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Brown vs the Board of Education 1954.  This ruling opened the door to future litigation limiting discriminatory practices against students based on, for example language, race, ethnicity, disability, culture, etc.

In my opinion this is the most important Supreme Court case regarding education. Separate but equal is inherently unequal. Although it took many years, and even some states' resistance to it, it forever changed who could get an education and where.

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Who was involved in the Lau v. Nichols case?

Lau v. Nichols set non-English speaking students and their families against the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD). The plaintiffs claimed that they were not able to succeed academically in English-only classrooms, nor were they able to master English, a high school graduation requirement, without bilingual curricular and instructional supports. Attorneys for the plaintiff represented Lau and some 1,800 other non-English speaking Chinese, Latino, and Filipino students.

Why was Lau v. Nichols important?

Lau v. Nichols was important because it secured judicial precedent requiring school districts receiving federal funding to end exclusionary practices making it harder for non-English speaking students to succeed. In other words, English-only instruction and curricula were required to be supplemented with bilingual instruction and appropriate supports to give non-English speaking students equal access to the curriculum and equitable academic opportunities.
Retrieved from: https://study.com/learn/lesson/lau-nichols-1974-case-summary-significance.html

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Castaneda vs Pickard, 1981 An appeals court establishes a three part test to determine whether schools are taking appropriate action under the 1974 Equal Education Opportunity Act.  1.  Programs must be based on sound theory.  2.  Programs must receive adequate funding.  3.  Programs must show effectiveness over a certain amount of time .

This ruling is very important.  It is the third prong of Castaneda ruling that is being used to to argue that Arizona has been failing miserably since 2000, with Prop 203, while ELL children continue to lag several grades levels in content areas behind their monolingual peers.

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2002, WIDA World Class Instructional Design and Assessment  WIDA was born.

2020 Most states are served by WIDA.

While it was originally comprised of Wisconsin, Delaware and Arkansas, (Arkansas has since dropped out) now over 30 State Departments of Education have joined the WIDA Consortium.

WIDA provides several assessments for use with English language learners. WIDA designs and implements proficiency standards and assessment for grade K-12 students who are English-language learners, as well as a set of proficiency standards and assessments for Spanish language learners.

Personally, when I have taken a glimpse of WIDA material, either through IEPs I have had to translate, or doing a web search, I have been greatly impressed with the attention to detail of the learning standards set by WIDA.  I find it unfortunate NYS is not a member.

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2016 ELPA21 (English Language Proficiency for the 21st Century) is born.  Offering ELP standards and tests (like WIDA), ELPA21 is offered and housed at the National Center on Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) at (the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA). Now states can choose WIDA, ELPA21 or create their own ELP standards/assessments for ELLs. Federal criteria must be met.

This in my opinion, shows great hope for places that formerly did not allow for any ELL support, or home language testing or materials.  The fact ELPA21 is housed at UCLA in California gives me that hope, since historically, California has had very restrictive policies on providing supports to emerging bilinguals.  ELPA21 also offers an option for other states to either join ELPA21, WIDA, or create their own standards and assessments for ELLs.  This would also be a very nice option for NYS to join.