California Voters to Decide How Schools Teach English-Learners

In California, nearly 1 in every 4 children don’t speak English fluently. That’s almost 1.5 million students. How to best teach them is a topic of great concern among educators, because children who are learning English struggle more in school, trailing behind classmates who speak English in every academic measure. On Election Day, California voters will decide whether to overturn a longstanding policy of teaching these children in English-only classrooms, or whether to embrace bilingual forms of teaching that show more promising outcomes for children over the long run. Education Week Correspondent Kavitha Cardoza reports on the ballot question before voters, how the research and pedagogy have evolved around teaching English-learners and the value of bilingualism.