of institutional processeswithin schools that help to shape immigrant-origin English learner

(EL)1 youth’s educational experiences and trajectories: teacher placement.Understanding teacher placement—or the process by which teachers areassigned to particular groups of students—represents a generative point ofinquiry: It aids in grounding institutional queries by shining a light on habit-ual and recurring practice that constitutes part of the organizational work ofschools. Moreover, the specific focus on teacher placement into EL-

DAFNEY BLANCA DABACH is an assistant professor at the University of Washington, MillerHall, Box 353600, Seattle, WA 98195-3600; e-mail: [email protected]. Her research is sit-uated in the field of immigration and education, focusing on how teachers’ workintersects with immigrant and bilingual youth’s educational experiences. She also in-vestigates how institutional categories and policies shape youth’s access to educa-tional opportunities.

American Educational Research Journal

Month XXXX, Vol. XX, No. X, pp. 1–32

DOI: 10.3102/0002831215574725

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designated content courses yields a greater understanding of specific pro-cesses within schools that affect immigrant-origin youth’s educational oppor-tunities. School spaces are often differentiated, as are access to resources,such as teachers.

Teachers interact with youth daily, playing an important role in a hostsociety’s institutional welcome for immigrants. They represent a significantlink to both broader cultural socialization processes and learning (Mead,1951; Spindler & Spindler, 1990). And, the quality of teachers’ instructionplays a significant role in students’ educational outcomes (Darling-Hammond, 2000; Peske & Haycock, 2006), which mediate their futureopportunities within a society. Examining how teachers come to standbefore immigrant-origin EL youth is a critically underexplored area ofresearch within the larger project of understanding the school contextsimmigrant-origin EL youth encounter and the opportunities afforded tothem. In fact, the theoretical frame of this study, with its focus on the con-texts in which immigrants enter a host society, assumes that contexts matterfor students’ opportunities—even more so for immigrant youth who are newto a given society. Patterns of teacher distribution generally suggest childrenof color are more likely to be exposed to less experienced teachers than theirWhite counterparts (e.g., Clotfelter, Ladd, & Vigdor, 2005; Darling-Hammond, 2000). Yet little is known about how these same processes func-tion for immigrant-origin youth in settings that are organizationally differen-tiated for English learners. When access to educational resources becomesdifferentiated, this can potentially contribute to stratification processes thatlimit immigrant-origin EL youth’s educational opportunities if teachers withless experience are placed into EL-specific settings.

Based on research conducted at seven comprehensive high schools inCalifornia, this article opens the ‘‘black box’’ of teacher placement into con-tent courses that were designed to serve immigrant-origin ELs. I examineprocesses embedded in teacher placement practices to articulate how largerconstraints contributed to shaping the educational contexts that immigrant-origin EL youth encounter daily. Conceptually, I focus on teacher placementas a situated process through which school-based organizational normsintersect with policies in ways that are appropriated and potentially con-tested by actors in local settings (Hamann & Rosen, 2011; Levinson,Sutton, & Winstead, 2009). More specifically, I investigate how teacherswere placed into EL-designated courses in comprehensive high schools,2

identify the key actors involved in placement decisions, and shed light oninstitutional processes that mediated teacher placements. This illuminatesnot only how the contexts that greet immigrant-origin EL youth are poten-tially differentiated (and stratified) but also how contexts are shaped beforeyouth even arrive.

I analyze data gathered during a two-year qualitative study, arguing thatnorms of seniority-based teacher placement and overlapping policy

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implementations of teacher-quality measures at the federal and state levelscreated a situation in which less experienced teachers were most likely toobtain EL placements unless more senior teachers requested EL placementsand met EL certification requirements or administrators used alternativemethods or rationales for staffing decisions. In essence, within local sitesa ‘‘default policy’’ emerged of placing less experienced teachers into ELcourses. Ultimately, understanding more about teacher assignment eluci-dates an institutional process linked with immigrant-origin EL students’ edu-cational welcome to their host society. In the next section, I situate myresearch within a theoretical frame that focuses on how host societiesreceive immigrants in particular places and under particular conditionsthat connect to immigrants’ trajectories.

Theoretical and Conceptual Frames

Drawing from a ‘‘contexts of reception’’ theoretical frame (Portes &Rumbaut, 2006), I focus on four areas connected to the educational experi-ences of immigrant-origin EL youth. First, I highlight how previous scholar-ship in immigration studies has emphasized the significance of context, and Ielaborate on the need for a more robust conceptualization of how schoolsserve as a context of reception for immigrant youth. Second, I considerhow tracking practices differentiate access to school-based opportunitiesand how tracking applies to EL school spaces. Third, I examine teacherassignment practices that contribute to the differential allocation of educa-tional resources in local settings, including teacher tracking. Following thesetheoretical and conceptual elements, I provide background context regard-ing federal and state education policy within schools related to placementprocesses. I then present the research questions that inform my researchand analysis. I conclude the section by disclosing my position in relationto the research problems I investigated.

Theoretical Frame: Contexts of Reception and Immigrant Youth

As sociologist Alejandro Portes (1997) has noted, much immigrationresearch has focused on distinct immigrant groups rather than on larger pro-cesses and concepts for building theory. One pivotal but understudied con-cept is that of the host society and its ‘‘contexts of reception’’ (COR) (Portes& Rumbaut, 2006). Marrow (2011) articulates the essence of COR: ‘‘Contextof reception emphasizes how the structural and cultural features of the spe-cific contexts that immigrants enter influence their experiences and opportu-nities for mobility, above and beyond the role played by their own individualcharacteristics or motivations’’ (p. 9). COR research represents a corrective toapproaches that focus too narrowly on immigrants’ individual or personalcharacteristics (Marrow, 2005) and supports a broader inquiry into how

Teacher Placement Into EL Content Courses



host societies’ preexisting racial and class structures stratify immigrantsthrough differential modes of incorporation (Portes & Rumbaut, 2006).

Immigrant reception (how host societies respond to and incorporateimmigrants) is a significant process. Yet conceptually and empirically,research in this area may vary widely. Some have studied immigrant recep-tion through the disciplinary lenses and tools of political science, with opin-ion polls revealing ‘‘ambivalent’’ reception of particular groups (e.g.,Cornelius, 2002), while economists have focused on host society labor mar-kets to understand immigrants’ economic incorporation (e.g., Reitz, 2003).Meanwhile, others have focused on state policies (e.g., Filindra, Blanding,& Coll, 2011) to assess reception. Drawing from Portes and Rumbaut’s(2006) scholarship, Marrow (2011, p. 9) has emphasized four dimensionsas especially relevant to studying COR: (a) government policy, (b) labor mar-ket conditions, (c) the nature of immigrants’ enclaves and receiving commu-nities, and (d) the ways in which members of the host society respond toimmigrants, including prejudice.

As a flexible concept that moves across disciplines, COR analyses canshift in emphasis depending on researchers’ disciplinary visions and tools.What I argue for in the educational realm is scholarship that attends to thecontextual aspect of contexts of reception by investigating how the contextsthat greet immigrant-origin youth come to be assembled, structured, andinhabited by various actors at specific educational sites. Doing so contributesto building a stronger, epistemologically situated base in immigration andeducation research (Malsbary, Dabach, & Martinez-Wenzl, 2014), avoidingthe tendency within immigration studies to focus on adults and labor(Suarez-Orozco, Suarez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2008). To further developthe COR concept in education, additional scholarship is needed that: (a)articulates how contextual differences contribute to stratification and the dif-ferentiated incorporation of immigrants and their children, (b) accounts fordistinct levels of policy (federal, state, and local policies and their enact-ment), and (c) examines actual sites of contact in significant contexts forimmigrant incorporation—such as schools—where immigrants are bothreceived and interact with consequential others on a recurring basis.

