This study investigates the policy sensemaking of urban educators on the "Read by Grade Three" (RBG3) Law and their sensemaking impacts on English Learners' (ELs') learning experiences. Applying a critical cultural policy sensemaking framework, I conducted an urban district case study to highlight educators' perceptions and behaviors in support of ELs. I conducted 18 interviews with 12 participants (district and school administrators, literacy coaches, teachers, and an EL family), observed 47 hours of interventions and instruction, and school and district meetings, and collected 25 relevant documents about RBG3 and EL district policies. Each participant shared their understanding of RBG3, their emotions about implementing the policy, their pedagogical relationship with students, and their lived experiences from assessments and interventions.The findings of this study suggest that educators in urban contexts are critical of RBG3, which emphasizes accountability for students' reading scores by rationalizing the importance of consistent data tracking with frequent assessments and interventions. Under resource-constrained contexts with a high number of students having Individual Reading Intervention Plans, the lack of a district infrastructure system, human resources, instructional planning time, and professional development made the policy's intended goal unattainable for educators. Initial interpretation of the policy intertwined with the situated challenges evoked negative emotions such as frustration, hopelessness, insult, and a sense of unfairness. Accordingly, urban educators doubted the retention effects in the same system. Especially regarding ELs, teachers perceived that the retention exemption for ELs is unrealistic, and the testing system constantly gives students failure messages and test anxiety. Under this high pressure for rapid English acquisition and the negative consequences of slow growth over time, although ELs' cultural diversity has been celebrated in school and district events, their linguistic diversity has not been utilized as the core of instruction. Furthermore, an enforced test-driven accountability system has ultimately devalued the culturally responsive sustaining pedagogy and limited pedagogy's function to enhance test scores.This study implies that the RBG3 policy may exacerbate obstacles to ELs' learning through frequent diagnosis and interventions, especially in urban contexts. Policymakers and practitioners should acknowledge that although the policy intends to enhance students' fundamental reading competence for further academic success, this policy may bring unintended negative consequences to particular marginalized student subgroups like ELs. In addition, they should know the exemption for ELs cannot justify this testing environment where there are constant failure messages to ELs. Furthermore, compared to a classroom consisting of one or two dominant minority languages, it is necessary to conduct research on effective culturally responsive instruction for classroom structures that have ELs speaking more than 10 different non-dominant minority languages.
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