40                                                                                                                                                          Global Education Review 2(4) 
 

 

Global Education Review is a publication of The School of Education at Mercy College, New York.  This is an Open Access  article distributed under the terms of the Creative 

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properly cited. Citation: Lee, Stacey J.  & Hawkins, Margaret R.  (2015). Policy, context and schooling: The education of English learners in rural new 

destinations. Global Education Review, 2(4). 40-59 

 

 

Policy, Context and Schooling: 

The Education of English Learners in Rural New Destinations  

 

 

Stacey J. Lee 

University of Wisconsin, Madison 

 

Margaret R. Hawkins 

University of Wisconsin, Madison 

 

 

 

Abstract 

The number of immigrant English learners attending schools in new destinations across the US is rapidly 

increasing. We draw on the sociological scholarship on “contexts of reception” and scholarship on 

sociocultural approaches to policy to examine the educational contexts faced by immigrant English 

learners in new destination communities and how these contexts shape their educational experiences. 

Using data from qualitative case studies of rural school districts in Wisconsin, we examined local 

discourses surrounding new immigrant populations, and how they shaped the ways in which local 

educators interpreted and enacted educational policies on the ground. We argue that policy 

implementation is influenced by local understandings of immigrant English learners and their 

educational needs, such that potentially inclusive educational policies become assimilative in practice. 

  

Keywords 

Education, English learners, educational policy, anthropology and education, rural education 

 

Introduction 

The growth of immigrant populations is 

extending beyond traditional gateway cities as 

immigrants move to suburbs, small cities, towns 

and rural areas, especially in the Midwestern 

and Southeastern U.S. (Marrow, 2011; Martinez, 

2011; McConnell, 2006; Wortham, 2001; 

Wortham, Mortimer & Allard, 2009; Zuniga & 

Hernandez-Leon, 2006). As immigrant 

populations have settled in new destinations, a 

growing body of research has focused on how 

immigrant groups are being incorporated into  

 

 

communities that have relatively little 

experience with foreign-born populations. With  

a few important exceptions, the research on 

immigrants in new destinations has focused on 

the contexts faced by adults and not on the 

unique contexts encountered by school-aged 

children and youth (Hamann, Wortham & 

Murillo, 2001; Wortham, 2001). For school-aged  

Corresponding Author: 

Stacey J. Lee,  1000 Bascomb Hall. The University of 

Wisconsin-Madison,  Madison, WI 53706 

Email: stacey.lee@wisc.edu 

 

mailto:stacey.lee@wisc.edu


Policy, Context and Schooling                                                                                                                                                                     41 

 

 

immigrant children and youth, schools play a 

primary role in the incorporation process. What 

immigrant students learn in classrooms shapes 

their future opportunities, and how they are 

treated by their teachers and peers influences 

their understandings as to where they fit in their 

new country.  

Our focus in this paper is on the 

educational contexts, particularly the academic 

ones, facing immigrant students who are English 

learners (ELs) in rural new destinations. We are 

particularly concerned with how national, state 

and local educational policies and school district 

and school-level staffing shape the ways in 

which schools are responding to immigrant ELs.   

Because schools and school districts exist within 

community contexts, we will also consider the 

impact of community context on the decisions 

that local educators make regarding the 

education of immigrant ELs. Thus, we are 

asking: How are schools in rural communities 

that are new destinations for immigrants 

responding to the recent influx of immigrant 

students who are English learners (ELs)? How 

are educational contexts for immigrant ELs 

influenced by policy contexts, school district 

contexts, educators’ professional judgments, and 

local community contexts?   

 

Importance of Contexts of 

Reception 

Sociologists have highlighted the influence of the 

contexts of reception – government policies, 

economic opportunities, societal attitudes, and 

the presence or absence of existing co-ethnic 

networks – on immigrant adjustment and 

incorporation into US society (Portes & Borocz, 

1989; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006).  Discussions 

regarding the contexts of reception have been 

central to theory of segmented assimilation, 

which portends that many members of the 

second generation face serious barriers to 

upward mobility. Writing in the late twentieth 

and the early part of the 21st century, sociologists 

of immigration have identified the barriers 

associated with the hour glass economy, which 

limits the abilities of poor and uneducated 

immigrants to find jobs that pay a living wage 

(Zhou, 1997; Waldinger, 1996). Research shows 

that many of the lowest skilled and poorest 

immigrants settled in declining urban 

environments, which further threatens their 

path of incorporation (Zhou, 1997). Sociologists 

have underlined the importance of co-ethnic 

social networks in immigrants’ ability to 

successfully negotiate life in their new 

communities. Despite the obstacles facing low-

income immigrants, co-ethnic social networks 

have been shown to play a central role in 

immigrants’ ability to secure employment and 

have even been found to have a protective effect 

on immigrant youth in urban environments 

(Stanton-Salazar, 1997). 

Dominant group attitudes towards 

immigrants and immigration further shape 

experiences and opportunities for immigrants 

and their children. As many scholars have 

observed, Americans are notoriously ambivalent 

about immigrants, simultaneously celebrating 

the immigrant roots of the US and calling for the 

closing of borders (Schrag, 2010; Suarez-Orozco, 

2006). Of course, not all immigrants are viewed 

equally, and research suggests that racial 

differences account for some of the variation in 

how immigrants from various ethnic groups 

have adjusted (Stepnick & Stepnick, 2009). 

Furthermore, some scholars have found that 

attitudes regarding a particular immigrant group 

may change over time in response to economic 

and other social conditions (Portes & Fernandez-

Kelly, 2008; Ong, 2003).   

 The growing body of research on 

immigrants in “new destinations” and the 

research on the “new Latino diaspora” has 

highlighted the importance of regional contexts 

on immigrant experiences. In her research on 

Latinos in the rural South, Marrow (2011) found 



42                                                                                                                                                      Global Education Review 2(4) 

 

  

that regional context matters in relation to 

“assimilation, race relations and political and 

institutional responsiveness to immigrants” (p. 

233).  Unlike those who settle in established 

immigrant communities, immigrants in new 

destinations generally do not find a well-

established co-ethnic network or ethnic 

organizations.  Despite the possible challenges of 

being isolated from co-ethnic communities, 

research on the experiences of Latinos who have 

settled outside traditional Latino settlements 

suggests that these new spaces may offer 

immigrants greater flexibility to negotiate their 

experiences with the dominant group.  Wortham 

and colleagues (2009) asserted, “Such locations 

allow more flexible and sometimes more hopeful 

immigrant identities. Immigrants in the New 

Latino Diaspora face both more ignorance and 

more opportunity than in areas of traditional 

settlement.” (p. 395).  Wortham’s ethnographic 

research in one town with a new and growing 

Latino population suggests that Latinos have 

emerged as a “model minority” in contrast to the 

more established population of African 

Americans.  Similarly, Marrow (2011) discovered 

that Latinos in the rural South were generally 

preferred over African Americans by employers.  

As the literature on new destinations suggests, 

ideas regarding immigrants are influenced by 

the presence or absence of other racialized 

minority groups as immigrant newcomers are 

compared to both whites and groups of color. 

 The literature mentioned above focuses 

primarily on Latino populations, and that is, 

indeed, the most visible immigrant group to 

venture to new destination communities.  It is, 

however, not the only immigrant group to do so.  