The nature of contact between teachers and immigrant-origin youth isframed in part by governmental policies for EL students. While not all EL stu-dents are immigrants, and not all immigrants are EL-designated, many con-temporary programmatic school-based responses to the issue of immigrationare bound up with language classifications. In other words, immigrants’incorporation is structured by bureaucratic categories (e.g., ‘‘EL’’ designa-tions) that potentially route youth into differentiated settings. Yet, the com-plex dynamics of this process depend on which adults and youth are presentand how they inhabit their institutional settings (Erickson, 2004; Hallett &Ventresca, 2006). In connecting COR to education scholarship, I examineone piece of a larger puzzle: how teachers—who make up one aspect of

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the contexts youth encounter—come to be placed into specialized spacesthat are institutionally differentiated by EL designation and potentially altereducational opportunities for immigrant-origin youth.

Conceptual Frames

Institutional Differentiation, English Learners, and Tracking

Within research on immigrant schooling, the organizational and institu-tional processes that mediate immigrant-origin youth’s educational opportu-nities merit further investigation (Harklau, 2014; Holdaway & Alba, 2009).One stream of work has taken up the question of whether EL-specificcourses actually serve to track EL-designated students, thereby limiting theiropportunities to learn (e.g., Callahan, 2005; Callahan, Wilkinson, & Muller,2010). Through tracking, schools allocate opportunities differentially bygrouping some students into settings with more resources and curricularopportunities while other students receive less (Gamoran, 1987; Oakes,1985). (Tracking is distinct from differentiated instruction; with the latter,teachers vary instructional practices within classrooms to address studentheterogeneity [Tomlinson, 2014].) Although courses for English learnersaim to enhance access—especially in light of the need for differentiatingeducation for youth who have yet to become fluent in English (Lau v.Nichols, 1974), the ways in which some separate courses operate in local set-tings may in fact exacerbate educational inequalities for these students(Dabach, 2014).

Callahan and colleagues’ (Callahan, 2005; Callahan et al., 2010) quanti-tative course-taking analyses shed light on overall patterns of depressedachievement and limited access for EL students placed into EL courses forall but the most recent immigrants. Although many issues contribute todiminished opportunities to learn, Callahan and colleagues’ work suggeststwo problems in particular: Placing EL students into specialized coursesmay prevent them from taking more advanced coursework because ofscheduling conflicts, and placing them into EL-specialized programs mayhave negative effects due to lack of instructional rigor. They also point tothe need for investigating content-area courses intended for EL populationsbecause these courses are vital for meeting basic college entry requirementsand preparing students for future educational opportunities, beyond acquir-ing English (Kanno & Kangas, 2014; Kanno & Varghese, 2010). Yet, researchis needed on how content-area EL courses operate in local settings, espe-cially concerning how schools manage the staffing process. Given the signif-icance of teachers’ roles in enacting instruction and making curriculardecisions that ultimately affect the quality of education that youth experi-ence, it is important that we understand the processes that shape whichteachers are placed into specially designated EL settings.




Teacher Assignment and Teacher Tracking

As Cann (2012) notes, the unequal distribution of teacher resources thatdisadvantage low-income and youth of color appears to be the norm ratherthan the exception (e.g., Clotfelter et al., 2005; Darling-Hammond, 1995,2007; Kalogrides, Loeb, & Beteille, 2013; Lankford, Loeb, & Wyckoff,2002). At the same time, processes of teacher distribution, sorting, andassignment continue to complicate efforts to address such inequities (Little& Bartlett, 2010). While much contemporary work focuses on larger mech-anisms that affect the distribution of teachers, including pay structures andcontracts (e.g., Cohen-Vogel, 2007; Feng, 2010), here I focus on within-school processes that ground inquiries into specific school sites.

Finley’s (1984) classic study on teacher tracking illuminates differentialcourse distribution among teachers. Those with seniority were given firstchoice for teaching their preferred student populations, while new teachersand those of lesser status taught ‘‘remedial’’ classes. In this way, teacherassignment processes contributed to a broader system of tracking in whichyouth’s opportunities to learn were differentiated, with teachers themselvesparticipating in the norms that contributed to stratification. However, teach-ers wielded varying levels of power depending on, for example, seniority oradministrative role (e.g., department chair). Low student status also becameassociated with teacher status within schools, and lack of teaching experi-ence justified placing teachers with less experience into lower-track classes.

Although previous work has also noted the precarious status of Englishas a second language (ESL) teachers (Arkoudis, 2006; Siskin & Little, 1995),few studies have focused on questions specifically connected to processesmediating teacher placement into EL courses, particularly EL content coursesin comprehensive high schools. One exception is Olsen’s (1997) ethnogra-phy, which revealed the contentiousness of EL course staffing. In this study,teachers typically perceived EL courses as ‘‘extra work,’’ with lower statusthan mainstream and advanced placement classes. EL staffing became a polit-ical flash point—a simultaneous rejection of labor conditions and shiftingdemographics (with some exceptions). Generally teachers with higher statusand greater seniority rejected EL course placements while some new teach-ers were open to teaching EL classes. Olsen’s work established EL courses ascontentious sites of struggle that were divided along lines of seniority. Yether study was limited to one site, and she did not focus on teacher assign-ment processes. We have yet to understand the processes involved in assign-ing EL courses, particularly in light of policies that directly address teacherstaffing and qualifications.

Background: Federal and State Policy Context of Teachers’ Work With ELs

When I conducted this study (2007–2009), issues involved in teachers’work with underserved populations informed educational policy debates

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at both the federal and state levels (Darling-Hammond & Berry, 2006; Little &Bartlett, 2010). Data collection began after the implementation of the NoChild Left Behind Act (NCLB). NCLB focused in part on teacher-quality pro-visions as a means of diminishing the practice of ‘‘out-of-field teaching’’whereby teachers taught subjects (or student populations) they were notcredentialed to teach (Ingersoll, 2002). Although the aim was to ensurethat teachers who staffed courses were ‘‘highly qualified,’’ federal policyleft it to the states to determine what constituted being a ‘‘highly qualified’’teacher (Darling-Hammond & Berry, 2006). Although federal policy man-dated the need for ‘‘highly qualified’’ teachers, letting state agencies definewhat this meant in practice preserved some aspects of decentralization,allowing for greater variation across states.

Within the California context, a new policy (Senate Bill [SB] 2042)regarding teacher qualifications had already been implemented. One provi-sion of California’s SB 2042 law stipulated that all teachers—regardless ofcredential type—would henceforth earn authorization to teach ELs. In otherwords, previously candidates for teaching jobs in California could pursue ELcertification as an extra qualification through additional coursework or othermeans (e.g., state tests). Following the implementation of SB 2042,California’s authorization to teach ELs became ‘‘embedded’’ within all teach-ers’ credentials, ostensibly because nearly a quarter of California’s studentpopulation was EL-designated (Migration Policy Institute, 2014). In otherwords, in the old system not all teachers were certified to teach EL students,whereas in the new system all teachers in California were automatically EL-certified.

This credentialing policy shift coincided with the rise of separate ‘‘shel-tered’’ (EL-content) courses in schools (Dabach, 2009). As sheltered EL pro-grams became more widespread, EL credentialing requirements loosened,3

in part reflecting political pressure to establish easier routes to certificationso that teachers working with EL students would be in compliance withthe law (Dabach, 2009). So, in the context of intensifying focus on teacherqualifications and staffing for ELs, political processes at the state levelcame to influence the rules defining what constituted ‘‘highly qualified’’(Darling-Hammond & Berry, 2006). Significantly, the shift to embeddingEL certification into California’s credentials meant that new teachers—morethan ever before—would be authorized to teach ELs, unlike their seniorcolleagues.

