Two-way dual language (TWDL) bilingual education programs share 3 core goals: academic achievement, bilingualism and biliteracy, and sociocultural competence. This article proposes a fourth core goal: Critical consciousness. Although TWDL programs are designed to integrate students from diverse language, culture and race backgrounds, equity is unfortunately still a challenge in TWDL classrooms and schools. We argue that centering critical consciousness, or fostering among teachers, parents and children an awareness of the structural oppression that surrounds us and a readiness to take action to correct it, can support increased equity and social justice in TWDL education. We elaborate 4 elements of critical consciousness: interrogating power, critical listening, historicizing schools, and embracing discomfort. We illustrate these elements with examples from TWDL research and practice. In addition, we describe how critical consciousness impacts and radicalizes the other three core goals, in turn supporting the development of more successful, equitable, and socially just TWDL schools.

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This critical ethnographic study investigated how gentrification processes shaped an elementary school’s community and two-way bilingual education (TWBE) program in Central Texas. Findings revealed how these gentrification processes impacted the principal and vice principal at the ontological and epistemological levels, as their ways of being and knowing around their TWBE program were altered as a dual gentrification process pushed in new customers thirsting for bilingualism and pushed out Spanish-speaking families due to rapidly rising rents. Implications highlight the urgency for administrators to develop critical consciousness around the original race radical vision of bilingual education.

Two‐way bilingual education (TWBE) is guided by three traditional goals: academic achievement, bilingualism/biliteracy, and sociocultural competence. The rapid growth, whitening, and gentrification of TWBE programs have prompted a call for an extension of the three traditional goals to include a fourth one: critical consciousness. This critical ethnography examines how the author and a fifth‐grade TWBE teacher prioritized this fourth goal in the curriculum by positioning gentrification processes impacting the school and community as a generative theme. Los programas de la educación bilingüe de doble inmersión son basados en tres metas tradicionales, el desempeño académico, bilingüismo/bialfabetismo y la competencia sociocultural. El crecimiento rápido, whiteness y gentrificación de dichos programas han provocado una extensión de las tres metas para incluir una cuarta meta: la conciencia crítica. Esta etnografía crítica examina como el autor y una maestra de quinto grado priorizaron la cuarta meta al posicionar la gentrificación impactando la escuela y comunidad como un tema generador.

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