Although U.S. schools that provide bilingual education typically must negotiate English-only policies and pressures to sustain their programming over time, little is known about what this entails at the individual school level. Our research examines in detail how the leaders of an elementary school in New York City with a Spanish-English…

This article maintains that in spite of their seeming progress, Mexican-origin students in the US continue to face barriers that are typical of the complex challenges endured in public schools by minoritized and racialised peoples in the American context. It begins with a brief overview of the current-day demographics of the Mexican-origin…

This study uses 9 years of longitudinal, student-level data from the Los Angeles Unified School District to provide updated, empirically-based estimates of the time necessary for English learners (ELs) to become reclassified as proficient in English, as well as factors associated with variation in time to reclassification. To illustrate how…

Those who work in second- and foreign-language testing often find Koretz's concern for validity inferences under high-stakes (VIHS) conditions both welcome and familiar. While the focus of the article is more narrowly on the potential for two instructional responses to test-based accountability, "reallocation" and "coaching,"…

Different worldviews, different histories of induction into teaching, presumed differences in responsibilities, and different emphases in preservice and in-service preparation have all long contributed to enduring schisms that keep general education (or mainstream) teachers and English language support faculty from coordinating and finding common…

For many years English learners (ELs) have lagged behind native speakers of English in the academic community. In an era of accountability, the pressure to achieve and maintain Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) status is increasing the burden of success on ELs, especially when trying to learn a second language. The population of English learners is…

Immigrant youth who are designated as English language learners in American schools--whom we refer to as "emergent bilinguals"--are increasingly framed by numerical calculations. Utilizing the notion of assemblage from actor-network theory (ANT), we trace how emergent bilinguals are discursively constructed by officials, administrators,…

Paul Jablon's "The Synergy of Inquiry" (2014) is well-timed. The 2014 deadline set by No Child Left Behind (NCLB, 2002) for universal student proficiency has come and gone, and according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, "proficiency rates last year were below 50 percent for nearly every racial and ethnic group, in…

"No Child Left Behind" is federal education legislation consisting of implementation programs intended to reconcile the goals of insuring equality while promoting competition in public education in the United States. Immigrant students whose primary languages are not English are included in the mandate of "NCLB," categorized as…

Popular views about language and how children and youth learn language are based mainly in cognitive approaches in support of a common knowledge theory of language development. This common theory feeds into the efforts to increase teacher and learner accountability as measured on narrow assessments of what it means to use language well and in…

Principals face a tangled web of accountability for several reasons: NCLB shifted the focus of programs for English language learners (ELLs). Success is no longer viewed with the single lens of meeting English proficiency, but rather with a magnifying glass to ensure that students "will meet the same challenging state academic content and…

The focus of this paper is on US language policy statements that govern the priorities for teaching languages other than English in public schools and the language ideologies implied by specific management moves by the federal government to regulate language education, starting with the Bilingual Education Act (BEA) of 1968. Following introductory…

Language and cultural preservation efforts among different communities of language speakers in the United States have received increasing attention as interest in linguistic rights and globalization continues to deepen. In addition to mounting evidence of the cognitive, psychological, and academic benefits of heritage language/community language…

Following the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), which mandates standards-based accountability for the academic progress of all students, much attention has been given to integrating language and content instruction for English learners (ELs) in K-12 classrooms in the US. Although TESOL and other state-approved language proficiency standards…

The current literature indicates a need for quality studies on how best to close the achievement gap between elementary English language learners (ELLs) and their English speaking peers. The purpose of this sequential explanatory mixed methods research study was to determine the relationship between standards-based differentiated instructional…