Research Questions

This article builds on Finley’s (1984) and Olsen’s (1997) research onteacher assignment and integrates it within a larger project of understandinghow teachers—as one consequential contextual factor that youth systemati-cally encounter—come to be placed into settings that are separate from




general education classrooms. In the service of understanding how school-based contexts of reception may be shaped and differentiated, this studyasks:

� How were teachers placed into organizationally differentiated EL contentcourses in comprehensive high schools? Through what processes were teachersplaced in these settings intended for EL-designated students?

� Who were the key actors involved in placement decisions? How, if at all, didtheir roles in the placement process vary across sites?

� How did institutional factors embedded in norms, practices, and policies shapeteacher placement in EL content courses in local settings?

In asking these questions, I assume that institutional norms, processes, andpolicies transcend individuals and at the same time, actors participate inshaping both processes and outcomes. However, some actors have greaterpower within particular settings to shape how placements are distributedand which teachers’ preferences are privileged. For example, in Finley’s clas-sic study, the department chair was a central arbiter of placements, while inother work (Cann, 2012; Siskin, 1997) administrators assumed leadershiproles and competed or collaborated with department chairs to determineplacements. Here the focus is on both institutional aspects that mediateplacements as well as the role of actors in these processes.

Author Perspective on the Research Problem

I am the child of immigrants who were skilled manual laborers andentrepreneurs with little formal secondary education. Growing up, I oftenthought about how my access to education had differed from that ofmany other immigrant-origin youth. These questions of access came intosharp relief later in life when I was a research assistant for a longitudinalimmigration study. Following recently arrived immigrant youth across dis-tinct contexts, I noticed how they encountered very different learningopportunities from one class to the next, even within the same ethnicenclaves and school sites. As I observed and interacted with youth, theirteachers, and parents, I realized that many questions about patterned vari-ability within contexts remained unanswered. In developing this currentwork, I sought to capture one aspect of the contextual variations I hadwitnessed over time related to youth’s opportunities to learn, namely, theteachers whom immigrant-origin youth encountered.

Methods

This analysis draws on a larger investigation: the Teacher AdaptationStudy (TAS). In this qualitative study, I followed a group of teachers whotaught both EL-designated and general education content courses to capture

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one aspect of contextual variation—how teachers adapted instruction acrossdistinct institutional contexts intended for diverse populations of students. Inthe course of investigating teachers’ adaptations in contrasting contexts(‘‘sheltered’’ vs. ‘‘mainstream’’ classroom settings), I also sought to under-stand how teachers came to teach EL-designated courses within comprehen-sive high schools, including what larger processes mediated their placementtrajectories.

Sampling

School Selection

I recruited teachers during the 2007–2008 school year from sevenCalifornia comprehensive high schools that served immigrant-origin andEL students. (See Table 1 for school demographics.) Sampling was strategic:I targeted schools where EL populations constituted 10% to 30% of the totalschool population in order to construct a sample in which the number of ELstudents necessitated programmatic interventions (i.e., sheltered EL contentcourses) but were not so numerous that they became the norm within sites.The idea was to capture a sample where EL students comprised one constit-uency among others. I used the California Department of Education’s (CDE)Ed Data website (http://www.ed-data.k12.ca.us/) to examine schools’demographic data within a particular geographic area to determine whetherschools fell within the 10% to 30% range. (In order to protect human subjectsand reduce the likelihood that the selected schools could be identified, I donot disclose this geographic range. And at particular points in thearticle—especially when referring to administrators—I omit pseudonymsand am purposefully vague to provide additional protection to participants.)

Schools where Spanish-speakers predominated within EL populations wereselected in order to draw from samples that were more representative of the ELpopulations within California, where nearly 85% of EL students come fromSpanish-speaking backgrounds (California Department of Education, 2014).However, other language groups were represented at some sites, especiallyChinese and Vietnamese at one site and a diverse array of language groupsat another, including Filipino/Tagalog, Punjabi, and Farsi. Schools’ general stu-dent populations were highly diverse in terms of ethno-racial backgrounds,with most schools having pluralities of groups rather than clear majorities.Only two schools had slight ethnic majorities—a Latino majority at one siteand an Asian majority at another. The schools’ White student populations variedfrom 1.5% to 37%, with a majority of sites within an 8% to 18% range.

Teacher Sampling

All teachers in the sample (a) held valid subject-area and EL credentials,(b) had at least one year of prior K–12 teaching experience, and (c) were




assigned to teach at least one mainstream and one EL-designated shelteredclass in the same content area within social studies, mathematics, or sciencedepartments. In order to find teachers who met these criteria, I first collectedschool sites’ master schedules and examined them to determine whichteachers were assigned to teach pairs of sheltered and nonsheltered coursesin the same subject. A particular comparative logic was embedded in mysampling: I sought teachers who were simultaneously teaching within andoutside of EL content classes. These doubly assigned teachers were signifi-cant to the study because their frames of reference made it possible to com-pare and contrast differentially organized contexts within the same schools.

Teachers represented a range of ethno-racial backgrounds and livedexperiences. Of 20 teachers, 10 were White, including White ethnic(i.e., Polish American), 5 were Latino, 2 were African American, 2 were

Table 1

School Information Chart

School Percentage EL Percentage FRM Description

Adams High

School

22 46 Urban, predominantly Latino and

African American, working-class

Carter High

School

12 30 Urban periphery, demographically

shifting from White middle class to

middle- and working-class African

American and Latino students

Jefferson High

School

20 34 Urban, prior demographic shifts from

White blue collar to Latino and

African American populations

Washington

High School

30 43 Urban, predominantly Latino, largely

working class

Garfield High

School

20 75 Urban, with Asian, African American,

and Latino students; high poverty

rates at the school setting and

community alongside wealth nearby

Roosevelt High

School

13 26 Urban periphery, with a great variation

in languages spoken and a wide

spectrum of socioeconomic status;

greater presence of middle-class

immigrants than at other sites

Polk High

School

22 38 School in a midsized city in

demographic transition; used to be

middle- and upper-class White, in the

process of transitioning to working-

class Latino

Note. All names of schools and personnel are pseudonyms. EL = English learner; FRM =Free and Reduced Meals.

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East Asian, and 1 was South Asian. Half of the sample was comprised ofteachers who were either foreign-born (6 teachers) or had at least one for-eign-born parent (4 teachers). Additionally, 2 more U.S.-born teachers hadlived abroad as residents of another country for a year or more.

Data Collection

In-depth semi-structured teacher interviews covered a range of topicsconcerning teachers’ work with immigrant-origin youth, resulting in over30 hours of digital audio. (The vast majority of interviews lasted 60–90minutes.) I conducted all interviews. Interviews were transcribed in theirentirety using standard transcription conventions. In order to ascertain ELstaff placement patterns, I asked questions including: ‘‘How did you endup with the classes that you teach? Is this typical for your department?How does your department decide to offer sheltered [EL] classes?’’ I alsoasked teachers how they came to teach at their sites and what it was liketo teach in their settings. (For interview protocols, see Dabach, 2009,pp. 167–176.)

I also interviewed administrators (N = 7) and site-based EL instructionalcoaches (N = 4), resulting in an additional 6 hours and 30 minutes of tran-scribed audio.4 Coach interviews were open-ended and conducted at theoutset to establish contextual information at sites that had coaches.Administrator interviews were conducted after teacher interviews with thepurpose of triangulating data on teacher placement processes. After variationin administrators’ roles emerged from teacher interviews, I asked administra-tors to explain teacher placement processes at their sites, focusing on theextent to which administrators and departments controlled placement deci-sions. I also asked: ‘‘If you have a role in scheduling: What are your prioritieswhen placing teachers? What guides your decisions? What are your mainconsiderations when placing teachers to teach sheltered/SDAIE courses?’’Through these questions, both institutional constraints (e.g., credentialingpolicies) and administrators’ own stances toward EL placement processesemerged. Writing fieldnotes provided another means for contextualizingdata. In this analysis, fieldnotes were supplemental rather than primary ana-lytic sources. (All quotations are from interview data.)

