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When many people hear the term "English learner" they think of somebody who recently arrived to the US who speaks little English. But the reality is that most of these students are US born. In fact, many of them feel more comfortable in English, especially in academic settings.
When many people hear the term "English language proficiency assessment" they think of an assessment of the ability to communicate in English. But they are doing much more than that. They are assessing whether students are able to engage with grade level content in English.
What this means is that students who come from homes where a language other than English is spoken are required to show heir ability to engage in grade-level tasks in English in order to be considered legitimate users of English. That’s a problem.
The recent trend of talking about "academic language learners" is a way of expanding this expectation so that all low-income racialized students are required to demonstrate the ability to engage with grade-level tasks in order to be recognized as legitimate users of English.
I am aware that these policies have been created in efforts to ensure that students from racialized backgrounds receive supports they need to thrive in school. My worry is that once policy has been framed in this way it is easy to let schools & society off the hook.
From this perspective, students struggle because they haven't fully mastered a language they use every day, rather than because they go to underfunded schools with the least experienced teachers located in high-poverty neighborhoods produced by decades of racist public policies.
What kind of policies might be possible if instead of starting from the premise that students born and educated in the US have failed to learn English despite using it on a daily basis we started from the premise that no child should have to live in poverty?
What kind of policies might be possible if instead of starting from the premise that students were limited and need remediation we began from the perspective that policies that maintain poverty were limited and needed to be changed?
What kind of policies might be possible if instead of framing students who use English on a daily basis as lacking academic language we recognized the ways schools have been designed to systematically devalue their daily maneuvering of socially constructed linguistic borders?
