Rodríguez, Armando (1921-)

Armando Rodríguez was born in Gómez Palacio, Durango, Mexico, to Andrés Rodríguez and Petra Cárdenas. When Armando was 6, his family immigrated to San Diego, California, where he started school, speaking only Spanish. From an early age, he sought to create links of understanding between Spanish-speaking students and the rest of the school. This trait characterized much of his career. In 1941, as the country geared up for war, Rodríguez registered for the draft. While serving in the Army Signal Corps, he became a U.S. citizen.

After the war, he worked to organize Hispanic veterans and cofounded the Rudolph Martinez Post of the American Legion. At 26, he married Beatriz Serrano. He attended college at the San Diego State College on the GI Bill and graduated in 1949. After graduation, he became a special education teacher at Memorial High School in San Diego. He received a master's degree in special education and later served as vice principal of Gompers High School in San Diego.

Early in his education career, Rodríguez became involved in national, state, and local politics as a Democrat. He met figures such as Edward and Bobby Kennedy, César Chavez, and Dolores Huerta, worked with the Urban League, and was campaign manager for George Smith, who successfully ran for a seat on the local school board. In 1962, Rodríguez unsuccessfully ran for the 77th assembly district. In 1964, he attended the Democratic Convention, and he was later appointed to the Compensatory Education Commission by California Governor Pat Brown. While in that capacity, Rodríguez was offered a job in the state capital by Wilson C. Riles, associate superintendent of public [Page 720]instruction of California. In Sacramento, Rodríguez became chief of the Bureau of Intergroup Relations. During this time, he helped organize a walkout from a meeting with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission; his group had wanted to discuss the elimination of English-only regulations from the workplace.

President Lyndon Johnson invited Rodríguez to join the Department of Health, Education and Welfare as liaison to the Hispanic community. In that role, he headed the Office of Mexican American Affairs (later the Office of Spanish Speaking Affairs), where he worked on bilingual education issues. As part of this advocacy, Rodríguez visited Spanish-speaking communities and schools across the country, including Cuban exiles in Dade County, Florida, who were running successful bilingual education programs. In 1967, he met with a congressional committee studying bilingual education to help plan a response to the growing demand for bilingual education funding. Congress subsequently passed the Bilingual Education Act, Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

To help support needed work in curriculum development, Rodríguez invited Randolph Hearst, heir to the Hearst newspaper fortune, on a cross-country tour of classrooms with second-language learners trying to cope in English-only classrooms. In his 2007 memoir, Rodríguez describes the issue, mentioning that children who do not speak the language used at school are at disadvantage; however, to participate effectively as citizens in their new country, they need to be fluent in standard English. He describes the aim of bilingual education as an attempt to prepare American citizens, who can be competitive in areas such as business or politics. For students to become competitive citizens, they need to communicate in the language of power. Hearst agreed with Rodríguez's viewpoints, and his foundation funded bilingual education programs for several years until federal funding was increased.

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