Signed Bills
California Bill AB 2268 (Muratsuchi)
English learners: initial identification: English language proficiency assessment.
AB 2268 has been was signed by Governor Gavin Newsom on Friday, June 14th. The bill has gone into immediate effect to exempt TK students from taking the ELPAC in the 2024-25 school year. Read the statement from Asm. Muratsuchi’s office.
Early Edge is proud to sponsor AB 2268 (Muratsuchi) which will ensure that the language proficiency of the state’s youngest emerging bilingual students is not evaluated with developmentally inappropriate assessments that could harm their academic and life trajectories.
By 2025-26, California will become the state with the largest universal preschool program in the nation with the expansion of California’s Transitional Kindergarten (TK) program. The state is home to the largest percentage of children ages birth to 5 years who speak or are exposed to multiple languages in their homes. Emerging bilingual students entering TK must be appropriately identified and supported in ways that promote their unique linguistic and cultural assets.
California law requires the English Language Proficiency Assessment of California (ELPAC) (which assesses children’s listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills) to be administered to students in grades kindergarten through 12. Further, California law defines TK as the first year of a two-year kindergarten program, thereby subjecting children in TK to the ELPAC. When the ELPAC was developed and field tested, it was not done so with the younger TK population enrolled in California public schools. Therefore, administering it to current TK students could lead to potential misidentification of English learners (ELs), negatively impacting their educational experience. Moreover, it may necessitate local educational agencies (LEAs) to provide services and supports that are inappropriate and unnecessary for these students.
AB 2268 would protect the state’s youngest emerging bilingual students by ensuring they are not negatively impacted by the administration of an assessment ill-suited for their developmental stage.
Specifically, AB 2268 excludes TK from the definition of kindergarten for purposes of the ELPAC, which is not a developmentally appropriate measure of English language proficiency for the increasingly younger population of four-year-olds who are being served through the expansion of TK.
As the state moves towards universal TK by the 2025-26 school year, it becomes imperative for California to reassess the appropriateness of administering the ELPAC to this age group.
