Moving from Vision to Reality: Establishing California as a National Bilingual Education and Dual-Language Immersion Leader

As the first quarter of the twenty-first century comes to a close, the United States greets the future as a uniquely diverse—and diversifying—country. Nowhere is this more evident than in data on the changing demographics of public school enrollment. For the first time since the advent of universal, free public education, the percentage of white students dipped below 50 percent in 2014, and shrank to 45.2 percent in 2021. Latino/a/x students, who made up one-quarter of students in 2014, grew to represent 28.4 percent of enrollment by 2021.¹ Nearly 11.7 million school-aged children speak a language other than English at home, which works out to more than one in five U.S. K–12 kids.²

If these trends represent a plural democracy growing into an ever-more-dynamic version of itself, California is clearly a vision of the country’s demographic future. In 2021–22, the state’s schools were 56 percent Latino/a/x, 10 percent Asian, 5 percent African-American, 4 percent multiracial, and 2 percent Filipino. Just 21 percent of California students identify as white.³ In 2022, roughly 40 percent of California K–12 students spoke a non-English language at home.⁴ California schools enroll nearly 1.1 million students who are classified as English learners (ELs)—meaning that the state’s ELs constitute more than 21 percent of the U.S.’ 5 million ELs.⁵

Table 1

California’s growing and dynamic social, economic, and educational spheres could be an exemplar for the rest of the country. But the state’s schools have not always capitalized on these rich linguistic and cultural assets. In 1998, the state passed a referendum, Proposition 227, which mandated English-only instruction for ELs.

While California voters eventually unwound this mistake with the passage of Proposition 58 in 2016, damage from nearly two decades of the state’s monolingual mandate persists. The state’s bilingual teacher training programs were largely dismantled, and millions of California students progressed through a K–12 educational system that actively stigmatized ELs’ bilingualism and proficiency in non-English languages.

California EL advocates were largely responsible for the political shift from 1998 to 2016, reframing state discourse around the value of bilingualism and multilingualism for all students—and launching the state’s Seal of Biliteracy in 2011.⁶ As we noted in a recent Century Foundation report, this policy innovation has been highly successful—and is the best recent example of California acting as a national EL policy leader: “In the twelve years since California adopted its Seal of Biliteracy to recognize high school graduates proficient in multiple languages, another forty-eight states have developed similar programs.”⁷

In 2017, California built on Proposition 58’s passage with the adoption of its EL Roadmap Policy, a guidance document that identifies “opportunities to develop proficiency in multiple languages” as a core part of the state’s vision for English-learning students.⁸ The state subsequently supported the Roadmap with $10 million spread between grants made to Californians Together and the California Association for Bilingual Education.⁹ In 2018, California’s then-governor Jerry Brown and then-state superintendent of public instruction Tom Torlakson announced Global California 2030, an initiative pledging to significantly grow the state’s dual-language immersion programs and to graduate more fully bilingual and biliterate K–12 students.¹⁰

In other words, recent years have brought a tidal shift to California’s EL policies. The state has addressed some of the large policy obstacles restricting ELs’ access to multilingual instruction. English-only instruction is no longer mandatory, there is useful guidance from the state encouraging schools to prioritize ELs’ needs, and California’s political leadership reliably describes students’ multilingualism and multiculturalism as valuable.

This is appropriate, since research consistently shows that bilingual and dual-language immersion programs are the most effective models for ELs to 1) succeed academically, 2) sustain their bilingualism, and 3) learn English.¹¹ Given this solidifying consensus, it is clear that educational equity for ELs must be fundamentally defined in terms of education systems’ ability to support their emerging bilingualism from the start—and dual-language immersion programs are the most effective way to do so.

California education leaders are justifiably proud of these recent reforms. And yet, the absence of policy obstacles is not equivalent to systemic, constructive change. Much of the improved state policy on ELs is non-binding, voluntary guidance, and statewide expansion of bilingual and dual-language immersion programs does not yet appear to be a major priority for California policymakers. Indeed, the second page of the EL Roadmap states this plainly: “The guidance in the CA EL Roadmap is not binding on local educational agencies or other entities…the document is exemplary, and compliance with it is not mandatory.”¹² Global California 2030 also contains this boilerplate caveat on its second page.¹³

While California has made some investments in grants for growing dual-language programming and rebuilding its bilingual teacher training programs, these have not yet delivered substantive improvements to how ELs are educated in much of the state.

