A Big Win For Arizona’s Multilingual Students
Aside from Arizona’s 107th Birthday, we have something big to celebrate – Senate Bill 1014 (and House Bill 2184) passed unanimously and was officially signed into law by Governor Ducey (Feb. 14). This is a huge win for Arizona’s English language learners.The new legislation reduces the “four hour block” for English language development each school day and allows schools and teachers much more flexibility to design programs and services that best meet the needs of individual students.
This law is important because Arizona has one of the nation’s lowest graduation rates for students who are English language learners, in part due to the inability to learn other content outside of the instruction dedicated only to English. This policy change can help close the achievement gap that leaves so many students behind!
