A Longitudinal Portrait of California’s Kindergarten English Learners and Their Learning Outcomes

• In Event: Sunday Roundtable Session 3:05 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Emergent Bilingual and Multilingual Learners and the Policies That Impact Them (Table 32)

Abstract

California’s K-12 funding and instructional policies for English Learners (ELs) have changed significantly over the past two decades. As a first step in understanding their impact, this brief describes changes in the development of academic skills and English proficiency for 12 successive cohorts of students who entered as ELs in kindergarten from 2006 to 2017 in California. Average achievement for ELs in math and ELA improved over this time period, and achievement gaps narrowed. Furthermore, both the proportion of students who reach English proficiency by the end of first grade and the proportion who are reclassified by the end of first grade have increased substantially across cohorts. However, the proportion who remain ELs into sixth grade has declined only modestly.

Authors

• Sarah Novicoff, Stanford University

• Sean F. Reardon, Stanford University

• Rucker C. Johnson, University of California - Berkeley