In our study, for example, a particular 

community had a new influx of Somali 

immigrants/refugees.  In contrast with Latino 

immigrants, the Somali population is black, 

Muslim, and as refugees have limited or 

interrupted prior education. Thus the dynamics 

around racism, religious tolerance, and 

perceptions of educational potential are 

encountered differently (Bigelow, 2010; Kusow 

& Bjork, 2007). While new destination 

communities may offer more room for 

negotiations of identities and positions within 

the community, it is variable not only by aspects 

of the particular context, but by the specifics of 

the particular group.  Martha Bigelow (2010), in 

her study of a Somali diasporic community, 

noted “… when powerful institutions 

discriminate against youth based on entrenched 

xenophobia, racism and Islamaphobia, a 

democratic, plural society in the making has 

much to lose.” (p.148)  

 Importantly, the literature on context of 

reception highlights the centrality of policy in 

framing the incorporation process for 

immigrants.  Focusing on national and state-

level policies regarding immigration and other 

policies regarding access to social services for 

immigrants, sociologists discuss policies in 

terms of their relative exclusivity or 

inclusiveness regarding immigrants (Portes & 

Borocz, 1989; Portes & Rumbaut, 2006).  While 

inclusive policies define immigrants as 

“deserving” of particular services and/or rights, 

exclusive policies implicitly characterize 

immigrants as “undeserving” of public services 

and/or rights (Filindra, Garcia & Blanding, 2011; 

Marrow, 2011).  Significantly, exclusive policies 

were associated with barriers to incorporation 

and more inclusive policies were associated with 

increased opportunities (Filindra et al., 2011).  

Marrow (2011), for example, argued that K-12 

education is a relatively welcoming space for 

immigrants in North Carolina because of the 

“inclusive government policy” regarding the 

education of all youths regardless of legal status.  

In contrast to the K-12 policy context, 

researchers have identified the higher education 

context as being relatively exclusive because 

undocumented youth are denied access to 

federal financial aid (Filindra et al., 2011).  

  



Policy, Context and Schooling                                                                                                                                                                     43 

 

 

Sociocultural Approaches to Policy 

Although distinguishing between “exclusive” and 

“inclusive” policies provides a helpful framework 

for understanding the basic goals of particular 

policies, it assumes that the goals of a policy will 

or should determine actions and outcomes in the 

same way across different contexts. 

Furthermore, although this perspective on policy 

allows for the possibility that policies may 

influence attitudes, it does not account for the 

fact that attitudes may also shape the 

implementation of policy.  This framework 

reflects the rather deterministic understanding 

of policies associated with the “technical-

rational” approach to the field of policy 

(Hamann & Rosen, 2011). In short, the 

“technical-rational” approach to policy, which 

dominates policy discussions, assumes a direct 

relationship between policy and practice, is 

focused on predicting outcomes, and assumes 

that policies are rational, objective and scientific 

(Hamann & Rosen, 2011; Levinson & Sutton, 

2001).  

In contrast to those writing from a 

technical-rational perspective, scholars who 

apply various sociocultural approaches to policy 

assume that policies will take shape differently 

across contexts in response to differences in 

local cultures, resources and perspectives (Ball, 

1997; Hamann & Rosen, 2011; Koyama & 

Varenne, 2012; Shore & Wright, 1997, 2011; 

Sutton & Levinson, 2001).  Ball (1997), for 

example, asserted that policies define problems, 

pose solutions and create categories of people, 

but they do not determine specific actions.  

Similarly, Shore and Wright (2011) explained 

“we see policies as windows onto political 

processes in which actors, agents, concepts and 

technologies interact in different sites, creating 

or consolidating new rationalities of governance 

and regimes of knowledge and power” (2).  

Highlighting the role of human agency, Koyama 

and Varenne (2012) described policy as a 

“productive play” whereby “responses to the 

policy require deliberate human activity” (158). 

From the perspective of various sociocultural 

policy researchers, the line between policy and 

practice are blurred in such a way that teachers 

and aides are educational policy actors. 

According to this logic, policies can be 

transformed, resisted or embraced on the 

ground.  

 We will draw on both the sociological 

scholarship on “contexts of reception” and the 

scholarship on sociocultural approaches to 

policy in order to focus on the educational 

contexts faced by immigrant ELs in new 

destination communities. Following the lead of 

sociologists of immigration, we will pay 

attention to how immigrants are received by 

locals in five rural communities in Wisconsin. 

We are particularly interested in how long-term 

residents of these communities make sense of 

their new immigrant neighbors and how the 

local response to immigrants frames the work of 

educators. By engaging the scholarship on 

sociocultural approaches to policy, we seek to 

extend understandings of how local educators 

interpret and enact educational policies on the 

ground.  

 

The Study 

Data for this paper was collected as part of a 

larger mixed method study on the way rural and 

suburban communities in Wisconsin are 

responding to the recent influx of immigrant 

students who are English learners. The 

proliferation of immigrant populations in the 

state of Wisconsin is typical of the proliferation 

of immigrant populations in new destinations in 

the Midwest, where the majority of recent adult 

newcomer immigrants tend to have low levels of 

proficiency in English and limited educational 

backgrounds (Levinson, Everitt & Jones, 2007).  

Job opportunities in the meatpacking industry, 

farm work, and construction, along with the 

affordability of the Midwest compared to the 

west and east coasts, have drawn immigrants to 



44                                                                                                                                                      Global Education Review 2(4) 

 

  

the region during the last 20 years (Grey & 

Woodrick, 2005; McConnell, 2004).  The growth 

in immigrant communities in Wisconsin can be 

seen in statewide school district demographics. 

In 1999, 149 school districts in Wisconsin 

reported having limited English-speaking 

students, while in 2004 there were 240 districts 

with LEP students, which represents 54% of the 

total districts in Wisconsin (WINSS)1. The 

majority of immigrants are Latino 

(predominantly from Mexico, but also from 

Central and South America) but the immigrant 

EL population in Wisconsin also includes 

students from Africa, Southeast Asia, Asia and 

Eastern Europe.   

In the first phase of our study, we 

surveyed the roughly 300 districts in Wisconsin 

with EL populations to find out the types of 

programs in place for English learners. Based on 

the 136 survey responses, we identified nine 

school districts for qualitative case studies.  We 

were not attempting to identify “typical” or 

“representative” cases, but instead were looking 

for a range of districts. Thus we chose case study 

districts that reflected a range of differences 

across: geographic region of the state, ethnicities 

and languages of newcomers, size and rate of 

growth of newcomer populations, program 

models and staffing structures. All districts 

chosen had experienced a significant increase in 

their EL population within the last 10 years.  Our 

case studies included four suburban districts and 

five rural districts, thereby allowing us to focus 

attention on how location and local context 

influenced district responses to ELs.  We 

conducted 1-2 day observations in these districts 

during which time we paid particular attention 

to the discourses surrounding immigrant ELs, 

teacher beliefs, the structure of the 

programming and support services offered, the 

nature of the classroom instruction, the content 

of the curriculum, and interactions between 

students and school staff.   In each district, we 

conducted semi-structured interviews with the 

designated ESL coordinator, principals, ESL 

teachers, bilingual support staff, and when 

possible other members of the staff.  The 

interviews focused on how educators were 

making sense of the new immigrant EL 

populations, how they were making sense of 

educational policies for ELs and how they were 

making decisions about how to educate ELs.  We 

also conducted interviews with individuals at a 

CESA (Cooperative Educational Service Agency; 

a local arm of the Wisconsin Department of 

Public Instruction) that worked with one of the 

focal districts, the Wisconsin Department of 

Public Instruction, and WIDA (World Class 

Instructional Design and Assessment; a national 

standards and assessment organization that 

serves Wisconsin and other states, in order to 

understand policy and assessment from an 

official perspective. Finally, we examined local 

newspapers, policy documents and a number of 

community programs and initiatives (Wedel, 

Shore, Feldman & Lathrop, 2005).   