While this gap between public commitments and public action is frustrating, it also represents an opportunity. It is time for state and local leaders in California to deliver on the state’s EL Roadmap and Global California 2030 promises by:

1. significantly expanding multilingual instruction in the state—particularly via linguistically diverse, dual-language immersion schools;
2. investing short- and long-term resources in efforts to grow the state’s bilingual teacher pipelines; and
3. ensuring that the state’s 1.1 million ELs—who gain unique linguistic and academic benefits from bilingual and dual-language programs—are prioritized for bilingual and/or multilingual learning.

California’s Past and Present

Nothing shaped the past quarter-century of California ELs’ educational experiences like Proposition 227, a 1998 voter referendum that effectively banned bilingual instruction for these students. During the referendum campaign, Proposition 227 advocates promised that monolingual, English-only instruction would fast track ELs to English proficiency and produce better academic outcomes. Proposition 227’s critics characterized it as a fearful response to the changing demographics of California. When the ballots were counted, voters had overwhelmingly chosen monolinguistic and monocultural assimilation over multilingualism and multiculturalism.

Almost two decades later, the state’s politics had shifted, and the failures of the state’s monolingualism mandate had become evident. Outcomes for a generation of English learners hadn’t significantly improved, not least because implementation of Proposition 227 segregated many of them away from academic instruction in ESL courses for many hours of their school days. In 2016, the passage of Proposition 58, the California Education for a Global Economy Initiative, reset the state’s education landscape for ELs. It unwound the statewide monolingualism mandate and gave local education leaders flexibility to implement a wider range of language instruction models for ELs, particularly various forms of bilingual education, including dual-language immersion.

Momentum for multilingualism reached its zenith in 2018, with the goals outlined in Global California 2030: 1,600 or more dual-language immersion programs, which would enroll half of California’s K–12 students by 2030, and which would aim to make at least 75 percent of graduating students proficient in at least two languages by 2040.¹⁴ The EL Roadmap’s vision is similar, if more abstract: a state K–12 system where “English learners fully and meaningfully access and participate in a twenty-first century education from early childhood through grade twelve that results in their attaining high levels of English proficiency, mastery of grade level standards, and opportunities to develop proficiency in multiple languages.”¹⁵

And yet, progress has been frustratingly slow. A May 2023 Century Foundation report found that California reported enrolling nearly 97,000 English learners in its dual-language immersion programs in 2019–20. While this ranked second among all states for total EL enrollment (Texas enrolled nearly 201,000 ELs in dual-language programs that year), it actually represented a relatively modest 8.4 percent share of California’s more than one million ELs. Indeed, California’s share of ELs in dual language ranked behind the District of Columbia (29.8 percent), Texas (19.6 percent), Alaska (15.9 percent), Wisconsin (14.1 percent), Illinois (14.0 percent), and New Jersey (8.8 percent). According to state data filed with the U.S. Department of Education, just short of 8 percent of all U.S. ELs were enrolled in dual-language programs in 2019–20. A 2021 survey from the American Councils Research Center found just 660 dual-language programs in the state.¹⁶

In other words, rather than leading the United States in supporting ELs’ emerging bilingualism, California is only slightly out-performing the broader country for securing ELs’ access to dual-language immersion. And it may even be lagging behind the country overall, given that ten states—including dual-language-rich Oregon and Utah—did not submit any data on ELs enrolled in dual-language immersion in their schools. Add in California’s roughly 91,500 ELs enrolled in bilingual education, and it does not significantly improve the state’s national ranking at providing ELs with access to bilingual instruction.¹⁷

Table 2

Further, data from the California Department of Education shows that 57,582 students received the state’s Seal of Biliteracy at the end of the 2021–22 school year, in a year when California graduated nearly 450,000 students—meaning that not quite 13 percent of graduates qualified. Of those who received the Seal, 28,698 were former or current ELs, slightly under 50 percent of that year’s Seal recipients.¹⁸

In other words, the language flexibility Proposition 58 gives districts is not enough, on its own, to deliver on the EL Roadmap and Global California 2030’s ambitious new multilingual promises for ELs. To step into its natural role as a national leader on providing equitable bilingual and/or dual-language educational opportunities for ELs, California must do far more: invest more resources in launching more bilingual and dual-language programs, prioritize bilingual teacher pathways in state teacher development programs, and build a transitional kindergarten workforce that reflects young California students’ diversity.

The language flexibility Proposition 58 gives districts is not enough, on its own, to deliver on the EL Roadmap and Global California 2030’s ambitious new multilingual promises for ELs.

