The integration of the San Francisco, California school system in the early 1970’s proved to be the beginning of what became one of the most influential acts regarding the education of students who do not speak English in schools in the United States. Of the 2,800 non-English-speaking Chinese students that were now in regular classrooms, only one thousand of them received supplemental courses in English language. That left more than half of these students without extra instruction and cause to feel as if they weren’t being afforded their Fourteenth Amendment rights.
With aspirations of gaining the right to equal education opportunities for Chinese students, the parents of eight-year-old Kenny Lau filed suit against the school district arguing that non-English-speaking students taught only in English could not be expected to have equal access to the education the school district was offering, because of their lack of English skills.
Without success in the lower courts, a petition for certiorari was filed in 1974 and the Supreme Court granted the petition due to the great importance of the issue in the public. The Supreme Court then found that under the state imposed standards in California “there is no equality of treatment merely by providing students with the same facilities, textbooks, teacher, and curriculum; for students who do not understand English are effectively foreclosed from any meaningful education.”
This court case, Lau vs. Nichols (1974), was a breakthrough for English language learners (also called ELLs). It deemed that the district had violated the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. The successful outcome of the suit for Lou resulted in the enforcement of the San Francisco Unified School District providing ELLs