English as a Second Dialect Policy and Achievement of Aboriginal Students in British Columbia

Since the 1980s, the BC Ministry of Education has offered funding to support the language development of students who speak non-standard dialects of English. In practice, the students who are supported by this funding are almost exclusively Aboriginal, and English as a Second Dialect (ESD) funding has grown to be an important source of supplemental funding for Aboriginal students in many school districts. We exploit the staggered uptake of ESD funding by school districts to identify its effect on academic achievement. We find a sizable positive effect of ESD on grade seven reading achievement among Aboriginal students.