While the leadership in Washington D.C. has focused on divisive nationalist rhetoric and fear-based anti-immigrant policies, Californians have chosen a path forward that builds on the state's assets found in its diverse population.

One of these assets is a language other than English.  Rather than treating this as a deficit, families, schools and policymakers are increasingly seeing the value in biliteracy as a way to prepare all California's students for today's interconnected, interdependent global economy.

California is home to the nation's largest population of English Learners: children learning English in addition to their home language, roughly 1.4-million of them.  While these students bring the assets of their home language, they are too often seen as a liability: children who lower test scores.  But research over the past two decades has provided strong evidence that the human brain is capable of successfully learning two or more languages from birth and that bilingual language development confers cognitive and social benefits to children.

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