This study reviews orientations toward educating multilingual students with a focus on recent policies and initiatives in California. It includes data and findings from a study investigating the linguistic and cultural resources that English learners bring to school as funds of identity. The research site was a public elementary school in an urban community in Southern California. Data from surveys, interviews, and artwork created by Spanish-speaking focus students in fourth and fifth grade and interviews with their teachers were collected and analyzed. In this article, teachers' perspectives are examined in light of student survey results. Findings indicate that although the teachers in the study stated that students' abilities to speak more than one language represents a strength, depictions of everyday experiences in the classroom contradicted the language as resource orientation and recast language as a problem. Additionally, participants relegated the benefits of bilingualism to ambiguous advantages for the future rather than a resource for learning and daily academic tasks. Finally, directions for future research that can further the notion of multilingualism in educational settings are recommended.