Our approach to data analysis involved 

both inductive and deductive approaches to the 

data. We worked together to code and analyze 

the data using both grounded codes that 

emerged from the data and codes from relevant 

literature. We developed theoretical 

propositions through the writing of analytic 

memos and we sought out evidence that 

confirmed and disconfirmed our emerging 

findings (Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995). In this 

paper we focused on the way the five rural 

schools districts in our study responded to the 

growth in immigrant English learner 

populations.  While we appreciate that there are 

debates surrounding the definitions of “rural”, 

our working definition of “rural” includes 

geographic isolation from major urban centers, 

and population and/or district’s self- 

identification as rural (Coladarci, 2007).   Our 

purpose here is to examine the similarities and 

differences across the five rural districts in order 

to explore the kinds of educational contexts 



Policy, Context and Schooling                                                                                                                                                                     45 

 

 

facing immigrant English learners in rural 

Wisconsin. 

 

Five Rural Wisconsin 

Communities 

A largely working class rural community located 

in the central part of the state, Clover2 has 

experienced a dramatic increase in its immigrant 

population over the last decade. According to the 

2000 Census, Clover’s population was just under 

2000 with 98.6% of the population identified as 

white/non-Hispanic. According to the 2010 

census there were 2310 residents in Clover, with 

73.7% of the population identified as white/non-

Hispanic and 25% identified as Hispanic or 

Latino. Mexican immigrants have been drawn to 

Clover because of job opportunities on dairy 

farms and in the meatpacking industry. The 

growth in the Mexican immigrant population 

can be seen in Clover School District’s 

population of English learners (22 ELs in 1999; 

45 ELs in 2003 and 103 ELs in 2008).  When we 

conducted our case study in 2009 there were 160 

ELs in the district, accounting for approximately 

20% of the total student population in Clover.   

Located in south central Wisconsin, 

Allentown has experienced a modest growth in 

its immigrant population in the last decade.  

According to the 2000 Census, 97% of the 7800 

residents were white/non-Hispanic.  The total 

student population for the district in 2009-2010 

when we collected our data was 2559 and there 

were 48 students classified as English learners, 

compared to 4 English learners in 1999.  

Allentown educators reported that the first 

Mexican immigrants moved to town when a 

factory moved from Chicago to Allentown 

bringing many of the workers to town at the 

same time.  In addition to the Mexican 

immigrants, there were a few Asian immigrant 

families in the community.  Since we collected 

our data the Latino population in Allentown has 

continued to grow and, according the 2010 

Census, the Hispanic/ Latino population is at 

4.3%. 

Denton is located at the end of a migrant 

trail and as such the district has served 

significant numbers of Mexican students from 

migrant families through a Title 1 Migrant 

Education program3 for several decades. 

Mexican immigrant families began to settle in 

Denton during the last fifteen years, and in the 

2010 Census Hispanic/Latinos made up 29% of 

the town’s population of 8448, up from 21% of 

the total population in 2000. The growth in the 

immigrant population can be seen in the number 

of ELs in the Denton school district (280 ELs in 

1999; 398 ELs in 2003; 560 ELs in 2008).  

During our research in 2009-2010, native 

Spanish speaking ELs made up 24% of the total 

student population. 

Cedar Ridge is located in the south central 

part of the state and it is the largest of the five 

rural communities in our study.  With a total 

population of just over 15,100 residents in the 

2000 Census and 16,200 residents in 2010 

Census, it has many aspects associated with a 

smaller city (e.g., population density), but 

district officials consistently referred to their 

district as “rural.”  Cedar Ridge has experienced 

a steady growth in its Latino population over the 

last fifteen years. According to the 2010 Census, 

the Hispanic/Latino population made up 7.5% of 

the total population up from 4% of the total 

population in the 2000 Census.  During the 

2009-2010 academic year, there were 215 

English learners and nearly all were Spanish 

speakers.  By contrast, there were just 28 ELs in 

1999. 

Steward is a small farming community in 

the northern part of the state.  Since 2001 

Steward has been home to a growing Somali 

refugee community when members of the 

Minnesota Somali community began moving 

across the state border in search of work, more 

affordable housing and educational 

opportunities. Interestingly, teachers, 



46                                                                                                                                                      Global Education Review 2(4) 

 

  

administrators and individuals at the local 

Muslim community center reported that the first 

Somalis to arrive in Steward were high school 

students who left Minnesota because of concerns 

regarding their ability to pass the newly 

instituted high school exit exam.  According to 

the 2000 Census, Steward’s total population was 

around 3200 and was 97.7% white.  By 2003 

there were 400 Somali residents living in 

Steward, and in the 2010 Census 8.8% of the 

population identified as African American. 

According to the Wisconsin Department of 

Instruction, Steward did not report having a 

single English learner in the district in 1999.  By 

2003 they reported having 65 ELs and in 2009-

2010, when we were conducting our research, 

there were 86 ELs in the district, which made up 

approximately 5% of the total student 

population.   

 

Isolated, Understaffed and 

Overwhelmed:  Staffing Issues 

Across the Five Districts 

Prior to 2000 the majority of ELs in Wisconsin 

were enrolled in school districts in urban areas, 

but more recently immigrant groups have begun 

moving to suburban and rural communities 

throughout the state.  Immigrants who settle in 

urban and suburban communities in Wisconsin 

enter school districts and communities with 

established programs for English learners and 

with some experience dealing with racial and 

cultural diversity. In contrast, immigrants who 

settle in rural communities enter communities 

and schools with little experience dealing with 

racial, cultural or linguistic differences. Like 

other rural districts, the five districts in our 

study were under-resourced, isolated, and 

struggled to recruit and retain qualified ESL 

and/or bilingual staff (Berube, 2000). With the 

exception of Denton, where they had a history of 

working with migrant students, the rural 

districts in our study were still struggling to 

establish programs for their ELs when we 

conducted our research, which in every case was 

over five years since ELs first enrolled.  

Administrators spoke about their difficulty 

attracting teachers certified in English as a 

Second Language (ESL)4 and/or bilingual 

education to live in small rural communities. In 

several of the districts teachers certified to teach 

foreign languages were recruited to work with 

ELs, and in two of the districts these teachers 

were in the process of pursuing ESL 

certification. In interviews, teachers reflected on 

their early improvisational efforts to address 

newcomer ELs through after-school homework 

programs, volunteer tutors from the 

communities, and peer tutors.  

In all five of the rural districts the 

responsibility for ELs was left to a small number 

of educators, often as few as two or three 

individuals for the entire district. These 

educators were responsible for managing the 

required assessments of ELs, teaching classes, 

working individually with students, 

communicating with and interpreting for 

parents, and advocating for ELs in their schools.  

The most striking case of this was in Clover 

where one certified ESL teacher, one reading 

specialist and one bilingual aide were 

responsible for the 160 ELs in the district.  

Furthermore, the ESL teacher Mrs. Kohl, was 

the only person in the district with specific 

training to work with ELs.  According to Mrs. 

Kohl, the district has faced significant financial 

constraints that have hampered the 

development of ESL services, and it also has had 

difficulty recruiting qualified ESL teachers. She 

expressed significant frustration about being 

pulled in multiple directions, and feared that 

some students were simply being overlooked.  