Data Analysis

At the outset, my design and analyses were guided by three mediatingdimensions of teachers’ work with immigrant and EL students: institutionalopportunities and constraints, teacher orientation, and teacher repertoires ofpractice (Dabach, 2009). These dimensions informed my thinking about thewider terrain of teachers’ work with immigrant youth in which I situate thisproject. I focus on institutional opportunities and constraints here because oftheir relationship to teacher placement processes. Moreover, the examples of




these institutional factors on which I focus (i.e., norms of seniority, NCLB,and California credential policy) were most salient in the data I collected.

In the first phase of analysis, I listened to audio recordings of interviewsand read transcripts multiple times in order to develop a holistic sense of thedata and avoid focusing on quotations out of context. After reading and lis-tening holistically, I constructed summaries of interviews at the participantlevel (i.e., teacher, coach, etc.). Subsequently, I performed open coding,reading for themes (Ryan & Bernard, 2003). One theme I identified at thisstage was ‘‘seniority.’’ The way I identified this theme was through the rep-etition I was seeing in the data. I also wrote analytic memos about the rela-tionships I was seeing between the larger ‘‘big bin’’ deductive categorieswith which I approached the study initially (i.e., institutional opportunitiesand constraints) and the specific data I was seeing. For example, I concep-tualized seniority as a type of informal policy (or norm), which served as anexample of an institutional constraint.

During the second phase of analysis, I formalized code definitions andapplied them systematically to interview transcripts. For example, withseniority I developed the following definition:

apply code when participant either explicitly uses the word ‘‘senior-ity’’ or describes the way things work locally (norms) where teacherswith more time on-site have more say in their teaching assignmentsthan those who have less experience or time on site.

I then created documents where I could see all the examples I had coded fora particular category.

In the third phase, my focus was on triangulation and data reduction(Miles & Huberman, 1994). I used matrices to facilitate this process. Forexample, I grouped participants by site onto tables. I reduced data by indi-cating the presence or absence of codes (e.g., yes for the presence of senior-ity and no for the absence of seniority for each participant). I grouped datatogether in this way because my theoretical framework assumes that con-texts vary and that context matters. If participants’ accounts reflected thepresence of seniority in the tables, I recorded claims of seniority. If thecode was not present, I searched for evidence to determine whetherthe code was merely absent or if counterevidence was available for a com-peting claim (e.g., that teachers were distributed equally among EL coursesregardless of seniority). If a preponderance of evidence suggested the pres-ence of seniority and disconfirming evidence was absent, I determined thatseniority was present. I examined my conclusions and presented data andclaims to external groups to aid in verifying conclusions.

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Limitations

This study is subject to limitations. The project was initially designed toinvestigate not only EL teacher placement but also other phenomena. Hadthe study focused exclusively on teacher assignment, I would have collectedadditional data and sampled more widely across the seven comprehensivehigh schools and included data from department heads and others acrossall departments at each site. For a deeper understanding of potential depart-mental variation within school sites, the findings in this study can be supple-mented by future research. Also, the analysis would have been enhanced byobservational data from meetings where placement decisions were dis-cussed. However, the available data from participating teachers, administra-tors, and coaches provide a valuable window into under-investigatedprocesses that others can build from in future research.

Findings

In this section I present and interpret the study’s findings in three steps.First, I establish the overarching organizational picture showing wherewithin each school teacher placement decisions were situated—in otherwords, who made these decisions at the school sites and at which adminis-trative levels they were made. This frame sets the context for the next twosections that examine norms, policies, and actors. Second, I highlight howparticular norms (in this case, norms of seniority-based preferences) resultedin a ‘‘default’’ situation wherein newer teachers had less freedom of choiceregarding their assignments. Third, I discuss how broader policies shapedlocal teacher placement processes: specifically, how state-level policy shiftsin EL-credentialing combined with the need for officially labeled ‘‘highlyqualified teachers’’ from the NCLB mandate fueled the placement of newerteachers into EL-designated classrooms. Finally, I expand on administrators’roles in the process of teacher placement, illustrating how in some casesadministrators selectively involved themselves in what was essentiallya form of politics: the distribution of teachers as a resource.

Situating Placement Decisions: The Varying Roles of

Departments and Administrators

In this section I focus on describing organizationally where control overteacher placement was based, a feature that varied by school site.5 Inessence, distributing teachers’ courses involved varying degrees of adminis-trative and departmental control with respect to where schools fell alonga spectrum with departmental control at one end and administrator controlat the other. Table 2 presents the distribution of schools along this spectrum.




Departmental control, present at two schools in the sample, gave depart-ments primary oversight to determine how courses were distributed toteachers within the department. In this arrangement, teachers’ preferenceswere usually solicited in the spring before the following academic year,and the departmental chairperson would play a central role in determiningteacher distribution across departmental offerings. Although in such casesthe department chair had an official role to play in this process, longstandingnorms, such as teacher seniority, also mediated this process. While adminis-trators and counseling staff may have been responsible for other aspectsinvolved in creating the school’s master schedule, such as determining thenumber of sections to be offered, the task of teacher assignment was basedat the departmental level.

In two other schools, departments assumed primary control over place-ments but with some degree of administration oversight. In these schools,administrators described their role as having ‘‘veto power’’ (June 3, 2008;December 19, 2008). Departments would make teacher assignments, but ad-ministrators would strategically reject particular placements when they feltthis was necessary. In an additional two schools this process was inverted,with administrators playing a key role in determining teacher placementsbut with some input from departments. This was largely the result of newleadership taking a more active role in the process to reverse norms thatwere perceived as inequitable when they influenced how the schools hadbeen meeting underserved students’ needs. As one administrator describedthe situation:

For many years the departments kind of made their own masterscheduling, and what was happening was that teacher preferencewas taking priority over student needs. . . . [I]t [was] not equitablefor teachers, because [of] people who had more influence or forwhatever reason—it wasn’t equitable . . . and there was a lot of frus-tration underneath. . . . When I was asked to start doing the masterprogramming I said that I would be willing to do it, but I wasn’t goingto do it the way that it had been done. (June 5, 2008)

This administrator describes the shift from departmentally based to adminis-tratively controlled placements. Even when departing from the norm of

Table 2

Site of Control Over Teacher Assignments

Site of Control N of Schools

Departmental control 2

Mostly departmental control, with some administrative involvement 2

Mostly administrator control, with some departmental involvement 2

Administrator control 1

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departmentally based decision making, administrators in these settingsallowed departments to weigh in when finalizing teacher placements. Butthe majority of the decision making was in administrators’ hands.

Finally, at one school site administrators made course placements with-out departmental involvement in decision making. In fact, administratorshad so much control over the process of teacher placement in this schoolthat the mathematics department chair of 10 years’ standing reported thateven he did not know what his teaching assignment would be and that hehad little control over this process (March 28, 2008). Another teacher atthe site echoed this response: ‘‘Our [social studies] department chair doesn’tknow what he’s going to get. The administration decides everything’’ (March5, 2008). Under pressure from a regional accreditation agency, the schoolwas being closely watched and control was centralized.

As part of the process of teacher assignment, teachers were asked tosubmit preference forms. However, teachers’ stated preferences did not nec-essarily translate into actual placements. Though teachers’ preferences wereincluded in the formal process, two major themes emerged as mediators ofplacements: the norm of teacher seniority and the intersection of twopolicies—California’s SB 2042 credentialing policy and NCLB.

