Editorial 7 . 3 : Introduction to the thematic issue

This thematic issue of Language Policy focuses on language education policy in the United States through an examination of how current education reforms are being put into practice in California, Texas, and Florida—the states with the largest numbers of English language learners (ELLs). The source of these recent reforms and the topic for this thematic issue is No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which was passed into law by U.S. Congress in 2001, and is currently being implemented in all public school systems across the country. The U.S. has long had a decentralized educational system, whereby much authority is allotted to state departments of education (Manna 2006). However, NCLB is the most invasive federal education policy in U.S. history, as there are stringent accountability measures built in to ensure federal funding is allocated according to the law’s intents (Hill 2000). While there is some variation in how states interpret and implement the law, each state must still fully comply with the different mandates of NCLB in order to receive federal education funding. The accountability system is largely based on student assessment, as a primary means for schools to demonstrate to the federal government that students are advancing; thus the law has generated a greater emphasis on wide-scale testing than