State Appeals Court: California Can Stick With English in Tests for ELLs
Assessment

State Appeals Court: California Can Stick With English in Tests for ELLs

By Mary Ann Zehr — July 31, 2009 1 min read
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The news is just out today in the San Francisco Chronicle that a California state appeals court ruled that the state is entitled to provide tests for all students, including English-language learners, in English. The First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco rejected arguments of nine school districts that California’s use of English-only tests under the No Child Left Behind Law is a violation of federal law that ELLs should be assessed “in a valid and reliable manner,” according to the article.

I first wrote about this case when the school board of California’s Coachella Valley Unified School District voted to sue the state over this issue in March 2005. Coachella Valley was one of the nine school districts that filed the lawsuit in state courts.

Mary Ann Zehr
Mary Ann Zehr was an assistant editor for Education Week. Her beats included English-language learners, bilingual education, immigrants, dropouts, achievement-gap issues, and charter and private schools. She was the author of the blog Learning the Language.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.