Investing in Bilingual and Dual-Language Schools

Leading on educational equity for ELs begins with tangible resource commitments to growing bilingual and/or dual-language classrooms and schools around the state. California has made some moves in that direction. Two years after Proposition 58 passed, the state legislature passed AB 2514, which created the Pathways to Success Grant Program, which aimed at “establishing and expanding dual-language immersion or developmental bilingual programs in elementary and secondary schools.”¹⁹ The program would have given priority for grants to districts whose ELs enrollment was greater than 40 percent.²⁰ However, it was not subsequently funded by the legislature.

In 2021—five years after Proposition 58’s passage—the legislature passed AB 130, which provided enough funding to distribute twenty-seven new competitive grants under the Dual Language Immersion Grant program.²¹ In a press release announcing the $10 million in one-time grant funding, the California Department of Education announced that it anticipates these grants will launch fifty-five new dual-language programs across the state, “contributing toward the goal of 1,600 dual-language immersion schools set by the Global California 2030 Initiative.”²²

While these grants are a first step, they fall dramatically short of the need, and of what California could accomplish with a more significant investment. It’s not that recent state leadership is opposed to committing new resources to public education: during the past several years, the state has devoted major funding to other educational priorities. In 2022, legislators appropriated half a billion dollars for competitive grants through the Golden State Pathways Program, which funds schools to design pathways that smooth students’ transitions from K–12 to college or career.²³ In the past several years, legislators dedicated $4.1 billion to a competitive grants program to convert hundreds of California’s K–12 campuses into community schools.²⁴ In comparison to these programs, California’s $10 million investment is relatively modest.

To be sure, education funding should not be viewed as a zero-sum calculation. The K–12 system exists to prepare students for long-term success, so college and career pathways investments are a wholly appropriate investment. And there is a powerful moral case for supporting community schools with “wraparound” social services that meet the full breadth of young learners’ needs. However, budgets are moral documents that reflect the public’s values and the scale of leaders’ commitment to those values. In that context, it is clear that growing ELs’ access to bilingual and dual-language immersion programs is not yet a major priority for California policymakers.

Budgets are moral documents that reflect the public’s values and the scale of leaders’ commitment to those values.

A glance at state budgets suggests that California lags other, smaller, less linguistically diverse states in the resources it commits to expanding access to bilingual education and dual-language immersion. Utah—a state that enrolled just over 54,000 ELs in 2020 and has an annual K–12 education state budget of just over $8 billion—still committed more than $5 million to its dual-language immersion program in 2023, and has appropriated more than $7.3 million to the program for 2024.²⁵ Since 2012, Delaware—a state with fewer than 15,000 ELs in 2020 and an annual K–12 education budget of not quite $2 billion—has annually spent between $1.6 million and $1.9 million on dual-language immersion expansion.²⁶ Legislators in Maryland—a state with just under 90,000 ELs in 2020 and an annual K–12 education state budget of almost $10 billion—are considering a bill to annually invest $10 million into dual-language immersion expansion starting in 2025.²⁷

California, by comparison, enrolled 1.1 million ELs in 2020 and has an annual K–12 education state budget of nearly $130 billion.²⁸ So while the state’s one-time $10 million dual-language immersion investment is laudable, California can—and must—do much more to expand ELs’ access to these programs.

What’s more, competitive grants programs have significant limitations as a strategy for effecting systemic change in a state education system. These programs customarily reward grants to a limited group of schools or districts, a process which can further inequities, giving communities with time, capacity, and resources to devote to the competition’s application process an upper hand. Furthermore, the Dual Language Immersion Grants program likely does little to encourage more dual-language or bilingual expansion in the remaining 991 of California’s 1,018 school districts that received no funding.²⁹

There is an alternative policy mechanism for encouraging dual-language immersion expansion. In 2019, Texas shifted its core K–12 funding formula to give districts additional resources for ELs enrolled in dual-language immersion classrooms. As in most states, Texas ELs generate extra state funding for their school districts—an additional 10-percent increase on their base amount of per-pupil funding. Unlike other states, Texas ELs enrolled in dual-language immersion programs generate an additional 5 percent in state funding for their district, for a total of 1.15 times the base per-pupil amount. This gives schools a financial incentive to convert their existing ESL or bilingual classrooms into dual-language classrooms. Additionally, non-English learners enrolled in Texas dual-language schools also generate an extra 5 percent in state funding, ideally promoting the adoption of integrated two-way models.³⁰ This consistent annual funding for EL and non-EL students in dual-language immersion can also support long-term resource sustainability for these programs. By building these incentives into its funding formula, Texas tilted its already-large bilingual education system towards dual-language models for all schools, not just those with the wherewithal to pursue—and the fortune to win—competitive DLI grants.

