Hundreds of Plans for California’s Million English Learners: A Statewide Review of District EL Master Plans

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Friday 9:45 am - Gold 2
  In Roundtable Session: Language, Policy, and Possibility: Reimagining Educational Futures for Multilingual Learners

Abstract

Many policy decisions impacting California English Learners (ELs) are left to the discretion of districts’ EL Advisory Committees (DELACs) and are outlined in their EL Master Plan. This descriptive study leverages these plans to construct a dataset capturing key policy data. We merge with CDE enrollment data to explore trends between district and student characteristics and particular decisions. We find that clearly stated program goals are associated with various program offerings, independent of district characteristics. This indicates a potential cost-free lever for DELACs to shape the experiences of their ELs to expand, rather than constrain, opportunity. We also find immense variation in the assessments used to reclassify students. This highlights the importance of contextualizing findings when comparing ELs across settings.

Authors

• Isabel Clay-Frum, University of Southern California

• Margaret Dawson-Amoah, University of Southern California

• Junmin Byon, University of Southern California