Advocates had high hopes that the Every Student Succeeds Act marked a significant step forward for students learning English in the nation鈥檚 K-12 schools.
But English-language-learner education policies across the country remain 鈥渄isjointed and inaccessible to local education officials, teachers, and education advocates鈥� more than four years after the law鈥檚 passage, a new Migration Policy Institute report concludes.
The report, , assesses the ESSA plans for all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, analyzing policies that affect students鈥� language-acquisition journey, from English-learner identification to reclassification as English proficient, their academic achievement as a student subgroup, and the extent to which they are included in state systems of accountability.
ESSA required that, for the first time under federal law, schools would be held accountable for English-learners鈥� progress in achieving English-language proficiency and their performance in English language arts and math. Instead, the report authors, Delia Pompa and Leslie Villegas, found a 鈥渇ractured and incomplete鈥� picture of English-learner education and dozens of state plans that do little to hold schools responsible for the performance of their English-learner students.
鈥淚n terms of (English-learners鈥�) academic achievement, more often than not, long-term goals were purely symbolic because they rarely played a meaningful role in accountability systems,鈥� the report authors concluded.
The report wasn鈥檛 all doom and gloom, however. Pompa and Villegas praised ESSA鈥檚 role in creating consistent policies within states, including providing uniform standards on how students are screened for English-learner services and reclassified as English proficient.
The authors also noted that the law brought renewed focus to requirements that were written into law in previous versions of the nation鈥檚 K-12 education law but never fully implemented鈥攕uch as exploring the assessment needs of students who speak languages other than English. But even that has sparked debate in several places, including Florida, where officials argue that their that states 鈥渕ake every effort鈥� to develop statewide assessments in students鈥� first languages if they constitute a significant portion of the student population.
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