Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy (META)

Multicultural Education, Training, and Advocacy (META), Inc., was formed as an independent national public interest legal entity in 1983 by two lawyer/ advocates, Roger Rice and Camilo Pérez Bustillo. Joined several years later by another former Center for Law and Education colleague, Peter Roos, META's sole focus from its inception has been the educational civil rights of all language minority and [Page 568]immigrant students. In practice, this meant advocating for bilingual education when and where that was possible and for setting benchmark standards for programs for English language learners (ELLs), regardless of program models. Through its history, META and its attorneys have been involved directly or as advisors in nearly every case across the country brought to advance these purposes. This entry discusses META's advocacy of bilingual education.

As early as 1973, Rice had written briefs in support of the Lau v. Nichols plaintiffs in which the evidence for bilingual education was advanced in the U.S. Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court. Included in those briefs, along with legal and educational research citations, was a footnote written only in Chinese as a means of driving home to the Supreme Court justices the frustration of Chinese students who were receiving no classroom help at the time.

Following the Lau decision, META began a strategy of filing cases on a statewide basis in states with large language minority student populations such as Texas (United States v. Texas), Florida (LULAC v. Florida), California (El Comité de Padres v. Honig) and Massachusetts (Lynn Hispanic PAC v. Commissioner of Education). These cases led to the passage of new state laws (as in Florida) or court decisions and consent decrees that spelled out program standards in such areas as identification of students for services, teacher qualifications and training, program content, state obligations to monitor and evaluate programs, and program implementation. Similar court cases or administrative complaints were brought to defend and improve existing bilingual programs in cities with large non-English-speaking populations including Albuquerque (Carbajal v. Albuquerque Public Schools) and Denver (Keyes v. School District No. 1) among many others. In Albuquerque, META and cocounsel also successfully faced a challenge to the New Mexico Multicultural Education Act, legislation that had its roots in the history of New Mexico as a state where the Spanish language is valued and encouraged. Overall, as legal standards have shifted, much of META's work turned to whether school districts were actually implementing their ELL programs with adequate programmatic resources.

META's advocacy on behalf of ELLs also embraced efforts to ensure adequate and equitable fiscal support for educational programs. META, along with Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund (MALDEF), successfully litigated a statewide school finance equity case in Texas (Edgewood v. Kirby) on behalf of poor school districts with large language minority student populations. META also took the lead in pressing for equitable fiscal resources for poor schoolchildren in lower-income neighborhoods in Los Angeles (Rodriguez v. LAUSD). In these, and similar efforts in other states, META has worked in collaboration with other legal organizations such as MALDEF and Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Educational Fund (PRLDEF) and also with leading educational research and advocacy organizations including Intercultural Development Research Association (IDRA) in San Antonio, National Association for Bilingual Education (NABE), the National Council of La Raza, and others. META also initiated the convening of an Educational Equity Working Group in Washington, D.C., a coalition of Latino and bilingual education groups.

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