Seniority-Based Distribution Norms: ‘‘First Crack’’ Versus ‘‘Left-Overs’’

Seniority-based teacher distribution surfaced in six of the seven schools—either as a current practice (at five) or as a practice administrators had worked tochange (at four). At three schools, seniority was simultaneously a current prac-tice and one that administrators worked against. One long-time teacher,Mr. Linden, described seniority this way: ‘‘[With] more seniority [years onsite] . . . you get first crack at what you want to teach’’ (March 7, 2008).Mr. Linden noted further that the newest teachers had less freedom to choosein this process and were habitually ‘‘stuck’’ with classes that others did notwant to teach:

[Your] first year teaching at Jefferson High, you get quote-unquote‘‘stuck’’ with all the sheltered classes, with ELL classes, because I thinkafter you’ve been teaching for a little while, a lot of teachers don’t, Idon’t know, they don’t want to do it. (March 7, 2008)

Ms. Wilk, a social studies teacher at Polk High, also articulated this phenom-enon, but from the perspective of a newly hired teacher whose schedule wasloaded with EL courses:

DBD: How did you end up with this schedule?Ms. Wilk: I was the last one hired and these were the classes that were

left [laughs]. (March 26, 2008)




Ms. Wilk had little control in the process of selecting her course schedule.The underlying logic of teacher distribution was to privilege seniority, givingteachers with the most time on site greater choice in their teaching assign-ments. Depending on teachers’ preferences, they could choose to teach ELclasses. However, as Ms. Wilk and Mr. Linden noted, the newest teacherstended to teach ‘‘left-over’’ classes, and these classes often were EL courses.This pattern was also confirmed by others at additional sites, including a site-based EL coach:

Coach: The sheltered classes go to all the newer teachers.DBD: Do you find that at your school?Coach: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It’s even as bad as the teachers get a teaching

schedule, and they won’t even say that it was a sheltered class,and the first day of school, the kids show up, and they’re like,‘‘Oh, none of these students speak English,’’ because theirdepartment head didn’t tell them it was a sheltered class. Imean, that’s happened.

DBD: Do you feel like those classes are less desirable?Coach: Yes. (February 27, 2008)

While teachers with seniority could opt out of teaching EL courses, theydid not always do so, for varying reasons (Dabach, 2011). Mr. Montero, a vet-eran Mexican American teacher, chose to teach EL courses even though hehad seniority. He recounted how sheltered courses were typically distributedat his site and decided to keep teaching his sheltered science classes:

If you’ve got enough seniority, you can tell them, ‘‘No. No, please,no. . . .’’ They ask teachers, ‘‘What do you want to teach?’’ And I—Icould have dumped my sheltered English [learners], but I didn’twant to do that. I didn’t want to stick a new teacher with [xxx]6 reallyhard and, I kind of got it down how to teach, you know? And I justthought it’s a cruel thing to do to new teachers—give them the hard-est kids in the school to teach. So, I said, ‘‘I’ll just keep—I’ll take theseclasses.’’ (March 28, 2008)

While Mr. Montero revealed his own moral stance that led him to teach ELcourses, his language suggests that these courses were undesirable; usingthe word ‘‘dumped,’’ he simultaneously affirmed his choice while suggestingthat it ran contrary to the atmosphere surrounding EL courses. In his depart-ment, teachers with a particular interest, skill, or affinity were assigned moresheltered sections while those with seniority and higher professional statuswho preferred not to teach these courses were free to teach other classes.Pointing to the master schedule, Mr. Montero also noted that the departmentchair, who had the most seniority, had the easiest schedule—one main-stream biology preparation for all of his daily classes. Mr. Montero’s choice

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to teach EL courses was a quiet but principled stance. This was, however, anindividual choice rather than a departmental policy or collective norm. Apartfrom Mr. Montero’s active choice, the default was for newer teachers to staffEL courses.

Policies Mediating New Teachers’ Placements

In addition to norms of seniority, the concurrent implementation of twoaforementioned policies (NCLB and California’s SB 2042) exacerbatedpressures to staff EL courses with new teachers because the newestteachers—those having recently completed their teacher educationprograms—were automatically authorized to teach ELs. Yet their more seniorcolleagues may or may not have had EL-authorized endorsements becauseobtaining EL certification had been optional prior to the new policy regime.

As these California credentialing policy changes were being imple-mented, administrators at school sites were responding to pressures to com-ply with NCLB’s mandates to staff courses with ‘‘highly qualified’’teachers—essentially teachers who held valid teaching credentials thatwere appropriate for the subject area and student populations they wereteaching. With ‘‘highly qualified’’ teaching defined by state-specified creden-tialing mechanisms (rather than by a variety of measures), newly mintedteachers could staff EL courses, facilitating compliance with NCLB teacher-quality mandates in areas for which more experienced teachers did nothold EL authorizations. Mr. Newbury, a social studies teacher at AdamsHigh, observed that it was precisely because he was a new teacher that hewas routed to teaching EL courses:

Last year’s master schedule was decided on which teachers wouldqualify, which teachers were willing. We didn’t have a wholelot. . . . I’m already, I’m a 2042 [EL-embedded credential]. So, imme-diately when I came in, they were saying: ‘‘new teachers: EL. . . .’’Which is a very unfortunate circumstance, from what I’m like—mymentality and my beliefs. . . . Personally, I think it should be justthe opposite. I think a teacher who teaches well [can] get thosekids up to speed in their skills. (April 23, 2008)

The issue of teacher credentialing was linked directly to newer teachers’assignments to EL courses. And, as Mr. Newbury observed, this logic seemedcontrary to students’ needs to have teachers with enough experience to meetthe challenge of bringing youth ‘‘up to speed.’’ Furthermore, Mr. Lindennoted that, ‘‘As far as the old-timers go, they don’t have CLAD [Cross-culturalLanguage and Academic Development/EL authorized] credentials, and theycouldn’t teach sheltered classes even if they wanted to’’ (March 7, 2008).According to Mr. Linden, although the credential was required to teach ELstudents and its absence barred experienced non–EL-credentialed teachersfrom teaching these courses, it did not, by itself, improve the quality of




teaching. Furthermore, an administrator also shared concerns about the EL-embedded credential, noting that it was difficult to discern how much train-ing teachers had had in their teacher education programs now that SB 2042was in effect: ‘‘Since the CLAD is embedded in the credential, you neverknow how strong they are’’ (June 3, 2008).

Although one administrator noted that EL course staffing was now easierbecause greater numbers of teachers were automatically EL-certified, theseplacements tended to fall to newer teachers when schools did not have suf-ficient numbers of EL-certified teachers. This process was especially appar-ent at Adams High, but teachers at two other sites reported thisphenomenon as well. Given this overall context, one may wonder howadministrators navigated through these waters. I take up this subject atgreater length in the next section.

Administrator Roles: Variation in Control,

Selective Battles, and Political Processes

The underlying context of administrators’ work took place within thetwin currents of credentialing constraints and department-based norms ofseniority; however, the relative strength of these two currents varied acrossthe sites. Administrators could not ignore credentialing constraints, but theycould alter the supply of credentialed EL teachers by encouraging veteranteachers to obtain supplemental EL authorization.

