Interpreting as educational policy: disentangling discourses of language access in schools

The rights of language minoritized parents - up to a quarter of all parents in U.S. schools - are negotiated in interpreted conversations with educators. Therefore, language interpreting is school policy with consequential equity implications. In this critical discursive analysis, we examine interpreting and translation as educational policy. We apply Machin's (Critical Discourse Studies 10(4):347-355, 2013) Critical Discourse Studies framework of recontextualization to see how policy actors in schools combine, obscure, highlight, and delete elements of language access as they implement policy. This critical analysis of policy documents and qualitative interviews with school stakeholders takes place in Urban Mid-Atlantic and Urban Midwest school districts with growing populations of students designated English language learner (ELL). Our analysis addresses how school actors evaluate interpretation, as well as what they omit and substitute in their perspectives of interpreted communications with families; it also shows how meso-level administrators may be key to policy implementation change. We share both theoretical and practical implications towards greater justice in educational policy for communication with language minoritized families.