Recent civilrightsprojectucla_ms items

Academic Disparities in California’s Central and Imperial Valleys

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

California, known for having the largest economy in the United States, faces significant educational inequities. This report focuses on the racial and ethnic academic disparities in California’s Central and Imperial Valleys (CIV). Despite California’s overall economic strength, the CIV remains a pocket of severe socio-economic hardship, with marked disparities in educational outcomes that have persisted over time. Using a decade’s worth of data on K-12 students, we examine standardized test scores in mathematics and English language arts (ELA), absenteeism, and graduation rates while controlling for student-level demographics and school district characteristics. We find persistent achievement gaps between racial/ethnic groups in standardized test scores, absenteeism, and graduation rates despite efforts to address these disparities through state policies and funding. The findings in this report underscore the pressing need for targeted policies and interventions to address these...

The Case for a Right to a Racially Just Education

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

California’s statewide system for public education is designed to serve a minority of its students very well, and the rest, not well at all. The “haves”—students with access to necessary educational supports—thrive, while the “have nots”—students who lack these resources due to no fault of their own—lag behind. Black, Indigenous, Latino, Pacific Islander students, immigrant children, foster youth, unhoused students, students with disabilities, and English learners are consistently underserved by our schools. Over the past 30 years, much attention has been directed at the persistence of the discredited “achievement gap,” which subtly (and not so subtly) has placed the responsibility for “not achieving” on students, their families, and their communities. Today, formally conceptualized as an “opportunity gap,” this reclassification still fails to assign responsibility where it belongs: on the State’s failure to establish a public education system that ensures (not just aspires to)...

Meeting its Potential: A Call and Guide for Universal Access to Bilingual Education in California

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

California’s cultural and linguistic diversity are remarkable assets for the state. In particular, bilingualism is linked not only to economic growth, but also to improved health, social empathy, educational attainment, community cohesion, and civic engagement. Harnessing this potential depends upon the educational success of California’s more than one million students classified in K-12 schools as English learners (ELs). Abundant evidence illuminates not only the potential of this talented group of students, but also the danger of them being relegated to a second-class status in school. After nearly twenty years of English-only education, California has made significant strides in growing bilingual education programs, programs such as dual language immersion, maintenance bilingual, and heritage language revitalization, and in doing so has recognized bilingual education’s potential to improve academic and post-schooling outcomes for all students. State initiatives including Global...

California’s Geography of Opportunity: Intergenerational Mobility in the Golden State

Tue, 17 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In anticipation of the next twenty-five years of civil rights policy in California, this work investigates social mobility in the Golden State between the last two generations to gain insight into which groups could be best served by civil rights policy interventions (the first aim of the paper). This study used a publicly accessible database created by Opportunity Insights which employed data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Internal Revenue Service (Chetty, Hendren, Kline, & Saez, 2014; Chetty, Hendren, Kline, Saez, & Turner, 2014) to geospatially analyze the social mobility of children born in the Golden State relative to their parents. Furthermore, this study leverages a complementary dataset from IPUMS USA (Ruggles, 2019) to provide evidence that Hispanic and Asian mobility is likely mischaracterized in California when non-legal permanent residents (non-LPR) are excluded.

Seizing the Opportunity to Narrow the Achievement Gap for English Learners: Research-based Recommendations for the Use of LCFF Funds

Wed, 3 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Seizing the Opportunity to Narrow the Achievement Gap for English Learners: Research-based Recommendations for the Use of LCFF Funds

Bilingual Education and America's Future: Evidence and Pathways

Tue, 27 Jun 2023 00:00:00 +0000

As the population of students classified as English learners (EL) grows and EL-classified students continue to experience barriers to opportunity, the need to improve services and supports for EL-classified students becomes increasingly urgent. In this piece we advocate that the next twenty-five years of education and social policymaking should include establishing, through federal policy, bilingual education as the standard service for EL-classified students. Our argument is based in a rigorous, comprehensive synthesis of evidence for the benefits of bilingual education, bilingualism, and biliteracy for students and the nation, a supportive sociopolitical moment, and a wealth of resources and knowledge to support implementation. We also make the case for a series of incremental federal, state, and local policy actions to build towards bilingual education as the standard for EL-classified students. We outline these actions as well as key considerations to guide the incremental...

Teachers of English Language Learners in Secondary Schools: Gaps in Preparation and Support

Thu, 8 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Teachers of English Language Learners in Secondary Schools: Gaps in Preparation and Support

Alternative Instructional Models of Effective Bilingual Education

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Alternative Instructional Models of Effective Bilingual Education

What Works for the Children? What We Know and Don't Know About Bilingual Education

Fri, 18 Apr 2014 00:00:00 +0000

What Works for the Children? What We Know and Don't Know About Bilingual Education

Do the AZELLA Cut Scores Meet the Standards? A Validation Review of the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment