California Celebrates Its Linguistic Diversity While Shortchanging Bilingual Ed
Calif. has 1.1M English learners and a $130B state education budget, but less-diverse states with fewer resources are making more robust investments.
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California always seems to be ahead of the curve. Huge numbers of you are reading this column on Apple devices designed in Cupertino 鈥 and you got here by clicking a link on one of the social media companies with headquarters just down the road from there in Silicon Valley.
The Golden State: it鈥檚 where America looks for progress.
But leading the curve isn鈥檛 an unalloyed good. Various booms powered by its tech sector have brought California a dynamic labor market and simultaneously . California is pioneering aggressive policies for slowing the pace of climate change even as escalating and uncertainties leave it ahead of most states in facing climate change鈥檚 consequences.
Perhaps most of all, California is the American vanguard when it comes to demographics. America鈥檚 future is moving towards and diversity鈥攙ersions of those trends have already arrived in California鈥檚 present. As my co-author Jonathan Zabala and I put it in our recent Century Foundation report, :
In 2021鈥22, the state鈥檚 schools were 56 percent Latino/a/x, 10 percent Asian, 5 percent African-American, 4 percent multiracial, and 2 percent Filipino. Just 21 percent of California students identify as white. In 2022, roughly 40 percent of California K鈥12 students . California schools enroll 鈥攎eaning that the state鈥檚 ELs constitute more than 21 percent of the U.S.鈥 5 million ELs.
California leans global: never of the state鈥檚 economic output to other countries鈥. But when it comes to its genuinely international-grade linguistic diversity, California has long been ambivalent. In 1998, the state鈥檚 voters passed Proposition 227, mandating monolingual, English-only instruction across its schools. It took nearly two decades 鈥 and piles of research showing that this approach is ineffective 鈥 before the state in a 2016 referendum and embraced in California classrooms.
charts California鈥檚 progress in the seven years since then. The state has done much to align its vision for ELs鈥 success with research on these children鈥檚 linguistic and academic development鈥攊n particular, by prioritizing access to bilingual instruction. After the 2016 referendum, state leaders launched initiatives setting ambitious goals for improving ELs鈥 educational opportunities in the state鈥檚 schools鈥攖he and . In the latter, for instance, the state pledged to 鈥渜uadrupl[e] the number of [dual-language immersion] programs from 407 in 2017 to 1,600 in 2030,鈥 and have 鈥渢hree out of four students [be] proficient in two or more languages, earning them a State Seal of Biliteracy.鈥
State legislators have backed these 鈥 and related 鈥 objectives with some modest resources, including $10 million in state grants to launch 55 new dual-language programs in coming years. It has also provided funding for several programs aimed at increasing the diversity of California teachers and/or filling teacher shortages that include .
And yet, much remains to be done. That $10 million in grants reached 27 local education agencies, leaving 991 without any funding incentive to convert their English-only programs to bilingual campuses. That鈥檚 nowhere near enough to reach the Global California goals. As of 2019鈥20, California enrolled roughly 1 in 6 of its more than 1 million ELs in some form of bilingual education or dual-language immersion鈥. This ranks California well behind its peers鈥攂oth EL-rich states like Texas and Illinois and less linguistically diverse states like Wisconsin and Alaska.
, this is partly driven by a shortage of state funding for bilingual and dual-language programs. California鈥檚 single $10 million dual-language immersion grants competition is nowhere near large enough to keep pace with other states:
鲍迟补丑鈥 and has an annual K鈥12 education state budget of just over $8 billion鈥攕till than $5 million to its dual-language immersion program in 2023, and has appropriated more than $7.3 million to the program for 2024. Since 2012, Delaware鈥攁 state with and an annual K鈥12 education budget of not quite $2 billion鈥攈as annually spent and on dual-language immersion expansion鈥alifornia, by comparison, and has an annual K鈥12 [state education]budget of .
Forget international comparisons鈥攚hen it comes to building a genuinely multilingual public education system suited to the 21st century鈥檚 global economy, California isn鈥檛 even atop the U.S.鈥檚 interstate leaderboard. The state simply has not yet made it a priority to invest proportional resources into programs that meaningfully extend ELs鈥 access to bilingual and/or dual language opportunities.
Indeed, support for ELs鈥 bilingualism has not been a priority even in other new statewide education reforms. As we outline in the report, though California has invested major new public resources in trying to achieve universal access to early education programs for 4-year-olds and growing the state鈥檚 roster of community schools 鈥 ELs鈥 unique strengths and needs have not been central to these initiatives鈥 designs.
This is equal parts frustrating and surprising for a state with California鈥檚 political climate and demographic advantages. An overwhelmingly progressive state that publicly proclaims the value of its students鈥 remarkable linguistic, cultural and ethnic diversity cannot celebrate these very modest bilingualism investments as sufficient.
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Conor P. Williams is a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. Previously, Williams was the founding director of New America's Dual Language Learners National Work Group. He began his career as a first-grade teacher in Brooklyn. He holds a Ph.D. in government from Georgetown University, a master鈥檚 in science for teachers from Pace University, and a B.A. in government and Spanish from Bowdoin College.
