Long-Term English Learners in California

In California, about 40% of all K–12 students come from homes in which a language other than English is spoken; most of those students receive English learner services for some period of time until they gain English proficiency. In school year 2022–23, of California’s 5.8 million students, nearly 1 in 5 (18%), just over 1 million, were classified as English learners (ELs): students who had entered the school system with a home language other than English and had not yet acquired English proficiency. Among these students, about 330,000 students continued to be classified as EL for 7 or more years. By definition, most of these students were in grades 6 and above. Former ELs who had been reclassified as fluent English proficient (RFEP) numbered another 1 million students.

Ensuring adequate support for English learners is key to the state meeting its mission of providing a world-class education for all students. Toward that end, California’s State Board of Education has recently added a long-term English learner (LTEL) category to the California School Dashboard and enacted a requirement that LTEL as a group be included in the planning for programmatic and budget investments that occur with each district’s annually updated Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP). By state statute, students are deemed LTEL if they are classified as ELs for 6 or more years and are not making progress in English acquisition. The testing data to produce this formal designation is lagged at the state level and cannot be produced for individuals quickly enough to inform the annual dashboard. Hence the LTEL classification defined by state statute is different than the one used for the school and district dashboards. Thus, for the purpose of the accountability dashboard in 2024–25 and thereafter, LTELs will be counted as students who have been classified as English learners for 7 or more years.

To inform the deliberations that will follow the state’s action, this report describes the population of learners identified in 2022–23 as needing English language acquisition supports in California for 7 or more years (students designated as LTEL7). It describes the characteristics, location, and academic performance of these students designated as LTEL7 compared to their other peers ever classified as EL (“other ever-ELs”); other ever-ELs include ELs for fewer than 7 years or those who had been previously identified as English learners but were reclassified as fully English proficient.

While research indicates it can take 5–7 years to develop English proficiency, classification as an EL for many years may also indicate that students are becoming stuck at lower levels of English proficiency due to lack of appropriate learning supports, which may prohibit them from accessing the full school curriculum. Better understanding of which students are classified as English learners for long periods, and are likely to need additional support, will be key to helping students reach their educational potential.

This report therefore analyzes data for students designated as LTEL7 in 2022–23. It looks across demographic characteristics (gender, home language, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status), grade level and years classified as EL, geographic location, school contexts, and academic performance. Unfortunately, this report cannot look across the types of educational programming (English immersion, dual immersion, bilingual, or others), the quality or adequacy of English Language Development (ELD) instruction or other provided services, or the reclassification criteria used by districts, as these data are not systematically collected across the state.

Findings show that when comparing students designated as LTEL7 to their other peers who were ever-ELs:

• Boys were disproportionately represented among students designated as LTEL7 (56% vs. 51%).
• Socioeconomic disadvantage was more common among students designated as LTEL7 (89% vs. 80%).
• Special education needs were much more prevalent among students designated as LTEL7 (28% vs. 11%).

As the state considers how to best support ELs, it can be useful to examine where students designated as LTEL7 are located and what their school contexts are like. In 2022–23, the majority of students designated as LTEL7 were enrolled in schools in the most populous counties. However, in many small-population, rural counties, there were higher proportions of students designated as LTEL7 among students who were ever-EL.

Analyses of school contexts for students designated LTEL7 found that they were more likely to be in schools with access to fewer resources and facing greater educational challenges. That is, schools with higher concentrations of students designated as LTEL7 also had:

• Higher concentrations of students from low-income families
• Fewer courses taught by fully certified staff
• Higher rates of chronic absenteeism
• Lower rates of high school graduation
• A lower likelihood of attending a school that offered the Seal of Biliteracy compared to their other ever-EL peers

Understanding students’ initial English proficiency levels and their academic outcomes provides an insight into how well EL students are being supported in both their progression toward English language proficiency and success on English language arts (ELA) and math content (measured with the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress, or CAASPP). Analyses of academic outcomes for students designated as LTEL7 compared to their other peers designated as ever-EL show:

• Substantial differences in the initial level of English acquisition. Sixty-four percent of students designated as LTEL7 started schooling at level 1 (the Beginner level) on the English proficiency assessment as compared to 40% of other ever-ELs.
   
• Large performance gaps on the grades 6–8 and grade 11 CAASPP state tests in ELA and math, with students designated as LTEL7 performing at lower levels than other ever-ELs. In addition, some students designated as LTEL7 who reached the recommended academic achievement cut point on the CAASPP ELA test were not yet reclassified as fluent English proficient.
   
• Graduation disparities, with 69% of grade 12 students designated as LTEL7 attaining a high school diploma compared to 86% of their other peers designated as ever-EL.