She explained that as one of the few bilingual 

adults in the district, she does a lot of 

interpreting for Spanish speaking parents and 

that her classes were often interrupted because 

she had to take most phone calls from Spanish-



Policy, Context and Schooling                                                                                                                                                                     47 

 

 

speaking parents. In the 2009-10 academic year, 

administrators brought in a consultant from the 

regional CESA who advised the Clover ESL staff 

to prioritize providing services for ELs in state-

mandated tested grades (grades 3 & 10).  The 

consultant also recommended that no services 

be provided in the lowest grades, as students at 

young ages would adjust more easily without 

support. The consultant’s recommendation 

acknowledged that the ESL staff did not have the 

capacity to address the educational needs of all 

of the ELs in the district.  As we ended our 

conversation, Mrs. Kohl remarked, “As you may 

notice I am very frustrated with this situation 

but I keep my hopes up for better days to come.” 

Even in districts where the ratio of 

certified ESL/bilingual staff to students 

appeared to be reasonable, the staff reported 

being overwhelmed by their responsibilities.  

Cedar Ridge, for example, employed three ESL 

certified teachers for 215 ELs in the 2009-2010 

academic year, but the single elementary ESL 

teacher for the district had to split her time 

among six elementary schools, which meant that 

much of her time was spent driving from school 

to school. In Steward there were two certified 

ESL teachers for 86 students, but the ESL 

teachers were entirely responsible for all of the 

services for the ELs. 

While research on successful models for 

working with ELs suggests that schools need to 

have a collective and school-wide investment in 

working with ELs, the educators responsible for 

ELs in these five districts were isolated in their 

buildings (Bartlett & Garcia, 2011).  Teachers 

and aides spoke repeatedly about how 

mainstream teachers assumed that the ESL 

teachers or aides were the school staff 

responsible for working with ELs.  Even in 

districts that had moved to a push-in model 

(having language support services delivered in 

students’ mainstream classrooms), there was an 

assumption that ELs were not the responsibility 

of the mainstream teachers, and ESL and 

mainstream staff did not plan or implement 

instruction in collaboration.  In Allentown, for 

example, one of the ESL teachers expressed 

frustration about the “indifference of the school 

administrators regarding ELLs”5 and noted that 

this attitude made it difficult to get mainstream 

teachers to attend in-service trainings that 

focused on ELs. In four of the districts, we heard 

that there was no professional development 

offered that focused on ELs. Similarly, the ESL 

coordinator in Cedar Ridge noted that the 

greatest challenges she faced in her work were 

with “regular education teachers not providing 

accommodations for ELL students.” Thus, the 

limited staff members available with expertise in 

educating ELs did not integrate with the rest of 

the teachers and administrators in their 

buildings and districts, they worked with the EL 

students in isolation. 

Further, none of the rural districts in our 

study were located in close proximity to a college 

or university that offered pre- or in-service 

teacher preparation in the area of ESL.  

Although we encountered a few teachers with 

specific ESL preparation, for the most part 

districts utilized foreign language teachers to 

support ELs.  The districts often used 

instructional aides; while these staff members 

may have shared the language and/or cultural 

background of the students, they did not have 

academic preparation in the field of education. 

Even the certified ESL teachers we found had 

foreign language as their initial certification, and 

were not prepared to teach grade level-

appropriate academic content. 

Current discourses around effective 

education for English learners center on notions 

of integrating language and content 

development, providing access to and support 

for learning academic language (defined as the 

language features, functions, structures and 

registers that are necessary for academic 

achievement), and designing curriculum and 

instruction that is culturally and linguistically 



48                                                                                                                                                      Global Education Review 2(4) 

 

  

responsive to learners (Garcia & Kleifgen, 2010; 

Ovando & Combs, 2012; Valdes, Kibler & 

Walqui, 2014).  ESL instruction consisted of 

vocabulary instruction and drill, often delivered 

through commercial packaged programs.   As 

one elementary ESL teacher said, “we work on 

worksheets from the internet. We focus on 

letters of the sounds, and building up.”  Thus 

isolation describes much of what took place in 

the local educational context: students were 

isolated from meaningful academic content in 

their learning, and teachers were isolated from 

current discourses about effective educational 

program models and practices for ELs.  

 

Local Reception: Making Sense of 

Immigrant Newcomers   

Mexican immigrants and/or the children of 

Mexican immigrants accounted for the growth in 

the immigrant English learner populations in 

four of the five districts in our study. As in other 

communities that have been part of the new 

Latino diaspora, the attitudes towards the Latino 

immigrants in Allentown, Clover, Cedar Ridge 

and Denton can best be described as watchful 

ambivalence (Grey & Woodrick, 2005; Martinez, 

2011; Millard & Chapa, 2004). As in many rural 

communities across the US, the local 

populations in Clover and Allentown have been 

aging and in decline (Grey & Woodrick, 2005; 

Millard & Chapa, 2004).  

As younger residents graduate from high 

school they often leave smaller towns in search 

of opportunities in larger cities, leaving local 

industries with a shortage of labor. For rural 

communities experiencing a decline, immigrants 

can be an important source of revitalization. In 

Clover, for example, as in many rural 

communities in the Midwest, the new Latino 

population has filled the demand for labor on 

dairy farms and in the meatpacking industry. 

Latino immigrant children have kept 

enrollments in Clover schools robust even as 

similar towns struggle to keep schools open.  

Indeed, we heard more than one Clover teacher 

joke about the fact that the “large” immigrant 

families keep them employed.  

Alongside the recognition of how Latino 

immigrants are helping local economies, 

however, there is also evidence of some anti-

immigrant sentiment in some towns.  Educators 

in all of our case districts referred to the fact that 

some long-term residents feared the cultural and 

linguistic changes that immigrants brought to 

their community. In particular, educators in 

Denton, Clover, Cedar Ridge and Allentown 

spoke about long-term residents who were 

worried about the “problems” associated with 

“illegal” immigrants.  The part-time ESL teacher 

in Allentown reported that many of her 

colleagues made racist comments about “illegal” 

immigrants and complained vociferously about 

Governor Doyle’s proposal to allow 

undocumented students to attend Wisconsin 

public colleges at in-state tuition rates.  In 

Clover, one local politician was particularly vocal 

in his rhetoric about “illegal” immigrants in the 

town and across the state, suggesting that 

“illegal” immigrants were costing taxpayers 

money and were dangerous.  

As the ELs in Denton have shifted from 

being a migrant population to a year-round 

immigrant population, some members of the 

local community have expressed concerns about 

what this might mean for the town and the 

schools.  Ms. Matthews, the principal of one of 

the three elementary schools explained that she 

has had to respond to complaints from some 

locals about  “spending taxpayer money on 

them.”  Underneath this complaint is the 

implicit suggestion that many of the new Latino 

families may be undocumented immigrants, and 

some locals assume that they don’t pay taxes and 

are therefore undeserving of a public education.   

She explained that “family nights” for Latino 

parents had drawn particular attention because 

locals assumed that taxpayer money was being 



Policy, Context and Schooling                                                                                                                                                                     49 

 

 

used for special programming for “them.”   She 

noted that once she explained that Title 1 money 

was used for these events and not local money 

some parents were satisfied.   She expressed 

frustration with what she described as the 

narrow-minded response of a small but vocal 

number of locals, suggesting that public schools 

should serve all students regardless of 

background. Here, we have an example of how 

the inclusive K-12 policies surrounding 

immigrants may be influencing the way 

educators think about their jobs (Marrow, 2011). 

Mirroring the discourse of Dream Act advocates, 

Ms. Matthews asserted that undocumented 

students are blameless children who deserve to 

be included in the schools.  Children are thus 

positioned as sympathetic victims of their 

parents’ actions and government policies. 