Unsurprisingly, California’s dual-language immersion and bilingual education investments have produced relatively modest progress towards its EL Roadmap and Global California 2030 goals, as well as towards the opportunity presented by Proposition 58. Los Angeles Unified School District enrolls more ELs than any other U.S. school district: around 120,000, or roughly 20 percent, of its students were ELs in 2019–20. But that year, LAUSD enrolled around 31,700 ELs in dual-language schools—26.5 percent of the district’s 120,000 ELs (see Table 3).

By contrast, Texas’ Dallas ISD has the second-largest EL enrollment of any U.S. school district. Nearly 65,000, or roughly 42 percent, of its students were ELs in 2019–20. That year, Dallas enrolled over 44,000 of its ELs in dual-language schools—nearly 70 percent of the district’s 65,000 ELs (See Table 5).

So even though LAUSD enrolls nearly twice as many ELs as Dallas ISD, it enrolls thousands fewer ELs in its dual-language schools. Dual-language programs in the San Francisco Bay Area are also far from meeting the needs of their linguistically diverse students: just around 11 percent of the region’s ELs were enrolled in dual-language schools in 2019–20 (See Table 4).

Table 3

Table 4

Table 5

These sorts of gaps make it clear that California has not yet invested enough in the expansion of dual-language programming to fulfill its commitments under the EL Roadmap and Global California 2030, nor enough to equitably support the emerging bilingualism of its 1.1 million EL students.

Investing in Flexible Bilingual Teacher Training Pathways

More state resources for growing bilingual education and dual-language immersion are necessary to meet those aspirations, but they would not be sufficient on their own. Even if districts were awash in resources to design, plan, and implement new dual-language immersion programs, many would struggle to find enough bilingual teachers to deliver bilingual instruction.

That’s because California’s many years running English-only public schools didn’t just strip hundreds of thousands of ELs of their emerging bilingualism: they also strangled most of the state’s bilingual teacher training programs. With bilingual education largely prohibited across the state, demand for trained bilingual teachers dropped, so institutions of higher education stopped training them.

As such, when the ban on bilingual education ended in 2016, most districts simply didn’t—and still don’t—have enough available bilingual teachers to grow their bilingual and dual-language offerings. In the decade preceding the 2021–22 school year, California teacher training programs produced an annual average of just over 800 trained, bilingually authorized teachers.³¹ During this period, California generally issued around 15,000–17,000 new teaching credentials each year, meaning that only around 5 percent of new teachers have bilingual authorizations.³²

California state leaders are aware of this challenge and have, again, devoted resources to addressing it. Most notably, in 2017, California devoted $5 million to create its Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program (BTPDP) with the explicit goal of growing dual-language immersion programs under Proposition 58.³³ The funding was then divided into eight $625,000 grants and distributed to local education agencies through a competitive process. The program aimed to 1) increase the number of bilingual teachers and 2) provide professional development to current bilingual teachers.³⁴

Early returns on the program were encouraging: the state reported that it supported the credentialing of more than 350 new bilingual teacher candidates, and helped nearly 400 more licensed bilingual teachers move out of English-only classrooms.³⁵ Calls to revive—and expand—the program have intensified since it ended in June 2021. This year, California Governor Gavin Newsom proposed—and the California Assembly enacted—$20 million in funding for five years of additional BTPDP grants.³⁶

This expanded funding may seed a broader range of California bilingual teacher training pathways. The California Department of Education could maximize the efficacy of these funds by encouraging applications that focus on growing pre-service programs for new bilingual teachers and/or flexible, alternative pathway programs designed for bilingual paraprofessionals, district staff, and/or teacher candidates who have fulfilled many—but not yet all—of their teacher licensure requirements. It should also prioritize funding for applications that allow bilingual teacher candidates to earn bilingual authorization concurrently within their credentialing programs, so that they do not have to spend more time and money on their pre-service training.

Even as the state grows the BTPDP, it could also prioritize bilingual teacher pathways in other state programs funding teacher preparation. For instance, the state’s Teacher Residency Grant Program is designed to launch or expand teacher residency programs aimed at increasing teacher diversity or closing specific teacher shortages, including bilingual education.³⁷ The state has room for more of these programs: a 2019 Center for Equity for English Learners review of the state’s teacher training programs found “few bilingual teacher residencies offered and a greater need to expand and study bilingual teacher residencies as one of the most viable pathways to respond to this shortage.”³⁸

Research suggests that alternative training programs, like teacher residency models, can help train and license larger numbers of diverse educators.³⁹ California’s residency program has $350 million in grant funding over the next five years. Given California’s particularly acute troubles growing its bilingual teaching force, state leaders could devote a large share of these funds towards expanding teacher residency programs that prioritize recruiting bilingual candidates.