Findings from this report suggest several considerations for California as the state continues to identify ways to better support English learner students. Policies and practices may focus on the following five recommendations:

1. Ensuring that all students, including those designated as LTEL7, have access to adequate schooling resources and necessary whole child supports. The report’s finding that nearly 9 out of every 10 students designated as LTEL7 are socioeconomically disadvantaged suggests that, in addition to fewer resources available in school, these students have less access to resources outside of school compared to their more affluent peers. This underscores the importance of investing in additional supports for students designated as LTEL7, such as those provided by community schools that typically offer a wide range of integrated student supports (e.g., health, mental health, and social service supports).
    
2. Continuing to address the statewide teacher shortage. Our analyses found that the schools serving proportionately more students designated as LTEL7 were significantly less likely to have enough qualified teachers to teach their courses. One key policy need is to ensure that fully qualified teachers credentialed to teach the courses are available in all schools. While California has initiated a number of programs to reduce shortages—ranging from service scholarships and loans to Grow Your Own pathways and teacher residencies—additional support for both recruitment and retention may be needed in schools of concentrated poverty as well as rural and remote areas, in which it is typically more challenging to recruit staff.
    
3. Better identifying and addressing what EL students need in their early years, given the high proportion who are also eligible for special education services. Most students designated as LTEL7 began schooling at the lowest levels of English proficiency and many were also eligible for special education services. Key questions should include how to better support students designated as LTEL7 with disabilities and what testing accommodations would be appropriate for purposes of reclassification. Additionally, it will be important to identify the nature of disabilities that students designated as LTEL7 may have—and their relationship to language processing—and at what point in their educational trajectory students are identified as having a disability in the context of their English language learning. A more detailed understanding of these issues may enable students’ learning needs to be detected early, learning programs to be designed to address students’ specific learning needs, and appropriate resources and supports to be deployed, which may include earlier interventions than those currently utilized.
    
4. Collecting more data on how districts support English learners. There is a lack of statewide data on the district-specific criteria for reclassification as fluent English proficient. This leaves gaps in understanding the different targets that students need to meet and how they need to meet them in order to progress from being designated as LTEL to a fluent English speaker in that district. In addition, the state does not collect information about educational programming and supports for English language development offered at schools. This means policymakers and leaders lack ways to assess whether or how particular approaches or programs benefit different groups of EL students. The ability to understand how students designated as LTEL7 are faring in English immersion, dual immersion, bilingual, or other school EL programs would offer more information about the strategies and approaches that benefit this population of students.
    
5. Conducting further research on the experiences of students designated as LTEL7. Areas for future research include:
    
   • Supports Needed for Graduation. Students designated as LTEL7 are more than twice as likely to drop out of or exit high school without a diploma as other ever-EL or never-EL students. In addition to higher dropout rates, 21% of students designated as LTEL7 are listed as having no known information about their status after 12th grade, which may signal the possibility of moves or other modes of exiting the school system. More research is needed to understand the circumstances of these students with respect to both their family and school contexts so that districts and schools can seek to provide curricula and programming that address their needs and ensure that they are prepared for their college and career pathways.
      
   • Academic Opportunities. Research indicates that students classified as EL may lack the scheduling opportunities in some high schools to register for A–G courses—a minimum required for admission to California’s public universities and a requirement for high school graduation in some districts. It would be useful to know the extent to which this is a barrier in high schools, as well as to understand why high schools with more LTEL7 students are less likely to offer the Seal of Biliteracy. It is possible that high schools offering the Seal of Biliteracy have stronger resources in terms of teacher staffing, professional development, coursework options, and other supports for students to develop fluency in two languages and have the capacity to test students using the required assessments. Students designated as LTEL7 may be less exposed to schooling that offers this range of supports and may be missing out on opportunities that could develop the dual language capacities associated with stronger English acquisition and academic outcomes.
      
   • Reclassification Processes. Finally, it would be useful to examine why some EL students who meet state proficiency standards in ELA—a very high bar in California—may still be enrolled in EL programming. It is possible that students who met this standard may have been reclassified shortly after the test results were released, since many districts use the threshold of ELA performance for reclassification. Where that is not the case, it will be important to understand other factors that may be creating lags in reclassifying students after they demonstrate strong performance on the CAASPP. This can have implications in some schools for students’ opportunities to access content-based coursework that may use reclassification-based criteria as prerequisites.

The addition of students designated as LTEL7 to the California School Dashboard is a step toward raising these kinds of questions and may serve as a foundation for a greater understanding of the educational experiences of this student group, their needs, and the supports required for their educational success.

Long-Term English Learners in California by Heather Price, Dion Burns, Stacy Loewe, Patrick Shields, Jonathan Kaplan, and Hyeonjeong Lee is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

This research was supported by Sobrato Philanthropies. Core operating support for the Learning Policy Institute is provided by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, Heising-Simons Foundation, William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, Raikes Foundation, Sandler Foundation, Skyline Foundation, and MacKenzie Scott. We are grateful to them for their generous support. The ideas voiced here are those of the authors and not those of our funders.