While Latino immigrants were subjected 

to the discourses of illegality, Somali refugees in 

Steward were subjected to the intense racism 

and Islamophobia directed at the Muslim 

community since the attack on the World Trade 

Towers on September 11, 2001 (Bigelow, 2010; 

Sirin & Fine, 2008). Journalistic accounts of the 

Somali population in Steward have highlighted 

the cultural differences between the Somali 

newcomers and the long-time Steward residents. 

One public health researcher identified racism 

as the single most significant health issue 

confronting the Somali refugees in Steward 

(Sanders, 2006). According to Steward 

educators, fighting and property destruction 

were regular problems when the Muslim 

immigrants first arrived in Steward.  One 

particularly virulent act of Islamophobia 

involved the desecration of a Somali flag after 

9/11.  Joe Morgan, a district-level administrator, 

reported that some white parents took 

advantage of the state’s open enrollment policy 

and transferred their children to schools in other 

districts in the county in order to avoid sending 

their children to school with Muslim students.   

Jennifer Johnston, the high school ESL 

teacher, described racial tensions during the 

early years like this: 

You had this, you know, Somali 

population and this white population as 

well as the community issues, and there 

was hatred, and racism, and religious 

issues and it was just a nightmare…Well 

what happened was, is that the community 

started to resent them, they’re like I’m 

going to move out because there are 

Somalis, or I’m going to open enroll my 

children because I don’t want them to go 

to school with Somali, you know, with 

Somalis, and it was, you know… But, you 

know, what I saw at this time was that 

there were three strikes against them.  

They were Muslim.  This was 2001.  They 

don’t know the language and they’re black. 

Prior to all of those things, maybe being 

black you would have been targeted, but 

you have all of three of things going 

against you, not good.   

In Ms. Johnston’s account, we hear the 

ways that race, language and religion came 

together to mark Somali refugees in Steward as 

problematic outsiders.  In response to this 

hostility, Ms. Johnston and Mr. Morgan worked 

to encourage a culture of tolerance by painting 

Somali immigrants as sympathetic victims of a 

civil war, who possessed strong family values, 

not unlike members of the larger Steward 

community.   

Although all of the ESL/bilingual staff we 

interviewed across the five districts were 

dedicated to working with ELs and expressed 

concerns about how to support ELs, there was 

little recognition of the strengths within 

immigrant communities and/or the importance 

of building on immigrant languages or cultures. 

There was, for example, a fairly unquestioned 

belief across the staff in all five districts that 

immigrant parents weren’t involved in their 



50                                                                                                                                                      Global Education Review 2(4) 

 

  

children’s schooling, yet most acknowledged not 

knowing many parents. There was also a 

uniform discourse around ELs as lacking 

language skills and an assumption that 

educators needed to help them assimilate. In the 

following quote Mrs. Anne Smithson, the 

elementary ESL teacher for the Steward district, 

talked about her concerns for the Somali 

children. 

We are dealing with poverty, we are 

dealing with malnutrition, we are dealing with 

bottom, bottom, we’re dealing with refugees 

from war-torn situations.  Very little schema, 

they have schema, but it’s very, very...it’s in a 

little box compared to the other people, you 

know, even simple things as we talk about light 

and one of the first things I had to explain some 

of the pictures and visuals I was using was a 

birthday party.  And they raised their hands, 

Mrs. Smithson, what birthday party?  Well, they 

don’t celebrate birthday in the Muslim faith.  

They never celebrate birthdays, so then to see all 

these visuals and everything related anything to 

a birthday party, they have no schema for that 

whatsoever. 

While poverty was an issue for the local 

Somali community, Mrs. Smithson conflated 

economic disadvantages with cultural 

deficiencies. She interpreted her students’ 

cultural and religious differences as deficiencies 

that needed to be overcome.  In short, she slid 

from a discourse of sympathy to a discourse of 

deficiency.  Significantly, Mrs. Smithson 

positioned herself as an advocate for the Somali 

community in Steward and she talked about her 

efforts to convince her fellow teachers to “help” 

Somali children. 

As our data demonstrated, the 

ESL/bilingual staff in our case districts saw 

themselves as advocates for the immigrant ELs.  

Significantly, their advocacy was not limited to 

academic issues but included efforts to shape 

attitudes towards cultural, racial and linguistic 

outsiders. While ESL/bilingual staff expressed 

inclusive attitudes towards immigrant ELs, they 

also held deficit perspectives about immigrant 

ELs’ cultural and linguistic backgrounds, which 

led them to support assimilative practices. Thus, 

our research confirms the scholarship that 

demonstrates that inclusive attitudes and the 

desire to welcome immigrants do not necessarily 

lead to cultural and linguistic recognition 

(Turner, 2015)  

 

Making Sense of Educational 

Policies: Local Educators as 

Policymakers 

The five rural districts in our study experienced 

an unprecedented influx of ELs at the same 

historical moment that No Child Left Behind 

(NCLB) began requiring the annual assessment 

of and accountability for ELs. Under NCLB, ELs 

must be included in state assessment of 

students’ knowledge of academic content. School 

districts must also assess ELs’ progress in 

achieving English proficiency on an annual 

basis. Wisconsin is part of the WIDA 

Consortium; as a WIDA state, the Wisconsin 

Department of Public Instruction adopted WIDA 

assessments (e.g., ACCESS) for the mandated 

annual assessment of English proficiency in 

2006.  ACCESS is an assessment tool designed 

to measure ELs’ social and academic proficiency 

in English as well as the knowledge of the 

specific language associated with language arts, 

mathematics, science, and social studies.  

In addition to NCLB requirements for ELs, 

Wisconsin’s Bilingual-Bicultural Statute [Wis. 

Stats. 115.95] outlines requirements for serving 

ELs, but these policies were established in the 

late 1970’s, when there were far fewer ELs in the 

state and most were located in urban districts in 

the southeastern part of the state.  According to 

Wis. Stats. Ch. 115 95 and PI 13, schools are 

obligated to support ELs by establishing a 

“bilingual-bicultural” program once they meet 



Policy, Context and Schooling                                                                                                                                                                     51 

 

 

certain enrollment figures. Although Wisconsin 

does not mandate a particular type of program, 

there has recently been an increased emphasis 

on integrating English learners into mainstream 

classes with language support offered in the 

mainstream classroom, which teachers 

commonly referred to as “push-in.” The 

increasing support for “push-in” practices comes 

from both the movement for inclusive education 

in the field of special education and the critiques 

of segregated ESL classes that have come from 

the research literature (McClure & Cahnmann-

Taylor, 2010). Recent research on new 

destination districts suggests that push-in 

models are being implemented for complex 

reasons, including accountability pressures, 

concerns regarding segregation and cost-savings 

since push-in eliminates the need for additional 

classroom spaces and reduces the need for 

additional ESL/bilingual staff (Castagno, 2009). 

Policy researchers have described 

Wisconsin as a state that emphasizes local 

control over education (Brown, 2008; 

Lowenhaupt, 2015), which makes it a 

particularly interesting state in which to 

examine the way educators enact policy on the 

ground.   For example, while Wisconsin policy 

requires that students who score between 1 and 

5 on ACCESS receive assistance, the policy does 

not specify the type of services required.   Rural 

and suburban districts rely heavily on the 

network of 12 CESAs for information on how to 

comply with current state policies. CESAs serve 

as a link between school districts and between 

school districts and the state department of 

education, and CESAs provide services and 

resources for schools districts, including 

professional development.  