At the same time, administrators assumed a range of stances towardnorms of seniority. In essence, administrators described teacher placementas a political process in which they selectively ‘‘vetoed’’ assignments. As inany political process, they would weigh the benefits and costs: Were theygoing to expend their political capital on particular teacher placements?For example, one administrator recounted how she had used her ‘‘vetopower’’ to pull out a teacher whom she judged to be ‘‘not good for kids’’from an EL assignment and strategically placed her elsewhere:

For me, it’s important that the right people are in the right place. Sothat one teacher I was talking about . . . I kicked her out of shelteredlast year. I just flat out removed her. . . . And I’ve never let her back ineven though she comes and she whines and she petitions and shetells us how credentialed she is and how this [EL teaching] is herpassion . . . she’s not good for kids. She’s not going to move the pro-gram forward. She’s not going to do those things I need her to do. Sono matter what department [chair] comes up and says, ‘‘Could wegive her this section?’’ . . . the answer is no. (December 19, 2008)

At the same time, this administrator acknowledged that there were certaintimes at which she would not take on particular challenges; the decisionto intervene involved a calculation of political expenditure and, ultimately,if she could not terminate a teacher she would have to figure out wherethey would do the least amount of damage:

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If I can’t get rid of a teacher, if it takes me two to three years, and ifI’ve got a teacher retiring in two or three years, I’m not going there.That teacher gets what they want as long as they’re not harmingkids—where they want to be—normally it’s senior year. They can’tharm seniors. Seniors are done. So I tend to put my worst teachersat senior level. My best teachers go to the ninth grade or sheltered.If you want my philosophy of how I do that. . . . It’s about gettingto the kids. My ninth grade’s the most important year. My shelteredsare the most important kids. (December 19, 2008)

In this administrator’s priorities, EL and ninth-grade students came first.However, she acknowledged that she only had ‘‘veto power’’ in depart-ments’ teacher distribution decisions; in fact, she reported that departmentsmade 90% to 100% of all appointments. Although she articulated a vision onwhich she acted in particular cases, the departmental norm of seniority per-sisted, to be disrupted by a strategic veto only in cases in which the admin-istrator felt she had to expend the political capital for a greater good.

While administrators sometimes chose to deliberately take a stand tosupport what they perceived as more equitable teaching assignments, theirefforts faced additional sources of pressure. One source of perceived polit-ical pressure came from non-immigrant families’ complaints about ineffec-tive teachers who lacked management skills. Teachers had to be placedsomewhere, and because of the perception that immigrant parents wouldnot challenge these staffing decisions, their children were more vulnerableto having ineffective teachers assigned to their classrooms. As one adminis-trator euphemistically stated it, albeit with much hesitation:

In a lot of places I’ve seen, you know, maybe not the strongest teach-ers . . . they’re placed there [in EL classes], kind of a not—don’t rockthe boat kind of thing . . . decisions are made in a very pragmaticway. (June 5, 2008)

When asked to elaborate on this process, she offered an example from herown school site:

Okay, well, we do have a teacher here who is not a particularlystrong teacher who was put back in the classroom from being outof the classroom. . . . So, you know, this particular teacher mayhave some difficulty in management issues, and they have someissues from being in conflicts with students and maybe even parents.So, quite frankly those problems are going to be accentuated teach-ing a mainstream class than an ELD class where a more traditionalattitude towards—you know, in terms of respecting the teacher andparents, not complaining to the school and things like that. So wefind that happening also, not just here, but there’s other places wherethat happens . . . which is not a good reason to assign someone, but ithappens. (June 5, 2008)




Noting in passive voice that ‘‘it happens,’’ rather than speaking of administra-tors actively making these decisions, this administrator indicated that assigning‘‘not the strongest teachers’’ to teach EL students was something that hap-pened not only at her site but at other sites as well. She observed that the issuewas tied up not only with cultural norms of respect for teachers in many immi-grant families but also with language issues that put immigrant parents at a dis-advantage vis-a-vis their native-English-language counterparts:7

In any school . . . students and parents who are native speakers [are]going to be more vocal than coming from an immigrant backgroundand not speaking English. . . . So if you have a teacher who’s nota particularly strong teacher or who lacks management skills or lacksinterpersonal skills, you’re going to have less resistance. (June 5,2008)

Placing ineffective teachers with immigrant-origin youth was describedas a case of taking a path of ‘‘less resistance’’ in contrast to the fear of facinggreater political pressure from native English-speaking parents. Not all immi-grant parents fit this profile; however, because of this perception, immigrant-origin EL children were more vulnerable to exposure to ineffective teachersat this site and, as suggested by the administrator, at other sites as well.

Administrators I interviewed described a range of degrees of controlover teacher assignment at their school sites and of political pressures tonavigate: from departmental norms of seniority and credentialing constraintsto external pressures from non-immigrant constituents. And yet, whileadministrators navigated through these processes, some appeared to bemore committed to challenging the status quo, devising strategies to helpthem realize their visions. One principal explained how the process ofmigrating from Mexico as a teenager and being placed into basic mathemat-ics classes (even though she had already completed geometry in Mexico)sparked her desire to change things for the future. As a school counselorwho was previously involved in processing her school’s master schedule,she also saw how seniority created inequitable staffing for students:

What I noticed is that the teachers with the most expertise, with themost experience, were always choosing easy assignments. Theywanted the GATE [Gifted and Talented Education] students, theywanted the advanced students. And who ended up teaching every-body else? It was the new teachers that had less experience. Andso I thought if I become an administrator, then I can change that.(June 3, 2008)

Equipped with her vision, this principal also had a teacher placementstrategy called ‘‘high and low’’: teachers would receive both a ‘‘high’’ anda ‘‘low’’ class, ‘‘because if you know how to teach to the high and youknow the level of standards, you will know what is it that you need to

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work with your low students in order to get there.’’ She acknowledged thatthis approach would not by itself create transformation: ‘‘It will take muchmore than just ‘low’ and ‘high’ and suddenly there’s a miracle. . . . So inthe meantime, I need to work with all of the support staff here’’ (June 3,2008). While bolstering her staff’s skills, she simultaneously recruited strongnew teachers invested in teaching EL students. In her view, as long as shewas restricted to the pool of teachers she had on hand, her staffing wouldbe limited to strategically moving teachers and classes around a masterschedule board. Changing the equation for teacher assignment wouldinvolve recruiting new highly skilled and committed teachers.

In addition to recruiting new teachers to her site, she and other admin-istrators discussed ‘‘convincing’’ teachers to take on particular assignments.Rather than dictating teachers’ schedules, she recounted a narrative whenshe asked two particularly ‘‘strong’’ teachers pointed moral questions: ‘‘Ihad to . . . convince them because they didn’t want that kind ofassignment. . . . I had to say, ‘Well, if you don’t do it, then who’s going doit? Because you know how hard it is’’’ (June 3, 2008). Distributing teacherresources involved varying levels of strategy on the part of administrators,including raising moral questions with staff and altering their site-basedteacher supply. However, without these administrators’ active stances, thedefault norm was seniority.

Discussion and Implications

In this section I first summarize the study’s findings and then discuss itsimplications. I consider possible alternatives to the norms and practices evi-dent at the sites and close by considering some unanswered questions thatsuggest directions for future research.

Summary of the Findings

In summary, this study finds that while patterns of control over teacherassignment varied, two institutional factors mediated teacher placement:norms of seniority and the intersection of California’s credentialing policywith NCLB teacher quality provisions. These two factors created conditionsin which less experienced teachers were more vulnerable to EL placementswhen more senior teachers did not choose to teach in these settings or didnot hold EL certification. Finally, administrators also adopted a variety ofstances regarding what was described as a preeminently political process,where exercising the power to change placements entailed expending polit-ical capital or choosing not to. Within a given setting, some actors had morecontrol over teacher assignment decisions than others. Taken together, thesefindings suggest that teacher placement into EL courses was a site of politicalstruggle, either active or passive—or often both, as default norms intersected




with interpretations of broader state and national policies as well as teachers’and administrators’ own stances.

This study reflects the processes through which teacher placementswere shaped by institutional norms, policies, and actors. As noted previ-ously, this study’s focus on teacher placements offers one example of insti-tutional processes that are connected to the contexts in which immigrant-origin youth are received in schools. Teachers’ presence is an especially sig-nificant point of focus because teachers shape central aspects of classroomcontexts that immigrant-origin EL youth encounter. They do this in the typesof activities they organize that may expand students’ opportunities throughexposure to a rigorous curriculum (or conversely, not), the warmth or cool-ness of tone they set, the norms and expectations they enforce, and therelationships they develop with students that can potentially confer addi-tional resources outside of classrooms (Stanton-Salazar, 2001). In short,both teachers and schools represent consequential contexts that warrantcareful and comprehensive investigation.

