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It's a new day for English learners in California. In July of 2017, the State Board of Ed unanimously passed a new policy called the English Learner Roadmap, which supersedes the old Proposition 227 English Learner policy.
The English Learner Roadmap is a clear turn away from the days of deficiency-oriented views of English learners. It's a turn away from the old English-only world and sentiment, and it's really embracing a future for California that's about preparing our kids not just for career and college readiness, of course, but also for leading and thriving in a global, multilingual 21st-century world.
In November 2016, the voters of the state passed Proposition 58, the Edge Initiative, which basically said we want our children to have more opportunities to become proficient in multiple languages. It was followed shortly after by the development of this new English Learner Roadmap, which says, for our English learners, we want an education that will best prepare them for the 21st century, and that that includes high-level intellectual work with all of the supports they need to engage in that kind of work and with an education that gives them the opportunities to develop skills in multiple languages.
The English Learner Roadmap provides our districts and our schools with a clear, comprehensive statement of what needs to be put in place for our English learners if we're going to get them to the education that we know that they need. It covers everything from professional development, leadership development, assessment alignment, preschool through high school, the quality of instruction, the access to the courses students need to be college-ready by the time they graduate. It covers the climate and the attitudes in our schools and the need to create safe, affirming, inclusive environments for our children that embrace the languages and cultures they bring.
The English Learner Roadmap will mean for our English learners an education of a breadth and a depth that has not been available to them thus far. The English Learner Roadmap, to the extent that it's really fully implemented, will mean for students that they really do have preparation for college, that they really will have the facility in multiple languages, which will give them connections both to family and heritage and other cultures and communities and to jobs all over the world.
The English Learner Roadmap will mean that our students get science and social studies and the arts and are able to be full participants in the academic setting and full participants in their world and is able to get them to their goals, academic discussions, participation, one, two, three.