Policy Brief: Using ESSA to Improve Secondary English Learners' Opportunities to Learn through Course Taking.

While the 2015 federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) allows states to adopt new measures to assess school accountability, state and district leaders must now use evidence-based interventions that address student inequities. For English learners (ELs) at the secondary level, one important measure of opportunity to learn is access to and completion of rigorous, college preparatory coursework. Drawing from ESSA's definition of "evidence-based," aligned with the Castañeda guidelines, we propose course taking as a valid and reliable statewide indicator of student success, and offer recommendations for local evidence-based interventions that would support ELs' opportunity to learn.