The "Lau v. Nichols" ruling shows the importance of tailoring programs for local multilingual learners. We used longitudinal data from one school district in California to assess the relationship between attending a school with a language support program and English language arts (ELA) achievement. We found that students labeled an English learner had positive and significant average score changes over time when they attended a school with an academic language acquisition or a two-way bilingual program. Findings highlight how emerging multilingual learner access to high-quality bilingual programs can be associated with positive ELA growth over time.