Violating Lau: Sheltered English Instruction programs and equal educational opportunity

This article considers the impact of the Lau v. Nichols Supreme Court decision on the education of English learners in Washington State, US. In particular, we focus on the most popular educational program in the state, Sheltered English Instruction. We first examine how intertextual links to various policy texts and discourses shape Washington language policy and then look at how educators in four school districts interpret and appropriate this policy. Based on fieldwork in four school districts, we argue that English learners are often submerged in English-only classrooms, in which the curriculum is not fundamentally changed to meet their needs, thus denying them equal educational opportunity according to Lau v. Nichols.