Contributions

This study makes a theoretical contribution by extending the scope ofCOR research more directly to schools, providing a sharper focus on COR-related issues for immigrant-origin youth than research that studies general-ized attitudes of host society members as documented in opinion polls (e.g.,Cornelius, 2002). It also shifts investigative focus from immigrant enclaves(e.g., Zhou, 1992) to schools as contexts of reception in their own right.Some researchers (e.g., Dentler & Hafner, 1997; Hamann, 2003; Lee &Hawkins, 2015; Marrow, 2011) have focused on schools as important sitesof immigrant reception; this study adds to this literature by focusing onhow teachers entered into dedicated spaces that were constructed forimmigrant-origin ELs. The analysis reveals how policies, norms, and practi-ces in local settings shaped teacher assignment to EL courses in ways thatjeopardized youth’s access to educational opportunities.

While other work on COR may focus on how immigrant reception ismediated by factors that vary by geographical region (Lee & Hawkins,2015; Marrow, 2011), here I strive to understand how school-based contextsare assembled, produced, constructed, and maintained and how they cometo exhibit particular constellations of factors by examining one facet: theteacher’s presence in the classroom and how teachers are routed into thesespecialized settings. The focus is not only on how contextual differencesaffect immigrants’ opportunities but also on how contexts are constructedand how some actors and not others enter into the scene. The study ofteacher placement is, then, one piece of a larger program of work that em-phasizes how consequential contexts that immigrant-origin youth encounter

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are politically constructed and shaped—not merely settings that happen todiffer from one another.

More specifically, this study’s findings articulate aspects of school-basedCOR. First, the varying degrees of control over teacher placement processesthat I found suggests that there were differences across sites regarding whohad control over placement decisions. Conceptually, this means that thecreation and maintenance of school-based contexts of reception are likelyto involve multiple actors with varying levels of power and discretion overdecisions that shape the contexts youth encounter. Second, the intersectionof state and federal policy that I have described suggests that contexts areshaped by factors that operate on many levels; the intersection of such pol-icies in local settings sheds light on specific aspects of the processes throughwhich policies from the local, state, and national levels come together inlocal settings (a focus also present in some policy research, e.g., Honig,2006; as well as in the anthropology of policy, e.g., Levinson et al., 2009).

Third, the finding that less experienced teachers were more likely to beplaced into EL content courses suggests that immigrant-EL youth’s access toeducational opportunities were limited. Disproportionate novice teacher dis-tribution links to more pervasive patterns of educational inequality not onlyfor immigrant-origin and EL-identified youth but also more generally forlow-income youth and youth of color (Clotfelter et al., 2005; Darling-Hammond, 1995; Feng, 2010; Peske & Haycock, 2006). Certainly there is var-iation in new teachers’ skills, with some able to implement ambitious instruc-tion when they have access to sophisticated teacher education programs andsupports (e.g., Lampert, Beasley, Ghousseini, Kazemi, & Franke, 2010; J. P.Thompson, Windschitl, & Braaten, 2013). Yet research has identified waysin which novice teachers generally differ from their more experienced coun-terparts (e.g., Bransford, Derry, Berliner, Hammerness, & Beckett, 2005;Darling-Hammond, 1995, 2000; Sabers, Cushing, & Berliner, 1991) as wellas differences in related learning outcomes for students (Clotfelter et al.,2005). Experienced teachers typically have more fully developed abilitiesto understand student and classroom processes and tend to be more effec-tive because of their recognition of student learning patterns(Hammerness et al., 2005; Sabers et al., 1991). Although experience is onlyone component of teacher quality, it is an important one (Darling-Hammond, 2000). In light of this article’s findings, current scholarship oncritically innovative teacher preparation becomes increasingly consequential(e.g., Zeichner & Bier, 2013).

My analysis also expands and updates Finley’s (1984) and Olsen’s (1997)findings on teacher placement, on a larger scale, introducing wider variationin administrators’ roles in a post-NCLB world where accountability pressureshave increased. Unlike Finley’s study where department heads were the cen-tral figures in making these decisions, this study’s findings align more closelywith more recent scholarship (e.g., Cann, 2012) that identifies multiple




decision-making sources. At the same time, this study confirms the preemi-nently political nature of the placement process found in both Finley’s andOlsen’s studies, highlighting how those with less teaching experience (andtypically less power as newcomers to the school’s teaching staff) are posi-tioned in ways that maintain the power of more senior teachers to havegreater say in their choice of placements.

Turning to interpretations of NCLB and California’s SB 2042 in local con-texts, this study highlights how in practice these policies may potentiallycontradict the spirit of the very measures that seek to address educationaldisadvantages. Like other NCLB reforms that have had unintended conse-quences for EL students (Darling-Hammond, 2007; Olsen, 2010; Pollack,2008), teacher quality provisions were interpreted at local sites where therewas a shortage of EL-credentialed teachers in ways that exacerbated, sug-gesting that there were additional pressures to place newly credentialedteachers into EL content courses, longstanding patterns of novice teacherassignment to underserved students. Despite NCLB teacher-quality provi-sions, this work documents continuing tensions surrounding ‘‘who teacheswhom’’ (Clotfelter et al., 2005) and extends this work specifically to ELpopulations.

This study also responds to a continued need to account for localteacher placement processes and practices, especially in settings where ELstudents are taught separately from their non-EL peers. When EL coursesare separate, it becomes easier to assign the most politically vulnerableteachers to these placements. Others have also highlighted dilemmasinvolved in the trade-offs between differentialist and universalist solutionsto EL access to educational opportunity (Reeves, 2004; Richardson Bruna,Vann, & Perales Escudero, 2007; Stritikus & Nguyen, 2010; K. D.Thompson, 2013; Valdes, 2001). This study contributes to this line of workby underscoring the tension between targeting EL students’ content needs(through separate courses aimed at providing access) and the actual politicalprocesses underlying teacher assignment that take place within the largercontext of patterns of teacher marginalization, sorting, and stratification(Achinstein, Ogawa, & Speiglman, 2004; Cann, 2012; Finley, 1984; Little,1993; Olsen, 1997; Talbert & Ennis, 1990).

Yet, dilemmas also arise when placing EL students into general educa-tion content courses. Merely placing EL students into mainstream classroomswithout appropriate pedagogical modifications violates civil rights law(Gandara, Moran, & Garcıa, 2004; Lau v. Nichols, 1974) and may leave theirneeds unmet. At times, specialized EL settings such as International Schools(e.g., Jaffe-Walter & Lee, 2011) may better serve students’ needs. Examiningstudents’ access to educational opportunity is important whether ELs areeducated in specialized or mainstream programs. This study’s findings sug-gest, however, that specialized courses carry a particular risk: If patterns ofnovice teacher placements are present at local sites, separate courses may

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be more easily assigned to less experienced teachers or those with lesspower in their settings. In the absence of critical perspectives on the imple-mentation of EL policies (Dabach & Callahan, 2011), efforts to expand accessmay inadvertently become vehicles for unequal access when they intersectwith preexisting local sorting processes within schools.

Alternatives to the Status Quo

Given the pervasive norms of seniority-based teacher assignment foundin this study and others, are there alternative systems of course distribution?How can collective capacity, rather than individual notions of teacher com-petence, support more equitable teaching of historically underserved youth(Little & Bartlett, 2010), including immigrant-origin EL-designated youth?

Gutierrez (1996) presents such a vision in investigating the relationshipbetween departmental organization and the academic achievement of under-served youth. In an innovative study situated in eight mathematics depart-ments, Gutierrez documented differences in departmental cultures andlinked these to student achievement patterns. Importantly, in high-achievingdepartments she found a ‘‘commitment to a collective enterprise’’ that was evi-dent in a rotation of course assignments in contrast to the approach taken innon–high-achieving departments, in which placements were distributedaccording to teachers’ preference sheets or seniority or some combination ofboth. In high-achieving departments, ‘‘the practice of rotating courses alsoseemed to expose teachers to the entire curriculum and student body. Theend result was often a sense of shared responsibility for all students’’ (p. 515).

