California’s public school students are continuing to rebound from the pandemic, with more showing up for class, more graduating and fewer misbehaving at school, according to new data released today.

The California School Dashboard, a color-coded snapshot of how students and schools are faring, showed improvements in many categories during the 2023-24 school year — a relief for schools trying to help students recover academically and social-emotionally after the 2020 campus closures.

The most notable improvement was in attendance. The percentage of students who were chronically absent, missing more than 10% of school days in a year, dropped to about 20%, a significant decline from when it peaked at 30% three years ago. Prior to the pandemic about 12% of students were chronically absent.

“This is good news,” said Hedy Chang, director of Attendance Works, a nonprofit that advocates for school attendance. “I’m pleasantly surprised. 
 To benefit from all the services that schools are offering, kids have to show up.”

Since the pandemic, schools across the state have been doubling down on efforts to lure students back to school. Many used their federal and state COVID-19 relief money to hire outreach workers, add bus routes, host pizza parties and otherwise make it easier and more enticing to come to school. Some districts had  to solve transportation and other obstacles.

Chronic absenteeism continues to improve after pandemic peak

Those efforts paid off, Chang said. While the pizza parties helped, she pointed to many schools’ focus on improving campus climate overall. That includes counseling, social-emotional learning, stronger relationships between school staff and families, and health and wellness services.

Pandemic relief , so some districts will be scrambling to maintain these programs going forward. But the state’s recent investments in community schools, arts education, transitional kindergarten and other services will help, Chang said.

Recognition for long-term English learners 

Another noteworthy item in the Dashboard is the inclusion of a new student group: long-term English learners, or students who were not fluent in English after seven years. The reasons for these students’ delays vary, but in general they’re not receiving adequate help learning English and as a result, lag far behind their peers academically.

About 10% of students who were ever classified as English learners were considered long-term English learners last year, according to state data. Those students had some of the lowest math and English language arts scores of any of California’s 13 other student groups.

“We’re celebrating this significant milestone, that long-term English learners get the spotlight they deserve and they are no longer invisible,” said Martha Hernandez, director of Californians Together, which advocates for students who are English learners. “But now the work begins to ensure their needs are met.”

Schools and other education agencies need to work together to help families who are recent immigrants by finding translators, provide counseling to students, boost bilingual education and bring in tutors to help with English and academic skills, said Lindsay Tornatore, director of systems improvement and student success at California County Superintendents, which represents county office of education superintendents.

‘Not good enough’

Elsewhere on the dashboard, the graduation rate was 86.4%, up a bit from the previous year and higher than the pre-pandemic rate of 84.2%. But a related item on the dashboard raised alarm bells with researchers. The number of students meeting the requirements for admission to California’s public universities was up only slightly — an increase of just 3,700 students among a graduating class of 438,000.  Close to half of high school graduates are ineligible for the University of California or California State University.

“That’s just not good enough,” said Alix Gallagher, interim managing director at the nonpartisan think tank Policy Analysis for California Education. “It means the recovery has been anemic, and that’s a problem. We need a different approach, starting at the state level.”

Most California high schoolers graduate in four years

But only about half of graduates meet University of California or California State University admission criteria, also known as A-G requirements.

She pointed to some districts’ policies of placing students on math tracks that don’t allow them to meet the college admission requirements by their senior year. While not all students should be expected to enroll in four-year colleges, they should at least have the option available, she said.

The Department of Education hailed a drop in the suspension rate, among all student groups. Student misbehavior had increased after schools re-opened, and schools struggled to maintain a positive atmosphere for staff and other students. The rate dropped from 3.6% to 3.3% last year.

No major changes to format

The dashboard itself has been . The data is too hard for parents to navigate, and the color coding can be misleading, according to a report from the Center for Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University. 

For example, a school might earn an orange color, the second-from-lowest designation, for showing slight improvements, but its scores might actually be lower than schools that earned a red, the lowest ranking. The state said it would consider making some changes but hadn’t made any major alterations on this year’s version.

The dashboard was released a few weeks earlier than it was last year. By 2026 the dashboard’s release will coincide with the Smarter Balanced test score announcement in mid-October.   

This was originally published on .

Teaching students who speak different languages can be an exciting endeavor that more and more teachers are experiencing. Diversity is an asset, something to be embraced and encouraged. It helps broaden students’ perspectives. Listening to and learning alongside peers from various cultures allows students to feel more connected and capable of navigating the world. When educators feel prepared to teach in such classrooms, they can celebrate this diversity properly while also developing students’ English literacy skills.