Similarly, the state’s Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program has $33 million in remaining funding for small grants supporting school staff interested in pursuing further education training in pursuit of becoming fully licensed teachers. The program includes support for bilingual teachers as a goal, but—as with its Teacher Residency Grant Program—the state could make that the program’s primary aim in future rounds.⁴⁰

For this to work, however, state leaders will need to significantly improve the program’s efficacy in recruiting and training bilingual teachers: an analysis found that just four of the 209 teachers credentialed through the program’s first round (2016–2019) had a bilingual authorization. A second round of grants (2017–19) produced just eight bilingual authorizations out of 108 teachers credentialed. At a total cost of $45 million in competitive grants, this is not yet a particularly high-yield bilingual teacher pathway.⁴¹

State leaders could also consider a corresponding adjustment to the Golden State Pathways Program, the state’s aforementioned $500 million investment in aligning K–12 education systems with college and career pathways. The program provides grants for school districts to build, adjust, and promote these pathways, as the California Department of Education explains it, “with an emphasis on addressing areas of acute statewide need, such as developing a diverse workforce to meet the need for professional and learning support positions in childcare settings, preschools, and schools maintaining prekindergarten, kindergarten, or any of grades 1 to 12.”⁴² Again, state leaders could attend to the particularly stark shortage of bilingual teachers in the context of the aspirations articulated in the EL Roadmap and Global California 2030 by prioritizing Golden State Pathways grant funding for projects that will connect linguistically and culturally diverse K–12 students with bilingual teaching careers. The state could also target grants through this—and similar—teacher pathway investments to K–12 graduates who earned a Seal of Biliteracy.

California boasts thousands of young bilingual and bicultural adults interested in working in schools. For instance, the California Mini-Corps program, founded in 1967 through federal migrant education funding, recruits college students with migrant backgrounds to work as tutors for K–12 migrant students with the goal of training the tutors to eventually become bilingual teachers.⁴³ Mini-Corps tutors receive $17 per hour, as well as receiving mentorship from classroom teachers that they observe and learn from as they tutor.⁴⁴ Currently, Mini-Corps only supports approximately 600 students statewide with a budget of $7.5 million.⁴⁵ Its scope could be expanded with a greater investment. An additional $5 million in annual state funding could result in approximately 1,000 students participating in the program each year.

All California grants programs aimed at recruiting and training bilingual teacher candidates could invite applications for local leaders interested in linking Mini-Corps program alums with teacher training pathways. These pathways could take myriad forms. For instance, since teacher candidates with full-time jobs outside of their training may not be able to manage the financial burden of participating in unpaid student teaching, local leaders could pursue state grants to provide stipends during Mini-Corps alumni’s student teaching service. Or, perhaps better, teacher training programs could apply for state grant support to design and implement bilingual teacher training programs that recognized Mini-Corps service as student teaching experience itself.

Supporting Young Dual Language Learners in California’s Transitional Kindergarten Expansion

California is currently embarked on a major expansion of its Transitional Kindergarten (TK) program, with the objective of making early learning universally available for the state’s four-year-olds by the 2025–26 school year.⁴⁶ Estimates suggest that this will involve more than tripling TK enrollment from 89,000 children in 2019–20 to more than 300,000 in 2025–26.⁴⁷ This is a promising development for California’s young English learners, customarily referred to as dual language learners (DLLs): studies consistently show that DLLs uniquely gain from early education opportunities.⁴⁸

As such, California’s push to make its transitional kindergarten program universal could be a powerful opportunity for improving outcomes for the state’s DLLs. This should be a central concern as the state continues implementation, since nearly 60 percent of young Californians speak a non-English language at home.⁴⁹

How can state and local leaders best support DLLs in their TK programs? Research indicates that the details of DLLs’ early learning opportunities matter. DLLs particularly benefit from early learning settings that both expose them to English while simultaneously supporting their emerging bilingual development.⁵⁰ This means that California’s main TK policy challenge for DLLs echoes its main K–12 policy challenge for ELs: linguistically diverse students of all ages do best when they are able to develop their emerging bilingualism, but supporting this in TK classrooms requires developing solid pipelines for bilingual teacher candidates. As California pushes billions of dollars to grow its early education programs, the state will need at least 12,000 new early educators—and at least 16,000 assistant teachers—to lead new TK classrooms.⁵¹ To best meet DLLs’ needs, a large segment of these new classrooms should offer bilingual or dual-language instruction.

Fortunately, the early care and education workforce in California—as in the broader United States—is significantly more diverse than the K–12 workforce (see Table 6).

