Texas Legislation (HB 103 and SB 121)

The Bilingual Education and Training Act (also known as Senate Bill 121) was enacted by the 63rd Texas Legislature and signed into law by Governor Dolph Briscoe in June 1973. Although not the first of its type in the United States, this legislation was a turning point in the education of Mexican American students and other language minority children in the state of Texas. The groups targeted for special intervention were students from a population who had suffered decades of educational neglect and underachievement in the public schools because of their inability to compete in the traditional English-only system. Although a portion of the act carried provisions for adult education, the legislative language requiring K-12 bilingual education was new and unprecedented. The centerpiece of the law was the mandate requiring bilingual (mainly Spanish-English) instruction in any Texas public elementary school enrolling 20 or more children of limited English ability in any grade level. The provision in the law that a language other than English could be used to provide subject matter instruction was especially significant because it effectively eliminated the long-standing English-only teaching requirement imposed by a 1918 Texas law.

Even though Senate Bill 121 provided the legal mandate for bilingual education, at least two districts, the Laredo United Consolidated Schools (now Laredo United Independent School District) and the San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD), had begun to experiment with bilingual education several years prior to the approval of the formal mandate. SAISD had also experimented with a form of vocational bilingual education at Lanier High School aimed at developing bilingual secretaries for the fast-growing international marketplace. The designers of the Lanier project were Josué M. González and Abelardo Villarreal. In addition, the district had been the main venue of the University of Texas Oral Language Research Project spearheaded by university professors from the Austin campus. The research project applied the audio-lingual method to the teaching of English and science in the elementary schools. The method proved only partially successful and resulted in important modifications to the knowledge base for teaching English to English language learners (ELLs).

Fueled by the alarming 80% to 90% drop-out rates among Mexican American students and by studies at the St. Lambert school in Canada showing the value and utility of bilingual education, the nascent models of dual-language instruction also began to take form in Texas. Leading the state's pioneering efforts were United Consolidated Schools superintendent Harold C. Brantley and innovative teachers Dolores Earle, of Laredo, and Gloria Zamora, of San Antonio. Spanish was used in these early programs, as in later programs of bilingual education, essentially to build the self-concepts of children and to facilitate their learning of English as the eventually exclusive medium of learning. Subsequently, under the leadership of superintendent José A. Cárdenas, the Edgewood Independent School District launched the first districtwide effort to teach bilingually.

Other programs evolved in various school districts and in various pedagogical forms across the state before the enabling legislation authorized them: Corpus Christi, Kingsville, McAllen, Del Rio, and El Paso all operated without legal support and in violation of the 1918 English-only law. By 1968, approximately 10 programs had been implemented in the state. Faced with the urgency to legitimize these early programs, Texas State Representative (later Senator) Carlos Truán and Senator Joe Bernal banded together in support of the first bilingual education bill in the state. The bill labeled HB 103 became law in 1969. It provided “that bilingual instruction may be offered or permitted in those situations when such instruction is educationally advantageous to the pupils.” In retrospect, HB 103 was designed as a purely enabling piece of legislation. It did not contain the special provisions for mandatory bilingual education and funding requirements found in the later SB 121. Nevertheless, it served a useful purpose not only in affording school officials the opportunity to design special language programs for ELLs in the schools but, equally important, in providing them with the administrative clearance necessary to tap into the newly authorized federal funds available under Title VII of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA).

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