All parties in the national dialogue over how best to serve English language learners (ELLs) agree that our nation cannot allow such a large and rapidly growing subgroup of students to lag behind their native-English speaking peers. Because the costs of continuing to under-serve this population far outweigh the costs of providing adequate and equitable schooling to all students, policymakers must put aside ideological differences and take action to assure quality education for ELLs. Because this is a nationwide dilemma, it is the onus of the federal government to leverage its power to provide incentives to states and local school boards to improve their services. In order to do this, the federal government should target the following areas: improving instructional quality for ELLs, granting local autonomy of program design in exchange for accountability, making significant changes to the NCLB accountability and testing requirements, encouraging external support services for immigrant families, and promoting a value for bilingualism for all students.  

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