Table 6

As we noted in a Century Foundation report earlier this year, “just one in eight American teachers speaks a non-English language at home,” that is, just over 12 percent of U.S. teachers are demonstrably multilingual.⁵² California’s challenge, then, is to ensure that the state’s burgeoning early education investments retain these diverse early educators by bringing them into the new TK classrooms.

The diversity gaps between early childhood education (ECE) and K–12 systems have multiple causes, but the foremost is structural: becoming a K–12 teacher generally requires much more extensive and expensive higher education training and credentialing than becoming an early educator. Since young bilingual adults are more likely to face financial pressures limiting their opportunities to pursue further training and higher education, strict teacher credentialing requirements can be major obstacles that reduce overall teacher diversity.⁵³

There are upsides for those who are able to meet the requirements: the additional training required to be a K–12 (or TK–12, in California) teacher brings the promise of higher pay, compared to the pay in most private early education settings.⁵⁴ Indeed, analyses have repeatedly found that TK teachers are paid far more, sometimes even double the salaries of their peers in other ECE settings, such as pre-K, child care centers, or family child care programs.⁵⁵

Clearly the differences between these systems matter for California’s future ECE workforce, where the state views TK as the first of a two-year kindergarten model—that is, as part of an expanded TK–12 system, and not as a pre-kindergarten program. This poses a significant challenge for state policymakers, who must find ways to build pathways for early educators to fill the growing number of TK positions without exacerbating labor shortages in other pre-K and child care settings.

Pathways into California’s TK sector must provide early educators with support and resources to meet credential requirements aligned with the K–12 system. TK teachers must hold at least a Multiple Subject Teaching Credential (or, as it becomes available, the state’s new PK–3 ECE Specialist Instruction Credential), which requires candidates to have a bachelor’s degree, acquire a credential from a state-approved teacher preparation program, demonstrate sufficient knowledge of “the provisions and principles of the U.S. Constitution,” and more.⁵⁶ They must also have twenty-four units of training in early childhood education and/or child development.⁵⁷

There is no solid research consensus linking more specific early education teacher training and credential requirements to reliable improvements in student outcomes.

The value of strict credential requirements for children’s outcomes is uncertain. For instance, though a 2015 National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine consensus study recommended that all pre-K teachers be required to complete an undergraduate degree program, it concluded that research on the benefits of such mandates was “inconclusive” and “insufficient to enable conclusions as to whether a bachelor’s degree improves the quality and effectiveness of educators, whether for early childhood settings or for K–12 schools.”⁵⁸ Similarly, there is no solid research consensus linking more specific early education teacher training and credential requirements to reliable improvements in student outcomes. This does not mean that there is no value to formal ECE training and credentialing: it only suggests that the field yet lacks comprehensive evidence consistently linking student outcome benefits to any particular early education credential mandate.

The costs of such requirements are somewhat clearer. As California K–12 schools become fully TK–12 and take over the early care and education of a large chunk of the state’s four-year-olds, current TK credentialing policies will almost assuredly produce a TK workforce that is less linguistically, ethnically, and culturally diverse than the state’s recent ECE workforce. Further, given these constraints, it is perhaps unsurprising that nearly 60 percent of California LEAs are planning to launch exclusively monolingual, English-only TK programs, and that just 12 percent are planning only dual-language immersion in TK.⁵⁹

California leaders are aware of this challenge and have taken some steps to address it. The state is offering an Emergency Transitional Kindergarten (ETK) Permit with somewhat more flexible credential requirements. LEAs can request this permit for TK teacher candidates who have a bachelor’s degree, a minimum of a Child Development Teacher Permit, and some mixture of additional training and/or experience in early education. Teachers with an ETK Permit can serve for two years in a TK classroom.⁶⁰

Meanwhile, the state allows candidates who already have their Multiple Subject Teaching Credential to use past teaching experience as equivalent to the state requirement that TK teachers complete twenty-four units of additional ECE and/or child development training. This could save some educators with years of ECE instructional experience significant time and money as they pursue TK positions, though it only benefits those who already have their teaching credential.⁶¹

State leaders are considering legislation that would provide competitive grants to publicize the state’s new PK–3 Early Childhood Education Specialist Credential, and to grow teacher training programs that allow candidates to simultaneously acquire this credential and a bilingual teaching credential.⁶² However, this proposal’s future is unclear. The state could back this proposal with funding 1) adequate for creating large, high-quality TK teacher training pipelines and 2) that comes with conditions requiring these new pipelines to prepare all candidates to meet DLLs’ unique needs.