One of the first things that we noticed 

during our data collection was that testing 

policies were shaping how educators were 

talking about ELs and how they thought about 

their work as teachers.  Across all five districts, 

administrators and teachers spoke the language 

of policy, regularly referring to EL students by 

their ACCESS scores. Not insignificantly, the 

emphasis on scores contributed to a deficit 

perspective on the students, one where the focus 

was on what students could not do.  Staff talked 

described “level 1’s and 2’s” (beginners) as 

“being high needs,” reflecting a deficit 

perspective.  Another example of focusing on 

what students can’t do was reflected by the ESL 

coordinator in (Cedar Ridge), who, when talking 

about ‘low level’ high school ELs, said, “You 

know, you, at that level, they’re often not 

independent enough to break those chunks 

down while all this information is coming at 

them,” thus conflating a lack of language 

proficiency with a lack of independence. And a 

number of districts discussed modified grades 

for  “lower level” students.   

While teachers were able to report on the 

ACCESS scores of all of the students in their 

classes, they did not understand the breakdown 

of scores the test provided regarding students’ 

proficiency in specific skill areas (reading, 

writing, speaking and listening; the overall score 

being a composite), and often had no other 

information about the students.  For example, 

teachers had little knowledge about older 

students’ previous educational backgrounds or 

literacy skills in their first language. 

Furthermore, across the districts ESL staff 

appeared confused about how to use the scores 

to make decisions regarding practice.  While 

WIDA offered professional development 

opportunities for teachers, ESL staff in four of 

the five districts explained that their districts 

either didn’t have the money to pay for the 

WIDA training and/or they didn’t think district 

administrators prioritized ELs enough to spend 

the money.  

Interestingly, we heard educators in all 

five districts using testing data to support the 

move to push-in models for ELs.  In Denton, for 

example, Barb Mitchell and Lynette Edwards 

(elementary school principal and district level 



52                                                                                                                                                      Global Education Review 2(4) 

 

  

administrator responsible for ESL services 

respectively), both explained that the Denton 

District had moved away from the bilingual, 

pull-out model in favor of a push-in model for 

ELs in response to testing data that indicated 

that the previous pull-out and bilingual models 

were “not working.”  Mrs. Mitchell explained the 

goals of push-in as being similar to inclusion 

models for special education students: 

Because, really the idea was you 

wanted, you wanted our English language  

learners to look more like our model for 

special education, which was inclusion. 

Because if you know how you learn 

English or any other language, you learn it 

by immersing yourself in that. 

Reflecting an understanding that pull-out 

services lead ELs to feelings of marginalization, 

the district coordinator explained:  

We can’t teach the kids in isolation 

and expect them to succeed in a regular 

classroom because they don’t have that 

comfort level if we’re constantly pulling 

them out, they’re... they’re missing 

instruction from a teacher and they’re not 

able to interact with peers.  And so when 

they go back into that room, they don’t feel 

comfortable. 

As these quotations suggest, the support 

for push-in reflects the current rhetoric in the 

academic literature and in the policy world 

regarding the academic and social benefits of 

integration for ELs.  

The Clover School District has also 

embraced push-in as the official policy for 

bringing ELs - cultural and linguistic outsiders- 

into the mainstream.  Indeed, some policy 

researchers have lauded the Clover School 

District for its commitment to push-in practices 

for ELs (Odden, Picus, Archibald, Goetz, 

Mangan & Aportela, 2007).  In a 2007 

Wisconsin policy report, for example, the Clover 

elementary school principal was praised for his 

decision to spread the ELs across the 

kindergarten classes despite the fact that there 

were enough native Spanish-speaking students 

for separate ESL or bilingual kindergarten 

classes (Odden et al., 2007). 

In theory, push-in or inclusive models 

position ELs and native English speakers as 

equal participants in the classroom and 

promotes general education teachers and 

ESL/bilingual teachers as engaging in co-

teaching (Ovando & Combs, 2012).  In our 

observations across the districts we found that 

ESL staff continued to be almost entirely 

responsible for working with ELs.  Underneath 

all the talk of inclusion, we found little evidence 

that any of the districts had prepared the staff 

for the inclusion of English learners in 

mainstream classes.  Ms. Arroyo, the ESL 

coordinator in Cedar Ridge, expressed 

frustration about the fact that that mainstream 

staff don’t view the ESL teachers as equals who 

could provide assistance with instruction and 

assessment.  

In our interview with Jean Short, the high 

school ESL teacher in Denton, she described the 

way push-in worked at the high school level: 

Sometimes I sit just with groups of 

students in the classroom and um, just 

talk quietly within that group to try to 

check understanding with what’s going on 

in the room, um, sometimes I’m helping 

them take notes and understand what it is 

they’re putting down.  Sometimes, I may 

take a group of students, you know, I had 

an English teacher who had a whole group 

of students who didn’t understand 

subject-verb agreement.  So I did some 

additional activities with them in the back 

of the room while she continued on with...  

So it varies.  

As Ms. Short’s description reveals, her 

current role in push-in classes is largely that of 



Policy, Context and Schooling                                                                                                                                                                     53 

 

 

an aide who provides assistance to ELs while the 

general education teacher focuses on the native 

English speakers. This not only denies her the 

status of a co-teacher in the class, but also 

actually serves to transform push-in to very 

visible pull-out, as she separates ELs to work 

with them in the back of the room. Our 

observation of a 12th grade social studies course 

confirmed Jean’s description of how push-in 

services were handled in the district. 

 

After interviewing Jean we followed 

her to the 12th grade American Political 

Systems Class where she works with 5 ELs 

(all native Spanish speakers).  She noted 

that the Access scores for the students 

ranged from 2 to 5 (including 3 and 4).  All 

the students were sitting in rows (17 

students total), and all the ELs sat in the 

back. The teacher was giving a power 

point lecture on the Electoral College.  

During the class he called on two white 

girls sitting in the front row several times 

and directed conversation to them as well. 

Jean worked mostly with the level 2 boy 

and also interacted briefly with the other 

boy.  She focused on vocabulary words and 

told students when to write things down.  

“You need to write that down- 10”  (i.e., 

number of electoral votes WI has). It 

seems that students were probably 

missing stuff as she was talking to them. 

The teacher did not interact with the EL 

students or Jean at all.  (Field notes, Nov. 

6, 2009) 

 

As this field note suggests, both ELs and 

the ESL teacher were marginalized in this 

example of push-in. Although ELs and native 

speakers were in the same room, ELs were not 

fully integrated into the life of the classroom.  

Rather, they were academically marginalized by 

instruction that was directed solely at native 

English speakers and they were physically 

segregated at the back of the class. Ms. Short 

acknowledged the shortfalls of this model, and 

reported that “some teachers” were resistant to 

seeing ESL teachers as equal partners and that 

she was often not informed in advance about the 

lesson plan for the day.  She explained that 

without prior knowledge of the day’s lesson plan 

she couldn’t “pre-teach” to her ELs and was left 

whispering vocabulary words in their ears to try 

to just keep up. 

According to Mrs. Kohl, the ESL teacher in 

Clover, many mainstream teachers at the middle 

and high school levels were resistant to 

integrating ELs into their classes and did little to 

adapt their teaching to meet the needs of ELs. 

