California’s Gold: An Advocacy Framework for Young Dual Language Learners
A child’s early years of life are marked by an incredible capacity for growth and learning. For the majority of California’s young children, this potential is magnified by their linguistic and cultural diversity. California’s Gold opens a dialogue on how best to support dual language learners in the early years.
This framework opens a dialogue about how to integrate preschool with the early primary grades and improve DLL/EL education throughout these grades. It marks an opportunity for improvement in early childhood education on behalf of DLLs, and to complement encouraging new state policy developments that are seeking to advance the education of older English language learners.
This framework is intended for a variety of advocacy audiences, who we expect will have different uses for it: (1) longstanding DLL early childhood advocates in need of a forum for coordinating and planning their advocacy and messaging; (2) early childhood education advocates new to DLL issues who seek to learn about this issue and incorporate it into their advocacy; and (3) K-12 English Learner advocates interested in magnifying the importance of early childhood in their advocacy.