FROM "WHAT IS" TO "WHAT COULD BE"
Moving from a policy discussion of "what is" to a policy discussion of "what could be," a more powerful way of challenging linguistic inequities in schooling would be to create a language policy that supported both teacher and student multilingualism at school. Such a policy would enable teachers to legitimately use languages other than English to assist students in accessing school knowledge. A policy of full institutional multilingualism could also encourage the recruitment of more multilingual teachers and the development of multilingual assessment practices. These hiring and assessment practices would expand the current space available for challenging linguistic privilege and linguistic inequities in multilingual schools. However, thinking about the dilemmas and tensions that arose from the implementation of the 1995 Language for Learning Policy, it is clear that such an antidiscriminatory language pol icy would likely involve conflict. Implementation of such a language pol icy, then, would need to be accompanied by teacher education programming that assisted teachers in learning to respond productively to different kinds of linguistic conflict.
Although I have argued for a future that supports teacher as well as student multilingualism at schools where English is the primary medium of instruction, current policy development in Toronto has not increased the spaces teachers need for challenging linguistic inequities. As mentioned in the Introduction, when several different school boards in the metropolitan Toronto area merged to form the new Toronto District School Board in January, 1998, the policies that had been implemented in each school board were replaced with new policies. A new language policy for the new Toronto District School Board was adopted on May 27, 1998, after our classroom observation work at Northside had been completed. The 1998 Literacy Foundation Policy is similar to the 1995 Language for Learning Policy in that it articulates the belief that "all languages and varieties of languages are equally valid forms of thought and communication" (p. 2). The 1998 policy also states that "First language literacy is important for second-language learning and for achieving academic success in the second language" (p. 2). However, the new policy does not include the statement that "Students' first languages play an important role in the classroom, in the school program as a whole, and in communication with the home" that was contained in the 1995 policy. As discussed in the Introduction, it was this statement that legitimized institutionalized student multilingualism at Northside. Replacing the statement that students' first languages play an important role in the classroom and the school program is a more general statement about valuing and respecting diversity.
Valuing and respecting diversity requires an inclusive curriculum which recognizes and affirms the life experiences of all learners, regardless of gender, place of origin, religion, ethnicity and race, cultural and linguistic background, social and economic status, age and ability/ disability, (p. 7)
Although such a statement keeps a space open for the acceptance of student multilingualism at school (accepting student multilingualism is a way of recognizing the linguistic life experiences of learners at school), it is not as powerful a statement as the 1995 statement, which explicitly discussed students' first languages as playing an important role in the classroom and school program. It also does not expand the space for challenging linguistic privilege and inequities in the ways that have been already discussed.
