In the summer of 1998, Proposition 227 was passed by 61 percent of the electorate changing the way English Language Learners (ELs) were educated. Prior to the proposition, most ELs were placed in “bilingual” classrooms where they were taught in a combination of English and their native language. Proposition 227, however, called for all public school instruction to be conducted in English. As a consequence, ELs were placed in classrooms that were taught only in English, called “English immersion” programs.

While the proposition calls for all classrooms to be taught in English, it does include a provision that allows parents to request a waiver to have their child placed back into a bilingual program with school and instructor approval. The amount of these waivers requested and/or granted will be a function of districts and schools’ policies. Schools and districts had the responsibility to disseminate the information about the waivers to parents, and teachers and school principals had to approve the request for a student to be placed into a bilingual classroom. As a result, schools and districts maintained some autonomy in whether or not they would choose to dismantle their bilingual education programs.

But did they? After the passage of the proposition, despite the statewide call for a ban on bilingual education, about 20 percent of schools maintained their bilingual programs, and that percentage has remained around 10 percent. This study uses the policy innovation and diffusion framework to explain this observation.

From the policy innovation and diffusion framework, I identify four motivations that “pressure” governments to innovate: self-interest, uncertainty, coercion, and legitimacy. I argue that these four motivations can sometimes be conflicting forcing governments to filter the incoming information and choose which type of pressure to respond to. For example, a local government may face coercive pressure from the State to innovate, but may ignore this in the pursuit of legitimacy if there is strong opposition from local advocacy groups. The way governments choose to filter this information could be determined by their characteristics. I hypothesize that conflicting motivations led some schools to resist the coercive pressure from the State after the passage of Proposition 227. I also hypothesize that characteristics of a school influence the decisions over the ordering of priorities.

I find evidence in favor of my hypotheses. Results show that schools that faced strong conflicting pressures, such as prior investment in specially certified bilingual teachers (self-interest), presence of a higher percentage of registered Democrats in the county (who were more likely to vote against the proposition and represent a pressure for legitimacy), and a higher certainty over the benefits of bilingual education (a measure constructed by the author and representing a pressure related to uncertainty), were less likely to adopt the ban on bilingual education. I also find that schools with more financial resources were less likely to respond to motivations of self-interest and more likely to pursue legitimacy. Also larger schools were more likely to ignore other conflicting pressures and just adopt the State’s policy.