The political dynamics concerning teacher credentials are fraught, and any reforms to this area must inevitably navigate and respond to them. But solutions to political pressures still have empirical consequences for the state’s TK workforce. At present, the state’s strict requirements make it likely that TK classrooms will struggle to find the bilingual TK teachers necessary to offer bilingual or dual-language instruction. This will, of necessity, produce more monolingual, English-only TK classrooms—which are less effective for young DLLs. It will also raise the specter of a two-tiered ECE system in California, where TK settings have more highly paid and generally less diverse teachers delivering more English-only instruction, and other pre-K settings have lower salaries for generally more diverse teachers and more linguistic and cultural diversity in their instruction.

To avoid these outcomes, California will need to make large, long-term investments into programs that attract bilingual TK teacher candidates and help them meet these strict TK credential requirements. The state will also need to be patient as early educator preparation programs grow their capacity to train new TK teachers. Finally, the state could commit resources to raise wages for California’s early educators working in other ECE settings, particularly in California’s State Preschool Program, so that TK expansion does not significantly worsen teacher shortages across the ECE landscape.

In the meantime, the state could modify TK teacher credential requirements to provide career bilingual educators with more credential flexibility. Perhaps the state could extend the ETK Permit’s scope to allow TK teachers to renew it for longer than two years, during which time they would be required to pursue additional training and/or credentialing. This combination of flexibility and scaffolded credential requirements is a tested reform for addressing bilingual teacher shortages in the K–12 system. For example, to staff its many dual-language immersion programs, Portland Public Schools runs a grow-your-own program that provides provisional teacher licensure—along with teacher preparation coursework at nearby universities and district coaching support—to bilingual adults with bachelor’s degrees. Over time, the candidates work towards complete licensure so that they can remain in the classroom permanently.⁶³

A provisional state TK licensure approach along these lines would allow bilingual early educators with significant field expertise—and sorely needed language skills—to begin earning a TK–12 salary in a TK classroom before assuming the heavy costs to pursue additional training and coursework. Indeed, an analysis from the Center for the Study of Child Care Employment suggests that there are as many as 17,000 California early educators “with a rigorous set of ECE qualifications that school districts might consider” as potential TK teachers, if only they had pathways that recognized their teaching experience as equivalent to some of the state’s TK credential requirements.⁶⁴ Simultaneously, the state could waive some credential requirements for teacher candidates who earned a Seal of Biliteracy during their K–12 educational experience.

Conclusion

Since California adopted its EL Roadmap in 2017, the state’s education community has regularly pushed for it to be implemented. The state has periodically supported implementation with modest investments—primarily those outlined above—in dual-language programming and efforts to grow California’s bilingual teaching workforce. But these investments have been too piecemeal and too small to convert the Roadmap from a vision document into a compelling force for systemic changes, one that drives California’s public schools to better meet the needs of the state’s 1.1 million ELs instead of merely proposing that they do so. In sum, the state has articulated an equitable, multilingual, multicultural public education vision for ELs, but it has not provided sufficient resources and accountability to make that vision real.

California’s decentralized approach to education governance stymies many standard policy solutions to this challenge. By contrast, states as varied as Illinois, Wisconsin, Connecticut, Texas, and New York have enacted bilingual education mandates that require districts to develop bilingual or dual-language programs when their EL enrollment reaches a particular threshold. Though California has succeeded in removing its statewide English-only mandate, it has only been able to support the growth of multilingual programs through suggestion and small competitive grants programs.

The state’s primary school funding mechanism, the Local Control Funding Formula, is emblematic of this governance challenge. Local education agencies (LEAs) receive state education funding, including additional funds generated by—and intended to meet the needs of—ELs in their communities. In exchange, LEAs develop local control accountability plans (LCAPs) that outline how they will use these funds to advance students’ learning. These plans are largely self-policed: state leaders have little capacity and authority to use them to hold LEAs accountable. This system’s core wager was to reduce the categorical strings attached to state funding to free local education leaders to spend resources more effectively to meet their communities’ particular needs.

But repeated analyses by EL advocacy leaders at Californians Together have found that this theory of education reform remains largely unproven in practice. In their fourth, and most recent, report on California’s local control experiment, “In Search of Equity for English Learners,” they wrote, “With each new reading, rating, and set of analyses, we hoped to see an improved, comprehensive focus on the programs, actions, and services for English Learners. As implied by the title of this report, the quest for equity for English Learners is still elusive.”⁶⁵

Without more state leadership on holding LEAs accountable for better educational opportunities and outcomes for ELs, systemic progress towards goals encoded in the EL Roadmap and Global California 2030 will be difficult. State leaders could consider going beyond this decentralized approach to supporting ELs and increase oversight and accountability of LEAs. This could include a state requirement that districts with significant concentrations of ELs consider expanding bilingual or dual-language immersion as a strategy for closing academic gaps between ELs and non-ELs while drafting their LCAPs.

