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Question: What Legal Obligations Do Schools Have To English Language Learners (ELLs)?

Answer:

Under civil rights law, schools are obligated to ensure that ELLs have equal access to education.

Approximately 5 million students in U.S. schools have limited English language skills that affect their ability to participate successfully in education programs and achieve high academic standards. It is the responsibility of schools to ensure that all students, including these English language-learning (ELL) students, have equal access to a quality education that enables them to progress academically while learning English. The specific services to be provided are not specified by federal or state law; however, legislation provides the following broad outlines.

In 1970, the federal Office for Civil Rights (OCR) issued a memo regarding school districts' responsibilities under civil rights law to provide an equal educational opportunity to ELLs. This memorandum stated:

Where the inability to speak and understand the English language excludes national origin minority group children from effective participation in the educational program offered by a school district, the district must take affirmative steps to rectify the language deficiency in order to open its instructional program to these students.

Although the memo requires school districts to take affirmative steps, it does not prescribe the content of these steps. It does, however, explain that federal law is violated if:

students are excluded from effective participation in school because of their inability to speak and understand the language of instruction; national origin minority students are inappropriately assigned to special education classes because of their lack of English skills; programs for students whose English is less than proficient are not designed to teach them English as soon as possible, or if these programs operate as a dead end track; or parents whose English is limited do not receive school notices or other information in a language they can understand.

In its 1974 decision in Lau v. Nichols, the United States Supreme Court upheld OCR's 1970 memo. The basis for the case was the claim that the students could not understand the language in which they were being taught; therefore, they were not being provided with an equal education. The Supreme Court agreed, saying that:

There is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teachers, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.

The case reaffirmed that all students in the United States, regardless of native language, have the right to receive a quality education. It also clarified that equality of opportunity does not necessarily mean the same education for every student, but rather the same opportunity to receive an education. An equal education is only possible if students can understand the language of instruction.

Within weeks of the Lau v. Nichols ruling, Congress passed the Equal Educational Opportunity Act (EEOA) mandating that no state shall deny equal education opportunity to any individual, "by the failure by an educational agency to take appropriate action to overcome language barriers that impede equal participation by students in an instructional program." This was an important piece of legislation because it defined what constituted the denial of education opportunities.

The U.S Department of Education's OCR oversees school districts broad discretion concerning how to ensure equal educational opportunity for ELLs. OCR does not prescribe a specific intervention strategy or program model that a district must adopt to serve ELLs.

The following guidelines have been outlined for school districts to ensure that their programs are serving ELLs effectively. Districts should:

identify students as potential ELLs; assess student's need for ELL services; develop a program which, in the view of experts in the field, has a reasonable chance for success; ensure that necessary staff, curricular materials, and facilities are in place and used properly; develop appropriate evaluation standards, including program exit criteria, for measuring the progress of students; and assess the success of the program and modify it where needed.

For additional information regarding the provision of equal education opportunity to ELLs, see resources below or contact the Office for Civil Rights enforcement office at:
Phone: (800) 421-3481
Email: ocr@ed.gov
URL: http://www.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/index.html

Resources

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Answer: Under civil rights law, schools are obligated to ensure that ELLs have equal access to education. Approximately 5 million students in U.S. schools have limited English language skills that affect their ability to participate successfully in education programs and achieve high academic standards.

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ITTT International TEFL & TESOL Training

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Theories, Methods & Techniques of Teaching - Total Physical Response

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Tips for Teachers of Newcomer Emergent Bilingual Students_2017

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K-12 Instructional Models for English Learners: What They Are and Why They Matter

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Ample data on English Learner (EL) student outcomes provide evidence of the steep challenge these students face in developing grade-level academic language and content knowledge. These data point to a critical question: are local schools and school districts using appropriate instructional program models to meet EL needs? While the effectiveness of specific instructional models for these students—such as dual language, transitional bilingual, and English-only approaches—have attracted the attention of researchers and policymakers, instructional programming actually provided by schools or school districts is often a mix of different models or approaches. For this reason, it is crucial that a range of stakeholders—including state and local education agency leaders, legislators, school board members, and community advocates—have a clear picture of what programs are offered to EL students and factors that might indicate whether they are appropriate and effective choices.

To improve understanding about the critical nature of the choices schools make with regard to EL instruction programs, MPI’s National Center on Immigrant Integration Policy released an issue brief, the second in an EL Insights series, that describes the goals and main features of common instructional models and key factors that often shape their selection and implementation by schools. In this webinar, the brief’s author, Julie Sugarman, discusses the key features of EL instructional models, how they are sometimes woven together to address language- and content-learning needs of students, and factors that can account for varied approaches within and across schools.

Other experts discuss state- and district-level approaches to supporting schools in implementing effective EL program models. They highlight the evolution of bilingual and dual language programming in Madison, Wisconsin, and New York State’s implementation of English as a New Language units of study as the foundation for more effective EL programming. Both speakers illustrate how, in order to improve the academic trajectories of EL students, ongoing reflection guided policy revisions and changes to the design and support of EL programs.

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This practice guide was prepared for the WWC by Instructional Research Group under contract ED-IES-12-C-0016.

The following research staff contributed to the guide: Joseph Dimino, Kelly Haymond, Russell Gersten, Madhavi Jayanthi, and Rebecca Newman-Gonchar.

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WWC | Teaching Academic Content and Literacy to English Learners in Elementary and Middle School

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This practice guide provides four recommendations that address what works for English learners during reading and content area instruction. Each recommendation includes extensive examples of activities that can be used to support students as they build the language and literacy skills needed to be successful in school.

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Differentiated Instruction for English Language Learners

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Each student comes to school, not only with unique academic needs, but also with unique background experiences, culture, language, personality, interests, and attitudes toward learning. Effective teachers recognize that all of these factors affect how students learn in the classroom, and they adjust, or differentiate, their instruction to meet students' needs.

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Scaffolding Literacy Instruction for English Language Learners

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Introducing and Interacting with Vocabulary