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MABE Position #1: Bilingualism and multiculturalism requires explicit policy at the district, state, and regional level.

Rationale:
Examining current policies at the district, state, and regional level are imperative to ensure educational achievement. State and regional policies are used to develop district plans of action for specific outcomes. These action plans cover a wide range of issues that affect the instruction, programs, student support services, resource allocation, and practices impacting the education of culturally and linguistically diverse learners (CLD) in a variety of educational settings. Goals, policies and action plans designed to ensure the effective education of CLD learners need to be tied to relevant research and practices that support bilingualism and multiculturalism. These plans are not static, but are meant to respond to the increasing socio-cultural, racial/ethnic, and linguistic diversity in the educational system. Language diversity and language learning are often areas about which there is lack of knowledge, erroneously held perceptions, prejudice, errors of classification, and selection of ineffective interventions. Therefore, in order to ensure equitable educational outcomes, action plans need to be reviewed frequently to respond to changes (i.e., demographic data and local census data), and new challenges.