The Ineffectiveness of English Immersion in Arizona

In the present article, the authors present an analysis of the rate of acquisition of English based on the state’s language proficiency data, revealing that the core idea underlying Arizona’s Structured English Immersion (SEI) program is dramatically erroneous: Children do not learn English at the hypothesized rate of one year, and therefore cannot be expected to learn school content in the face of persisting language barriers. The findings show that the underlying theory of SEI, which posits that children will learn English so quickly under conditions of total immersion that no academic deficits will accrue, has not succeeded for English Learners in Arizona. The authors raise concerns about the legality of the state’s ELL program in the context of Castañeda v. Pickard (1981), arguing that Arizona has not produced evidence confirming that language barriers have been adequately overcome by its language education policy, and that the underlying theory of the state’s program has been empirically shown to be incorrect.