While Gutierrez’s (1996) work suggests that rotation is an alternative toa seniority-based preference system, technical implementation of course ro-tations may not necessarily lead to improved outcomes. Without collectivecapacity building, teachers may quietly endure their rotations rather thanuse them as collective or even individual learning opportunities.Importantly, in Gutierrez’s study, course rotation was part of a larger reformpolicy that also involved a rigorous common curriculum within departments,an active commitment to students, and innovative instructional practices.Her work highlights the relationship between course assignment practicesand other aspects of instruction, suggesting that measures to expand educa-tional opportunity would do well to integrate curriculum across areas ratherthan limiting efforts to course assignment policies. Such policies would seemlikely to enrich the educational contexts immigrant-origin EL youth encoun-ter, not only by virtue of instructional advantages but also by improving theschool environment through a climate of shared responsibility.

Remaining Questions

What remains unanswered by the current analysis but is addressed else-where (Dabach, 2011) is a critical area that intersects with how teachers




come to participate in particular settings intended for immigrant-originEL-identified youth. Teachers’ orientations to teaching in EL-specialized con-texts matter and also intersect with institutional processes (Dabach, 2011).Further research is needed to determine the extent to which teachers wishto teach EL content courses, particularly in systems that take into accountteacher preferences for course distribution, as well as under what circum-stances their preferences shift. While some may conceptualize course assign-ment as a problem that turns on having or lacking the will to teachEL students, additional evidence suggests that this is not always the caseand may oversimplify the issues at hand (Dabach, 2011). First, likeMr. Montero, more experienced teachers sometimes chose EL placements;however, these may be individual rather than collective decisions. Second,conceptualizing placement as a problem of individual teacher will is likelyto underestimate the complexity of instruction, particularly secondary con-tent instruction across linguistic, ethno-racial, and cultural differences, wherecomplexity is amplified rather than reduced. If teachers feel unprepared toteach ELs—as many teachers report (Gandara, 2013)—they may be disin-clined to teach ELs, especially with teachers’ increasingly public forms ofevaluation (e.g., Apple, 2005).

Moreover, aside from mounting pressure on teachers in the current edu-cational environment, the basic structure of the teaching profession empha-sizes the primacy of the classroom experience (Lortie, 1975). When teachers’experiences within these classrooms are unpredictable or negative, they areless likely to want to continue teaching these courses. Capturing individualteachers’ orientations toward teaching ELs alone will likely be insufficient forinforming policy and practice. Rather, such questions must be incorporatedinto a broader-based research approach that addresses not only issuesrelated to the will to teach immigrant-origin EL youth, but also the efficacyof collective efforts to address not only course assignment but also increas-ing collective capacity among teachers (Little & Bartlett, 2010). This meanswidening the focus beyond the individual teacher as an object of study toconsider collective units of analysis in reforms, attitudes toward sharedwork, and the organization of school-based contexts.

Finally, the finding that administrations and departments often sharedcontrol over teacher placement into EL content courses at particular sites,forming a continuum of comparative degrees of control across sites, offersan updated conceptualization of these processes that can inform ongoingresearch, analysis, and practice. Schools would do well to examine theirown decision-making dynamics to improve practice in ways that are poten-tially more beneficial to immigrant-origin EL youth.

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Conclusion

In this article I examined the processes of teacher placement into ELcontent courses within seven California comprehensive high schools thatoffered specialized classes to serve immigrant-origin youth who were desig-nated as English learners. By opening up the black box of teacher assign-ment to EL courses at these sites, this article contributes to the study ofthe host society’s school-based contexts of reception for immigrant-originyouth. This article used teacher placement into specialized EL-designatedspaces to analyze one facet of how contact between teachers and immi-grant-origin students may be structured, rather than based on randomly allo-cated assignments.

Processes within schools—not simply between schools or within ethnicenclaves or other prominently studied contexts of reception—mediateimmigrant-origin youth’s access to host society educational opportunities.Contexts matter for all youth’s opportunities, but even more so for immigrantyouth who are new to a given society and in the process of acquiring thelanguage of the host society. Moreover, understanding how teachers, as con-sequential adults within schools, enter into settings intended for immigrant-origin EL youth is also significant—particularly if we aim not only to studycontexts but to improve them.

This study directs attention to how school spaces for immigrant youthare established and arranged in ways that limit their opportunities to learnas they navigate life in a new world. Future work is needed not only onhow school contexts mediate immigrant-origin EL youth’s educationalopportunities but also how these contexts can better serve youth.

Notes

This research was supported by grants from the University of California All CampusConsortium on Research for Diversity (UC ACCORD), the UC Linguistic Minority ResearchInstitute (LMRI), the Center for Latino Policy Research (CLPR), and the SpencerFoundation’s Research Training Grant Program. Opinions reflect those of the authorand not necessarily those of the grant agencies. I sincerely thank the teachers, administra-tors, and coaches who participated in the study. I am grateful for those who providedinsightful comments on drafts and/or analyses: the anonymous reviewers, Paul Ammon,Sarah W. Freedman, Heather Hebard, Janette Hernandez, Ann Ishimaru, Kara Jackson,Reva Jaffe-Walter, Katie Lewis, Judith Warren Little, Christine Malsbary, Jessica Rigby,Alex Saragoza, Carola Suarez-Orozco, Manka Varghese, Kerry Soo von Esch, and KenZeichner. I especially would like to thank Mike Knapp, who read multiple drafts. I thankAliza Fones for research assistance. All oversights and errors are my own.

1English learner (EL) is a term used to describe students who are speakers of otherlanguages who have yet to be designated fluent English proficient. The term is problem-atic because it does not capture students’ emergent bi- or multilingualism (Garcıa,Kleifgen, & Falchi, 2008), yet it is the most commonly used label within U.S. policy discus-sions at the time of writing. Other terms include emergent bilinguals, dual languagelearners, English language learners, and English speakers of other languages.Additionally, I use immigrant to refer to foreign-born students and immigrant-origin torefer to both foreign-born and U.S.-born students from immigrant families. Immigrant-




origin youth who have yet to become designated as fluent in English face additionalobstacles as compared with their English-fluent immigrant-origin counterparts (Suarez-Orozco, Suarez-Orozco, & Todorova, 2008) and thus are the focus of this paper.

2EL content courses are classes in traditional subject areas (e.g., mathematics, socialstudies) that ideally are designed with the purpose of improving the accessibility of con-tent for EL-designated students and have a dual focus on content and language develop-ment. I use the term EL content courses interchangeably with sheltered courses. Thesecourses are related but differ from what is commonly referred to as English as a secondlanguage (ESL) or English language development (ELD) courses. In ELD, grammar andlanguage are more generally the focus of instruction (rather than language and content).I use EL courses more broadly to denote EL content and ELD courses.

3The first loosening of requirements came with the shift from the LanguageDevelopment Specialist (LDS) certification to the Crosscultural Language and AcademicDevelopment (CLAD) certification, under California Senate Bill 1969.

4For the purposes of this study, I use administrators to refer to principals and vice-principals. This does not include department chairs, who were teachers themselves, eventhough they had varying degrees of formal authority.

5Here my focus is on who within the organization had discretion to propose andfinalize teacher placements. However, others actively attempted to participate in decisionmaking through unofficial channels, as became evident in descriptions of teachers ‘‘lobby-ing’’ for courses. However, the focus here is on describing the general patterns of officialorganizational control.

6In interview transcriptions, unintelligible speech is signified by consecutive xs.7Valenzuela (1999) critiques the issue of immigrants’ cultural norms of ‘‘respect.’’

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Manuscript received January 11, 2013Final revision received January 26, 2015

Accepted January 31, 2015

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