Florida Consent Decree Summary

The Florida Consent Decree is a legal document that address the civil rights of English Language Learners (ELL) students. This document focuses on their rights to equal opportunity and/or access to all of the educational programs within the education system. The Consent Decree makes sure that these students will be provided with a clear and appropriate instruction that way it balances the playing field; that way the student has a better chance of being successful. The Florida Consent Decree is broken up into six sections that touch on a broad range of aspects and how it affects the student, school system, and school employees.

The first section is called Identification and Assessment. This make sure that the student is appropriately placed in the right setting and their
Nichols case was about how the San Francisco school system failed to provide English language instruction to all of their ELL students. Roughly around 2,800 Chinese ancestry students in the school system were labeled non-English speaking. One thousands of those students received supplemental courses in English language, while roughly 1,800 non-English speaking students did not receive such instruction. The San Francisco school system had failed to provide English language instruction. Also, it denied any non-English speaking student the ability to participate. Because of that, this violated the 601 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bans discrimination based "on the ground of race, color, or national origin," in "any program or activity that receive federal money.

It is important to understand the California Proposition 227 because improved the way that Limited English Proficient (LEP) students were taught. By providing early short-term placement, (no more than one year), in intensive English engaging programs for LEP and/or ELL students, and funding ($50 million per year for ten), this waived bilingual classes. This allows the student to gain English proficiency