An unpromising start for the tutoring session: the student, a “former” English learner, needs help with math to pass the California High School Exit Examination (CAHSEE). He has failed the math part of the test twice already, and will not graduate from high school if he does not improve his performance substantially this year.1 But as we see in the vignette, not only does this student have to learn more math this year—he also has to gain a much better understanding of the language used in math.

Although “Freddy” is no longer categorized as an English learner at school, his English remains quite limited. When he began school 12 years earlier, he was a Spanish monolingual. Now, at age 17, he speaks English mostly, although Spanish is still spoken in the home. Despite having been in a program described as “bilingual” during his elementary school years, his schooling has been entirely in English from the time he entered school. The “bilingual” program provided him and his Spanish-speaking classmates one Spanish language session each week. Over the years, he has learned enough English to qualify as a “fluent English-speaker.” His English is adequate for social purposes, allowing him to communicate easily enough with peers and teachers. However, he lacks the vocabulary and grammatical resources to make much sense of the materials he Officially, there are 1.6 million English learners in California’s public schools. They constitute 25% of the student population, grades K through 12, for whom language is a clear barrier to the school’s curriculum. Unofficially, there are many others—students like Freddy—who have learned enough English through schooling to be classified as English speakers but whose problems in school nonetheless can be traced to language difficulties. Added to the students who are still classified as English learners, they comprise some 2.25 million students in the state whose progress in school is impeded because they do not fully understand the language in which instruction is presented. reads in school, or to participate in the instructional discourse that takes place in his classes. Like many former English learners in California, Freddy has language problems at school, but he is no longer included in the official record of English learners kept by the California State Department of Education.

Would Freddy have been helped if this session had been conducted in Spanish, his primary language? The answer is no—not anymore. It would have helped when he was younger, but now, at age 17, it makes no difference. Having been schooled exclusively in English, Freddy no longer understands or speaks Spanish as well as he does English. He was no more familiar with Spanish ‘término,’ than he was with English ‘term.’