Here’s some advice for how teachers can amplify diversity in ways that acknowledge students’ heritage and foster a productive learning environment for everyone.

Check your own biases

Bias is a powerful thing, and it can exist in ways we don’t even realize. The first step in effectively teaching in a language-diverse classroom is understanding and overcoming your own assumptions as an educator.

Do you believe that all children can learn, regardless of their language background, what they look like, and their socioeconomic status? Cognitive research tells us they can—and that canlearn how to read, write, and speak in two or more languages at the same time. But sometimes, teachers find excuses not to believe that: This child’s parents don’t speak English, therefore it will be difficult for them to learn English at school. Their parents aren’t caring/giving/interested in education because they work all the time. Parents don’t read to their child therefore it will be difficult for the child to learn to read. 

Being honest with yourself and checking your biases at the door is critical to ensuring every child’s success.

Honor students’ cultural diversity

Acknowledging and celebrating students’ cultural heritage creates an environment where all students feel welcome—and therefore ready to learn. That means learning how to pronounce each child’s name correctly, building a classroom library that includes books reflecting characters with similar backgrounds and interests, and knowing about their interests and individual lived experiences.

Knowing what’s important to your students and their parents can help foster deep connections. We know from learning science that serotonin and dopamine are important aspects to learning, and those chemicals are more likely to flow in a safe, secure, and welcoming learning environment.

Learn about their heritage languages

Sometimes, teachers think they have to know all of the languages their students speak to be successful. That’s not true. However, learning at least a little bit about each language can help teachers make invaluable connections for their students. And with AI, it’s now easier than ever for teachers to gain this knowledge. You can start by asking an AI engine which letters and letter sounds are the same and which are different when comparing English to a student’s heritage language.

For example, if you know that in Spanish, “ll” makes a “y” sound and “qu” is pronounced as a hard “c,” you can help native Spanish speakers overcome some common hurdles in learning to read and speak in English.

Leverage students’ skills in their heritage language

Children who have grown up learning how to speak another language have already acquired initial literacy skills that can help them learn English—and you can leverage these skills to make the process easier for them. For instance, if you know which letters and letter combinations sound the same in a student’s native language and English, this gives you a natural entry point for helping that child learn English.

Use curriculum tools that follow the science of reading

Regardless of their first language, all children learn to read and write in any language most effectively by following an evidence-based, structured literacy curriculum grounded in the science of reading.

To meet this requirement, the curriculum should begin with phonological awareness activities, followed by systematic, explicit phonics instruction that leads to decoding simple text supporting this instruction. What this means is, if you’re introducing the short “a” sound to students, you should have them practice reading decodable texts that emphasize the short “a” sound. The lessons and activities should build on students’ phonics skills in a logical progression, leading to fluency with increasingly complex texts.

At the same time, students should be developing their vocabulary and learning about syntax and semantics to extract meaning from the text. These five elements—phonological awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension—should be taught together in a structured approach to literacy.

If the curriculum you’re using doesn’t meet these criteria, then you likely need some evidence-based materials to use in your classroom, along with professional learning on implementing the science of reading into instruction. A good place to start is the and the Online Language and Literacy Academy.

Teaching in a language-diverse classroom is an exciting prospect! By following these five strategies, educators can celebrate this diversity and create an environment where all students can learn and thrive.

English-learning students’ scores on a state test designed to measure their mastery of the language fell sharply and have stayed low since 2018 — a drop that bilingual educators say might have less to do with students’ skills and more with sweeping design changes and the automated computer scoring system that were introduced that year.

English learners who used to speak to a teacher at their school as part of the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System now sit in front of a computer and respond to prompts through a microphone. The Texas Education Agency uses software programmed to recognize and evaluate students’ speech.

Students’ scores dropped after the new test was introduced, a Texas Tribune analysis shows. In the previous four years, about half of all students in grades 4-12 who took the test got the highest score on the test’s speaking portion, which was required to be considered fully fluent in English. Since 2018, only about 10% of test takers have gotten the top score in speaking each year.

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Passing TELPAS is not a graduation requirement, but the test scores can impact students. Bilingual educators say students who don’t test out of TELPAS often have to remain longer in remedial English courses, which might limit their elective options and keep their teachers from recommending them for advanced courses that would help make them better candidates when they apply for college.

The way the state education agency currently tests English learners’ skills frustrates some educators who say many of their students are already fully capable of communicating in English but might be getting low marks in the test because of the design changes.

“You’re putting [students] in an artificial environment, which already reduces the ability of students to give you natural language,” said Jennifer Phillips, an educator with two decades of experience teaching bilingual students in Texas. “It’s a flawed system.”