Meanwhile, this governance status quo only heightens the importance of investing adequate state education resources to 1) significantly grow the number of dual-language immersion seats available to California’s ELs, and 2) rapidly rebuild the state’s bilingual teacher training programs. As outlined above, this will require much larger investments in bilingual- and dual-language-specific competitive grants programs like the Dual Language Immersion Grant program and Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program, as well as much stronger prioritization of bilingual teacher shortages in the state’s more general teacher workforce investments. Finally, it will require the state to lean towards flexibility around the credentials required for transitional kindergarten staff.

California’s brand is—as much in its public policy thinking as in its tech-infused economy—synonymous with innovation. The state is a national leader on responding to climate change, expanding access to health care, and experimenting with prison reform. The state’s strong economy and longstanding position as a prime destination for young workers—immigrants and native-born Americans alike—give it a wealth of potential and diverse linguistic and cultural resources. The state’s EL vision documents—the Roadmap and Global California 2030—reflect the multilingual, multicultural promise implicit in California’s present. But to become a national, equitable bilingual and dual-language immersion leader, the state needs to deliver correspondingly meaningful public reforms and resources.

Recommendations

California education leaders can convert their state’s equitable vision for ELs into a reality by pursuing the following reforms. Each core priority is followed by a list of recommendations essential for its advancement.

1. Expand multilingual instruction in the state, particularly via linguistically diverse, dual-language immersion schools.

• Publish annual updates on progress towards the state’s Global California 2030 goals, including 1) a list of bilingual and dual-language immersion programs with information on program model and languages of instruction and 2) analysis of the demographics of students attending bilingual and dual-language immersion programs.
• Launch several subsequent rounds of the Dual Language Immersion Grants program with annual funding of at least $75 million for each round.
• Invest in greater California Department of Education capacity for overseeing and aligning California’s bilingual and dual-language expansion efforts.
• Require LEAs with significant concentrations of ELs to consider expanding bilingual or dual-language immersion as a strategy for closing academic gaps between ELs and non-ELs while drafting their local control accountability plans.

2. Invest short- and long-term resources in efforts to grow the state’s bilingual teacher pipelines.

• Grow the Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program by an order of magnitude, providing at least $200 million in funding for the next round of grants.
• Concentrate future Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program grants into larger awards for teacher training programs with strong foundations in bilingual teacher preparation, as well as with the potential to scale up rapidly.
• Commit at least half of future Bilingual Teacher Professional Development Program grants towards alternative teacher credentialing pathways, such as apprenticeships, residencies, and/or “grow-your-own” models.
• Prioritize the training of bilingual teachers in all subsequent rounds of California’s Teacher Residency Grant Program, Golden State Pathways Program, and Classified School Employee Teacher Credentialing Program.
• Rigorously monitor the efficiency of all state-funded programs aimed at growing bilingual teacher training pathways, and annually reduce funding for programs that are not effective.
• Launch a statewide program to provide bilingual teacher candidates with stipend support during their student teaching service.
• Invest greater resources in new pathways for bilingual early educators to gain the credentials they need to serve in California’s rapidly growing transitional kindergarten system.
• Create significantly more flexibility in California’s credential requirements for TK teachers so that bilingual early educators with some—but not all—of the required credentials can be at least provisionally certified to teach in TK classrooms as they pursue full credentialing.
• Grant additional credential flexibility and provide substantial resources for Seal of Biliteracy recipients interested in pursuing bilingual teaching roles in TK or the broader TK–12 education system.

3. Prioritize dual-language immersion access for the state’s 1.1 million ELs, who gain unique linguistic and academic benefits from these programs.

• Move beyond granting local education leaders flexibility in their language instruction educational programs for ELs to actively push—or even require—them to expand ELs’ access to bilingual or dual-language instruction.
• Provide LEAs with additional state education formula funding for each EL student that they enroll in bilingual or dual-language immersion programs.

Acknowledgments

First, special thanks to Patricia Gándara, Macy Parker, Malia Ramler, Priti Sanghani, and TCF fellow Alejandra Vázquez Baur for providing feedback on earlier drafts. Second, this report—and the underlying research—were generously supported by a grant from Sobrato Philanthropies. While preparing this report, the authors conducted nearly two dozen interviews with researchers, advocates, and other stakeholders in California. However, the report is not a consensus document, and does not reflect the views of Sobrato Philanthropies or any particular expert or organization interviewed as part of the project. The views expressed here are the authors’ alone.

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Tags: English Language Learners, bilingual education, California Education