Surveying the Landscape of California's English Learner Reclassification Policy

How do California's school districts decide when English learners (ELs) are ready to exit the EL designation through the process of reclassification? This is the question that California's policymakers asked and which this brief discusses. Although California's Education Code has four criteria to reclassify EL students, there is local discretion on all but one statewide criterion. This report shares results from a survey of school district policies for measuring EL progress and for removing the EL designation, before and during school closures due to the Coronavirus pandemic. As required by federal law, the California Department of Education (CDE) is in the process of standardizing all criteria. Standardizing reclassification criteria has potential benefits; doing so may improve the timing for students to transition out of EL services and designation. Additionally, standardization of criteria may create more equity across districts.