Mainstream teachers in Clover have never been 

required to engage in professional development 

around ELs.   As we listened to Mrs. Kohl 

describe her role in the push-in settings, we were 

struck by the fact that she and the ESL aide were 

the ones who had to entirely adjust their roles to 

fit into each mainstream classroom.  While the 

mainstream teachers continued to offer 

undifferentiated instruction aimed solely at the 

native English speakers in the class, Mrs. Kohl 

and the bilingual aide rushed to assist and 

translate for English learners during class. While 

the Clover administration appeared to view 

push-in as a success in and of itself, Mrs. Kohl 

and the bilingual aide expressed serious 

concerns about whether the district was 

providing adequate support for the 160 ELs in 

the district. Although push-in is the official 

policy of the Clover district, students who are 

most at risk for struggling on standardized tests 

were given support in the form of pull-out 

services.  

In recent years the number of elementary 

school students in the Clover district scoring 

proficient or advanced has gone up, a fact that 

policy researchers have attributed to the 

district’s commitment to inclusive practices and 

to their reliance on the assistance of the local 

CESA (Odden et al., 2007).   Scholars writing 



54                                                                                                                                                      Global Education Review 2(4) 

 

  

from a technical-rational approach to policy 

might conclude that push-in practices in Clover 

are a success because test scores among 

elementary aged students have improved.  Our 

research, however, highlights a more 

complicated picture. In contrast to the rosy 

picture painted by the testing data, Mrs. Kohl 

drew our attention to the fact that 

 so many of our ELL students are on 

the D and F list at this time... I was looking 

at the report the other day and saw that 

there are two pages of students on the D 

and F list in the middle school alone, and 

if I took out the ELL students it came 

down to 17 students.  

Because testing was driving the decisions 

regarding which students got services, the result 

was that many ELs were not getting served. 

What happens in grades where kids aren’t 

tested? Mrs. Kohl suggested that these students 

were simply victims of the policies. 

In Denton, there was an awareness that 

many high school teachers had not embraced 

push-in. In response to our questions about how 

the transition to push-in was going, Mrs. 

Edwards responded 

And I know some of the...when we had 

some feedback from high school students 

last year, you know, like they’ve said when 

I raise my hand at the end of a lecture and 

ask, you, can you repeat that one part, I 

didn’t quite understand it, they get the, 

well you should have been listening... The 

kids are like, you know, when I get that 

kind of response, I will never raise my 

hand again, you know. 

As evidence that the district was invested 

in helping all teachers work with ELs, she 

explained, “for two years so far, every staff 

meeting, they’ve been presenting strategies for 

classroom teachers to use. And the mantra was, 

if it’s good for ELLs, it’s good for everybody.” 

The fact that administrators in Denton 

recognized that mainstream teachers need 

ongoing support and training during the 

transition to push-in is a positive sign.  The 

support for push-in, however, appears to come 

primarily from assumptions about the 

importance of cultural and linguistic 

assimilation for ELs. And, as implied in the 

quote, there was little recognition of the need for 

language-specific support, nor culturally and 

linguistically responsive instructional 

approaches and strategies.  

In contrast to the other four districts, 

Steward was interesting in its focus on creating 

policy to respond to local issues. This is not to 

say that the Steward staff did not spend time on 

mandatory testing, and they certainly did talk 

about efforts to implement push-in.  However, 

they were more focused on responding to local 

concerns and preparing ELs to live in the 

community.  For example, the ESL staff 

developed courses specifically directed at the 

Somali high school students, including a 

“survival skills” class that covered topics such as 

banking.  Here, there seemed to be an 

understanding that the Somali youth were likely 

to stay in Steward and continue to work in the 

“turkey store” (poultry processing plant) after 

graduation. 

As we noted earlier, the Somali high 

school students left Minnesota because of 

concerns regarding Minnesota’s high school exit 

exam. As in other states with high school exit 

exams, the Minnesota high school exit exam was 

designed for native English speakers and is 

therefore first and foremost a test of English 

proficiency, which puts ELs at a distinct 

disadvantage. Somali youth and families 

migrated to Wisconsin because Wisconsin did 

not have a high school exit exam, and they were 

specifically drawn to Steward by jobs in the local 

meat processing plant.  The move to Steward 

reflects the understandings of this population 

regarding how the Minnesota educational policy 



Policy, Context and Schooling                                                                                                                                                                     55 

 

 

disadvantaged them, and also reflects their 

determination to be active agents in their 

schooling (Dorner, 2012). 

Significantly, local community members 

and Steward educators expressed concerns 

about Somali students coming to Steward to get 

a high school diploma after failing the high 

school exit exam in Minnesota.  Ms. Johnston 

stated that she shared the concern about 

students showing up in January and trying to 

graduate after just one semester.  She and Mr. 

Morgan were also involved in negotiating new 

high school graduation policies directed at 

Somali students.  The first policy requires all 

students to be enrolled in Steward schools for 

two semesters in order to earn a Steward 

diploma. Using the discourse of accountability, 

Ms. Johnston explained that she supported the 

two-semester policy because Steward educators 

had to be able to assess whether students “can 

write or read” before getting a Steward diploma. 

The second policy requires students to 

demonstrate minimum English proficiency in 

order to graduate from high school.  Drawing 

once again on an inclusive discourse, Ms. 

Johnston was quick to point out that this new 

requirement was for “All seniors, all seniors. Not 

just English language learners.”  The students 

demonstrated their English skills using a 

portfolio process, which involved being 

interviewed by community members, 

administrators and teachers.  The involvement 

of community members in this process is 

particularly interesting and might be interpreted 

as a way to give long-time community members 

a sense of power and control in a changing social 

environment.  As these policies suggest, Ms. 

Johnson and Mr. Johnson’s advocacy did not 

extend to explicit questioning of the dominant 

educational discourses that called for 

assimilation.  

 

 

Making Sense of the Stories 

The educational contexts facing immigrant ELs 

in these five rural districts were shaped by the 

complex interactions among state-level 

educational policies and discourses, local 

community attitudes towards immigrants, 

staffing and budgets, and educators’ professional 

judgments.  English learners and their educators 

in our five rural districts faced serious and 

complicated challenges.  Although there were 

differences across the five cases, which make it 

impossible to talk about a single way that rural 

schools respond to new populations of ELs, 

there were important themes across the cases. 

Across all five districts ESL/bilingual staff 

were isolated and marginalized in their schools, 

and administrators reported difficulties 

recruiting certified ESL/bilingual teachers.  In 

addition to problems with isolation and 

understaffing, there was little depth of 

experience with EL issues in any of the districts.  

In most districts, the responsibility for ELs was 

left to a teacher whose preparation and 

experience had been in teaching a foreign 

language.  While virtually all of them recognized 

a challenging environment for English learners, 

and took on an advocacy role for these students, 

there were few teachers certified in ESL, and 

virtually none with a background that included 

subject-area academic instruction. We found 

that the ESL/bilingual staff was largely unaware 

of the current research on integrating language 

and content, or on additive approaches to 

working with immigrant ELs. Many of the 

teachers we interviewed recognized their 

limitations and confided that they were often 

overwhelmed by their responsibilities, worried 

about their students, and frustrated by their 

general education colleagues.   

