California brought back bilingual education. Why so few schools offer it

California first demanded public education be conducted exclusively in English in 1872, a policy that stayed on the books until Ronald Reagan, as governor, signed a law to get rid of it in 1967. About a decade later, the state started to require bilingual education for kids who couldn’t understand English, taking up a Civil Rights-era argument that the children of immigrants deserved an education in their native language to be able to get the full benefits of public schooling. Other immigrant-heavy states passed the same requirements, including Texas, Illinois, and New York. But California made a radical break with its peers in 1998 when voters approved another English-only law. For nearly two decades, bilingual education became increasingly popular among native English speakers and celebrated as a best-practice for educating the children of immigrants, but the nation’s most linguistically diverse state continued to ban it. 

We investigated the fallout of that ban and the state’s limping recovery since voters repealed it in 2016, conducting nearly three dozen interviews with researchers, policymakers, state education officials, advocates, bilingual educators, school leaders, teachers, parents, and students in California as well as education leaders in Texas, Illinois, and Colorado, where bilingual education has been a priority in state education policy for decades, and in Massachusetts, which is recovering from a 15-year-long ban of its own. 

Three key findings: 

1. The Education Department is underfunded and understaffed, so its support for bilingual education hasn’t translated into widespread enrollment in these programs. Last year in California, 10% of students still learning English got a bilingual education. In Texas, 40% did — and schools got extra state money for each child enrolled in a long-term bilingual education program called dual-language immersion.
   
   
2. A decades-long slump in bilingual-teacher prep programs has led to a decimated teacher pipeline, meaning there aren’t enough people to lead bilingual classrooms in K-12 schools or professors to train them. Even districts that want to start new bilingual programs haven’t been able to because they can’t find the staff.
   
   
3. Unlike in the 1970s, the California Legislature has not stepped up to require bilingual education or fund a systemic recovery from the English-only years. Since Massachusetts ended an English-only law of its own, the state has awarded $11.8 million to help schools start or expand dual-language programs. California, home to 10 times the number of kids who don’t speak English, has given districts just $10 million for that work. 

The Background: Why people advocate for bilingual education

Bilingual education lets kids use their native language while they learn English. Kids who already know how to read and write in one language just have to transfer those skills to a second language rather than learning the processes from scratch. Taking classes in their native language while they’re learning English also lets kids tackle more complex topics in their first language rather than having to put that off until they master English.

Dual-language programs set all students up for the “bilingual advantage.” Traditional bilingual education creates a pathway to English-only classes as quickly as possible. Succeeding in English-language classes is the goal. Increasingly popular dual-language programs, by contrast, have kids splitting the school day between two languages for their entire schooling, preparing them to reap the benefits of bilingualism in their lives and work long-term.

Dual language programs boost student outcomes. Districts with strong dual-language programs report significantly higher standardized test scores for students in those programs compared to students in general education programs. The leaps in student achievement show up by middle school. Researchers have found these programs lead to higher college entrance exam scores, high school graduation rates, and college-going rates. For kids who enter the programs not speaking English, they lead to faster English proficiency. 

Dual-language programs create more integrated schools. Because dual-language programs have become so popular among English-speaking families, they represent a way to integrate classrooms with recent immigrants and those whose families came to this country generations ago. 

What the Education Department has done, and what it’s up against

The state has taken steps to champion bilingual education. In 2017, the Education Department released an English Learner Roadmap, urging schools to help students who don’t speak English maintain their native languages while mastering English. In 2019, the Global California 2030 initiative named concrete goals for how soon the state’s schools should foster widespread bilingualism: By 2030, half of California students should be on a path to becoming bilingual and 1,600 schools should be running dual-language programs (more than double the number doing so in 2018).

But the state’s aspirations for bilingual education are running up against a severe teacher shortage. During the 2022-23 school year, the state commission on teacher credentialing only authorized 1,011 new bilingual teachers — across all languages. Only seven went to teachers who speak Vietnamese, the second-most-common language in California schools that year. It gave out fewer credentials to Spanish-speaking teachers that year than in the three years prior.

Patricia Gándara, a longtime bilingual education researcher and co-director of the UCLA Civil Rights Project, called the decimated teacher pipeline “one of those stories of ‘I told you so.’ … I could see what the problem was going to be: that when people came back to their senses and realized what a mistake this was, the big fallout was going to be that we didn’t have the teachers.”

Bilingual education advocates say the Legislature needs to do more.The Legislature has put $20 million toward helping districts coach up bilingual teachers and prepare them to lead bilingual classrooms and another $10 million to help districts start or expand dual-language programs. Advocates say it’s not enough. 

What’s next

Statewide accountability may be coming. Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill this year requiring the Education Department to come up with a statewide plan for helping districts adopt the English Learner Roadmap’s guidelines and report on districts’ progress. 

Supporters of bilingual education find inspiration in Texas, which never stopped requiring these programs and more recently created financial incentives for districts to start and expand dual-language programs as an even better model. Alesha Moreno-Ramirez, director of the Education Department’s Multilingual Support Division, said the Legislature would need to make the call to require bilingual education in California or create financial incentives for it. 

“That said, we would enthusiastically support the movement toward requiring bilingual education,” she added.