One state is working to strike the right balance with young English learners: ensuring they get timely support, without assessing them too early and potentially placing them on an unnecessary remedial path.
Until 2024, California’s universal pre-K program for 4-year-olds—called transitional kindergarten—administered the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC), the same screener used to formally identify English learners in the K-12 system, to its participants.
The goal was to identify and support kids with language development and literacy needs before entering the formal K-12 system, helping them start kindergarten ready to succeed alongside their English-speaking peers.
However, advocates and teachers reported that children were shutting down or having meltdowns over the stress of testing. They believed some students were misidentified as English learners, simply because they were too young to have learned the reading and writing skills needed to pass the assessment, regardless of their primary language.
In 2024, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation exempting transitional kindergarten students from the ELPAC, deferring English-language-learner designations to kindergarten or whenever a child enters public school.
“We’re excited that things are moving in the right direction in terms of implementing a better system that supports children’s needs in a developmentally appropriate way and while also supporting their social-emotional development,” said Carolyne Crolotte, the director of policy at Early Edge California, a nonprofit advocacy organization that supported the exemption.
California’s effort to balance identifying language needs without overassigning remedial support reflects a nationwide struggle. On one hand, some experts believe that identifying language needs in pre-K helps educators tailor activities to support English acquisition alongside literacy and prepares school districts to offer specialized instruction immediately upon kindergarten entry.
Others argue that few screening tools are developmentally appropriate for 3- and 4-year-olds, who are just starting to acquire literacy skills.
Although at least 45 states and the District of Columbia have passed legislation mandating an evidence-based “science of reading” approach, only 10 address English learners in depth—such as mandating targeted preservice or in-service teacher training or employing reading coaches for this group of students, according to a 2023 analysis from the Shanker Institute.
California pilots two new, age-appropriate screeners
Instead of the ELPAC—which relies on computer tests or formal one-on-one evaluations of reading, writing, speaking, and listening—the California department of education this school year plans to pilot two new screeners for transitional kindergartners, said Alesha Moreno-Ramirez, the director of the department’s multilingual-support division. The new tools focus more on play and storytelling than formal testing.
The pilot begins in the spring, though pending legislation could delay the rollout to the 2027-28 school year.
One screener, IPT Early Childhood, uses a colorful storyboard and interactive pieces to assess children’s understanding through storytelling. An examiner reads a story in small chunks and asks the student periodic questions.
The other, preLAS, uses colorful pictures to engage children. In one section, a teacher points to photos of eyes and ears, then asks the child to point to their own.
Both screeners focus on students’ speaking and listening skills, rather than reading and writing, and are expected to be rolled out to all school districts by the 2027-28 school year.
While the tools cannot officially classify transitional kindergartners as English learners, officials hope they will give both early-childhood educators and pre-K teachers insight into children’s language needs heading into K-12, Moreno-Ramirez said. Then, in kindergarten, students may take the ELPAC.
“This is a better approach to using transitional kindergarten as a way to set children up for success from their earliest years,” said Crolotte of Early Edge.
How states address early-childhood language needs varies
State policies on screening pre-K students for English-learner status vary widely. While federal law mandates screening upon K-12 enrollment, states set their own pre-K policies.
One recent project by the American Institutes for Research, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, and New America, a liberal-leaning think tank, found that 22 states and the District of Columbia have established pre-K screening processes, with 15 requiring them. Nine states screen pre-K students in the spring before kindergarten, while 19 states do not screen or assess pre-K students at all.
One state leader told the AIR and New America project team they don’t recommend pre-K screening and identification “because we don’t believe it is developmentally appropriate, and when we reviewed the available screener tools, we didn’t find any that we deemed [appropriate] for that age level.” That sentiment was shared by other state leaders, as well, project leaders said.
Misidentifying students as English learners can have consequences
When children don’t yet have the foundational skills required to read, it’s hard to parse whether they didn’t pass an English-language screener because they don’t know how to read or because they don’t know enough English, said Sarah Novicoff, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
Getting that differentiation right matters, she said, because the students’ needs determine how teachers and schools support them. If a student is struggling to read but has the English-language skills they need, they might be pulled out of class for small-group phonics instruction. If they don’t have a strong grasp of English and that’s making learning to read difficult, the school might instead use more visual cues, like photos of items in a story while teaching the English translation, to help bridge the gaps between languages, she said.
Misidentified children may be pulled out of their traditional classes at times for language-support services they don’t actually need and miss out on lessons they could participate in, said Laura Hill, the policy director and a senior fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California.
It can also be difficult for a child to exit an English-learner program, she said.
Requirements for being reclassified vary by state but often include reaching a target score on a state-level English-proficiency test, teachers’ evaluations of the child’s academic performance, conversations with the parents, and other measures.
“If it was a misidentification, you would hope that it would be easy to clear those bars, but I’m not sure that’s always true,” Hill said. “A misidentified student might just be below the cusp of needing to be reclassified, or maybe they have some learning difference that’s not really about language.”
One possible solution would be to routinely administer a standard screener throughout a child’s education, rather than just one time upon enrollment, said Thomas Dee, the Barnett Family Professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education.
“If you screen kids once early in kindergarten and you don’t revisit what’s going on with their developmental trajectories, well, I think the concerns about reproducing inequality, not having kids in classes they can thrive at their full potential, are legitimate,” Dee said.
But if administered in intervals, “that can create opportunities for kids to pivot to different trajectories that support their academic potential,” he added.
More data could bulk up California’s work, researcher says
Some experts worry California’s reforms do not go far enough.
Missing from the effort is a data-collection system that allows state leaders to monitor which districts are implementing early-literacy screeners and track how administering those screeners is benefiting children, said Dee.
Moreno-Ramirez said that the state plans to survey districts to identify which screener they use for their transitional kindergartners and the pilot is “designed for districts to provide feedback to the [state’s department of education]” even though “there are not formal reporting requirements.”
But, to Dee, more robust data would ensure state and district leaders can better monitor progress over time and make adjustments, either to the screeners themselves or to the supportive services students receive.
“At some level, we’re flying blind without data to guide future iterations of the effort,” Dee said. “The concern is we’re not well positioned to understand whether we’re doing it well or whether its promise is being realized.”