There is a robust body of scholarship that 

highlights the problems of teacher isolation, 

including the absence of opportunities for 

professional growth, emotional stress and 

attrition (Lieberman & Miller, 1990; Lortie, 



56                                                                                                                                                      Global Education Review 2(4) 

 

  

1975; Schlitte et. al,. 2005). And it has long been 

acknowledged that ESL and bilingual 

professionals in schools usually work in 

isolation, often being the only educator in a 

given building specifically designated to work 

with ELs. Significantly, we found that 

professional isolation from current research 

allowed a deficit perspective about immigrant 

families and a culture of low expectations for 

ELs to go largely unchecked. There was, for 

example, an unquestioned assumption, despite 

research to the contrary, that ELs could not 

engage in rigorous academic learning until they 

acquired English, which for most educators 

meant building vocabulary.  To be clear, we are 

not arguing that isolation causes deficit 

perspectives to emerge, but our data suggests 

that distance from information and lack of 

opportunities to engage in meaningful 

professional collaboration may allow deficit 

perspectives to go unchallenged.   Finally, our 

point here is not to criticize dedicated educators 

who are overworked and isolated, but to point 

out that professional isolation has a negative 

impact on educators and students.  Although 

problems associated with the isolation of 

ESL/bilingual educators are not unique to rural 

new destinations, we are arguing that the 

situation in rural new destinations is more 

pronounced.   

Without exception the ESL/bilingual staff 

lived either in the districts where they worked, 

or in neighboring towns, and thus were part of 

the local conversations regarding changing 

demographics.  While Denton was the only 

community where there was widespread anti-

immigrant sentiment, the ESL/bilingual staff in 

all five communities mentioned that some locals 

were concerned about the growing number of 

immigrants moving to their respective towns, 

and particularly worried about the impact of 

immigrant ELs on school resources. The 

ESL/bilingual staff in all five districts reported 

that many mainstream educators in their 

districts often held overtly problematic views 

about ELs. As our case studies demonstrate, the 

ESL/bilingual educators had to contend with 

these attitudes when making decisions about 

how to serve the growing number of immigrant 

ELs in their schools.  Finally, as we have already 

argued, even dedicated members of the 

ESL/bilingual staff expressed some deficit 

perspectives about immigrant ELs.  Previous 

research on the educational contexts in new 

destinations has similarly found that educators 

may express inclusive intentions towards new 

student populations and simultaneously hold 

deficit perspectives towards these groups 

(Cooper, 2009; Lowenhaupt, 2010; Wortham, 

Mortimer, & Allard, 2009; Turner, 2015).  

Across all five districts, the language of 

policy infused the ways the ESL/bilingual staff 

talked about the immigrant ELs.  The 

performance of ELs on standardized tests was a 

particular anxiety for teachers and 

administrators.  As various sociocultural 

approaches to policy remind us, all policies 

reflect particular assumptions regarding both 

the nature of the social “problem” and 

assumptions about how to solve the problem 

(Ball, 1997; Shore & Wright, 1997).  According to 

the logic of both testing and push-in policies, the 

problem is the slow rate of English acquisition 

among ELs and the impact of their limited 

English proficiency on ELs’ academic 

achievement. The fact that ELs speak languages 

other than English is therefore implicitly viewed 

as a deficit in need of remediation.  Not 

insignificantly, the ESL/bilingual educators 

across the five districts appeared to accept the 

assumptions regarding the problems defined by 

current policies.  Thus, while they expressed 

concerns about how test scores were used to 

evaluate schools and criticisms about the 

amount of time that testing took, none of the 

teachers questioned the assumption that ELs 

were behind and needed to acquire English more 

quickly. 



Policy, Context and Schooling                                                                                                                                                                     57 

 

 

As Thea Abu El-Haj (2006) has astutely 

asserted, current educational solutions reflect 

three justice claims around integration, equal 

standards, and recognition of difference. The 

policies around testing and the current emphasis 

on push-in policies grow out of educational 

justice claims around the importance of equal 

standards and integration respectively.  Both 

testing policies and push-in policies can be 

categorized as inclusive policies, which aim to 

include ELs among all other students. As 

research on testing clearly demonstrates, 

however, there are often significant unintended 

consequences of inclusive policies, including the 

creation of greater barriers for ELs (Menken, 

2008). Push-in policies, for example, are meant 

to address the problems associated with 

segregation, but when integration trumps 

bilingualism in this definition of inclusiveness 

the result is practice that is assimilative in 

nature. Because assimilative practices inherently 

focus on what ELs “lack” there are no attempts 

to build on students’ native languages or cultural 

backgrounds (Garcia and Bartlett, 2011). Testing 

policies, for example, have encouraged educators 

in Denton to move away from bilingual 

education in favor of English-only practices 

(Menken, 2008), despite provision for bilingual 

education in Wisconsin policy. As many scholars 

have observed, assimilationist practices can lead 

to marginalization and difficulty in school, 

thereby perpetuating inequalities. 

Our research confirms the importance of 

understanding educational policies as being 

nested within and playing out in particular 

communities.  We see the influence of local 

context in how educators make sense of policies, 

and we see how policies and community context 

shape how educators make sense of the 

educational needs of immigrant ELs. Our 

research also illustrates that inclusive 

educational policies do not guarantee that 

immigrant ELs will receive meaningful and 

equal educations. The assumption that inclusive 

policies will provide educational opportunities 

for immigrant ELs fails to recognize that policies 

are negotiated by policy actors on the ground. 

Inclusivity does not guarantee that students’ 

linguistic or cultural identities will be reflected 

in educational spaces.  Indeed, they were not in 

any of the focal districts in our study.  

Of course, deficit thinking and the 

problems associated with assimilative policies 

and practices are not unique to these five rural 

districts or to rural new destinations more 

generally. A vast body of scholarship has pointed 

to the challenging educational contexts facing 

immigrant ELs in urban districts as well. That 

said, we believe that the issues surrounding 

professional isolation, both the isolation that 

ESL/bilingual staff experience inside their 

schools and the isolation from current research, 

are more pronounced in rural new destinations. 

Furthermore, the lack of established co-

ethnic/immigrant communities in new 

destinations means that there is an absence of 

organized community voices to advocate for 

immigrant ELs and to challenge deficit 

discourses. Despite the challenges facing these 

rural new destination districts, there are pockets 

of possibility in each district in the form of 

dedicated individuals who deserve more support 

and professional development for their work. 

 

Notes 

1. Limited English proficient, or LEP, has long 

been the favored label for English learners in 

the US policy world.  

2. All names of towns and people used in this 

article are pseudonyms, in order to protect 

the privacy of study subjects. 

3. Title I is the portion of the United States 

federal Elementary and Secondary 

Education Act (ESEA), which provides 

financial assistance to local educational 

agencies (LEAs) and schools with high 

numbers or high percentages of children 

from low-income families. 



58                                                                                                                                                      Global Education Review 2(4) 

 

  

4. EL (English learner) refers to 

students/people learning English, while ESL 

(English as a Second Language) refers to a 

field, a program model, and programmatic 

and/or course content. 

5. English language learner, or ELL, is an 

alternative to English learner (EL). While 

they are synonymous, we have chosen to use 

EL. We use ELL only when quoting its usage 

by participants. 

 

Author Note 

Support for this research was provided by the 

Spencer Foundation. 

 

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About the author(s) 

Stacey J. Lee, PhD, is a professor in the Department of 

Educational Policy Studies at The University of Wisconsin-

Madison.  Her research interests focus on the multiple and 

complex ways in which race, class, gender and local context 

influence immigrant students’ opportunities, experiences, 

and identities; and the role of education in the incorporation 

of immigrant youth into the US.  

 

Margaret R. Hawkins, PhD, is a professor in the 

Department of Curriculum and Instruction at The University 

of Wisconsin-Madison.   Her research interests are in issues 

at the intersection of mobility, language and education, with 

a focus on languages and literacies in and out of school, 

including classroom, home and community based settings. 

 

 

 

 

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http://repository.upenn.edu/gse_pubs/122/