Crawford, James (1949-)

James Crawford is among the foremost authorities on bilingual education policy in the United States. A journalist by training and consumer of academic research and literature by character, he has consistently provided astute coverage and analysis of bilingual education policies and politics for more than 20 years.

Crawford grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee, and attended Harvard College, graduating cum laude in 1971 with a bachelor's degree in English. He began his journalism career in 1979 as a newsletter editor for the Massachusetts Coalition for Occupational Safety and Health in Boston, and he soon began to contribute to publications including The Nation, Mother Jones,[Page 184]Common Cause Magazine, Business & Society Review, In These Times, Jack Anderson Enterprises, Pacific News Service, and United Feature Syndicate.

In 1983, Crawford became the congressional editor of Federal Times, a weekly source of news and information about the U.S. Congress and the federal government. He joined the staff of Education Week in 1985 as a staff writer and Washington editor. At the newspaper, Crawford soon began to focus on bilingual education and its various dimensions—social, cultural, and political—always with an eye on the shifting public policy in that arena. He covered the issue at a period of contentious national debate about the best way to teach English language learners. TTiis debate was largely fueled by ideological passions about language loyalty, immigration reform, and national identity. Crawford injected a healthy dose of skepticism and an interest in research and pedagogy. His reporting avoided the superficial, scattershot analysis that typified most coverage of bilingualism and bilingual education at the time. Instead, he examined the research literature in many disciplines: applied linguistics, socio- and psycholinguistics, second-language acquisition theory and teaching, contemporary and historical language and education policies, and language planning. Crawford's obvious expertise in the field and his ability to explain complex policy issues to a lay public—including research methodologies and conclusions—set him apart from other journalists. He attended numerous bilingual education conferences, academic symposia, and other venues, interviewing teachers, administrators, parents, and university researchers. TTius, he came to know the field through a relentless search for information and perspective.

During Crawford's tenure at Education Week, Congress went through the process of reauthorizing the Bilingual Education Act (Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act). Crawford covered the frequently rancorous House and Senate committee hearings. He wrote extensively about the ideological stances of Federal Department of Education officials and their connections to “English-only” organizations. Consequently, his investigative reporting on the reau-thorization process was thorough and even muckraking. His Education Week articles still stand as a detailed and fascinating historical record of the federal debate about bilingual education policy during the Reagan administration.

Crawford left Education Week in 1987 to pursue freelance writing on bilingual education and language. He published his first book, Bilingual Education: History, Politics, Theory, and Practice, in 1989. Now in its 5th edition and renamed Educating English Learners: Language Diversity in the Classroom, the book remains one of the most widely used texts in teacher training programs. Crawford continued to write and lecture throughout the 1990s, publishing three more books and monographs: Hold Your Tongue: Bilingualism and the Politics of “English Only” Language Loyalties: A Source Book on the Official English Controversy; Best Evidence: Research Foundations of the Bilingual Education Act; and At War with Diversity: U.S. Language Policy in an Age of Anxiety. He has also published articles in numerous anthologies and edited volumes, as well as in professional and academic journals, like the American Journal of Sociology, Bilingual Research Journal, and the International Journal of the Sociology of Language.

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