English Language Learners

During the legislative session in 2006, the Arizona Legislature passed House Bill 2064, Laws of 2006, Chapter Four. This legislation dealt directly with requirements for English Language Learner Programs. The bill called for the establishment of an English Language

Learners Task Force:

• The charge for the Task Force was to develop Models for the instruction of English Language Learners.
• The Task Force adopted those models on September 13, 2007 and
• The Task Force then directed the Arizona Department of Education to develop a plan for implementing the models.

There is great deal of flexibility for district and schools to implement different approaches based on the following: the number of ELL students, the geographical location of the school, and the overall school size, rural or urban, to name a few elements.
However, there are several basic components which must be present in all approaches of the models.

Those components are the following:

1. All ELL students must receive a minimum of four (4) hours of English Language Development (ELD) every day.
2. The four hours must include instruction in Oral Language and Conversation (one hour), Grammar (one hour), Writing (one hour), and Reading (one hour).
3. During the ELL students’ instruction, the students must be grouped by their English Language Proficiency Level (Pre-Emergent, Emergent, Basic, or Intermediate).
4. The ELL students, during their four hours of ELD, must not be mixed with non-ELL students,  and
5. The ELL students must be taught by Highly Qualified teachers.

The reason for such a prescriptive approach is to ensure that as ELL students move about the state for their education, there is one consistent focus to their instruction. Also, it is critical that ELL students become English Language Proficient as quickly as possible. Current testimony from schools throughout the state indicated wide differences of instructional time and delivery, resulting in very limited success for ELL students. The Task Force decided to design a highly-structured program for all ELL students in the state of Arizona.

The clear expectation is that a focused, directed instructional approach, based on Time-on-Task research and well-grounded English Acquisition instruction, will yield dramatically improved results. If you would like greater detail on all the components of the models, you may visit the Arizona Department of Education’s web site at www.ade.az.gov.