The Dual Language Learner Policy Platform: Informing California's Early Learning and Care Policies and Investments in 2020-21 and Beyond

Research shows the importance of building on DLL children’s home language for preventing language loss, promoting positive identity development and facilitating English language development. California now has the opportunity to design a system that affirms the role of language and culture in all early learning environments, program requirements, workforce support and quality improvement efforts to ensure all children are set up for success.

This policy platform provides policymakers with critical recommendations necessary to provide the resources and access to high-quality early education that center the strengths and needs of the state’s dual language learner (DLL) population. Key recommendations from the platform include:

• Align the early learning and care system with the asset-based principles of the California English Learner Roadmap State Policy, by expanding dual-language programs in communities with large populations of children of color, DLLs, and low-income students; 
• Promote high-quality programs for DLLs starting from birth, by meaningfully identifying and including DLLs in early learning quality improvement systems; and
• Support the early learning workforce to build on the strengths of DLLs and meet their needs, by including explicit competencies for serving DLLs and providing funding for sustained professional development.

Read the Dual Language Learner Policy Platform Executive Summary.