Chapter 8: Building Leaders’ Roles Via Culturally Responsive Leadership

In the past two decades, the demographic change in the United States due to immigration has resulted in a drastic change in student populations at schools, especially urban schools. According to a report issued by the National Center for Education Statistics (2017), there were about 9.5% of school students (4.8 million) nationwide that were English language learners (ELLs). This has increased from 8.1% (3.8 million) in Fall 2000. In Fall 2015, 21% of the student population in California were ELLs. There were eight states that had at least 10% of its student population as ELLs. These states were Alaska, California, Colorado, Kansas, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, and Washington. Nineteen states and the District of Columbia had percentage of ELLs that were at least 6.0%. There were more ELLs in cities and suburbs than less urbanized areas.