TELPAS scores also account for 3% of the grades the TEA gives school districts and campuses in its A-F accountability rating system. Though they only represent a small portion of their rating, TELPAS scores might be more significant for school districts at a time when they have grown increasingly worried about how the state evaluates their performance. Several districts have sued TEA to block the release of the last two years of ratings, arguing that recent changes to the metrics made it harder to get a good rating and could make them more susceptible to state intervention.

TEA’s use of an automated scoring engine to score portions of TELPAS has also come under scrutiny after the agency used the same tool to evaluate short-answer and essay questions in this year’s State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, the state’s standardized test that all students in grades 4-12 take to measure their understanding of core subjects. of using an automated system to score STAAR and list it as one of their complaints in the districts’ latest lawsuit against the state.

Testing English learners’ skills

When students enter a public school in Texas, they are classified as “emergent bilingual” if they indicate they speak a language other than English at home and fail a preliminary English assessment. About a quarter of Texas students have that designation.

Federal law requires Texas to assess English learners’ progress regularly. Texas is one of only a handful of states that developed its own test instead of using the exam used in other parts of the country.

Each spring, about a million emergent bilingual students in Texas public schools take the TELPAS exam, which consists of four parts: listening, reading, writing and speaking.

Before 2018, teachers with TELPAS training would administer the test at students’ schools. Listening and reading evaluations were, and still remain, multiple-choice sections measuring student comprehension. For writing, teachers would gather and assess a sample of students’ work in the classroom throughout the school year. For speaking, teachers would talk to students in one-on-one evaluations or fill out a rubric based on their observations of students’ English fluency throughout the year.

When the TEA moved the test online, it changed the testing environment and scoring method. The change sought to standardize the test and make the results more reliable, an agency spokesperson said. The automated scoring technology helped deliver speaking assessment results more quickly. Last year, the automated scoring system started evaluating students’ written responses.

In each of the four assessment categories, students get a score of beginner, intermediate, advanced or advanced high. Students have to continue taking the test each year until they score advanced high in at least three categories; they may score advanced in the other one and still pass. Before this year, students had to score advanced high in every domain.

Several bilingual educators the Tribune spoke with for this story said the low test scores students have received since the test was changed do not reflect their actual performance in the classroom, adding that many English learners communicate better than their scores suggest. While English-learning students’ scores have since 2021, the TELPAS scores — particularly in speaking — have remained low since the test was changed.

“It is a little disheartening,” said Ericka Dillon, director of bilingual education and English as a Second Language courses at Northside ISD in the San Antonio area. The district has about 14,500 emergent bilingual students, a significant number of whom are proficient in English but struggle to reach advanced high on the TELPAS assessment, she said.

“They’re doing the best that they can, but they still won’t be able to meet that criteria,” Dillon said.

In response to a Tribune data analysis showing that the average number of passing TELPAS scores in speaking dropped after TEA redesigned the test and introduced the automated scoring system, an agency spokesperson said, “It’s not uncommon to see performance adjustments when student performance is evaluated in a standardized manner across the state.” The spokesperson also noted that speaking and writing are by nature more challenging than listening and reading.

The TEA has vigorously defended its automated scoring engine, rejecting comparisons of the technology to artificial intelligence. The agency has said humans oversee and train the system as well as monitor its results. The TEA said a technical advisory council has approved the technology, and when the program encounters a student response that its training does not know how to handle, it directs it to a human to score.

This year, the TEA said that at least 25% of the TELPAS writing and speaking assessments were re-routed to a human scorer to check the program’s work. That number oscillated between 17% and 23% in the previous six years, according to public records obtained by the Tribune.

Score changes after human reviews

One of the reasons educators are skeptical of TELPAS’ automated system is how scores sometimes change when they ask for a review. Humans rescore speaking and writing assessments.

Last year, 9% of the TELPAS speaking assessments that TEA reviewed got a higher score; that number was 13% the year before. The automated system initially scored more than 95% of the assessments that improved after a second look, public records show.

Spring Branch ISD officials said the percentage of assessments that improved after requesting a rescore was even higher at their district. They sent more than 800 speaking assessments for rescoring in 2022, and more than a third got a better score after they were reviewed. The next year, about half of their submissions improved after rescoring, officials said.

“If the evidence from our rescoring submissions is any indication, the system leaves a lot to be desired for its accuracy,” said Keith Haffey, executive director of assessment and compliance at Spring Branch ISD.

It’s unclear how many assessments would lead to a better grade after a second look since most results go unchallenged. The number of rescored assessments each year is less than 1% of the total TELPAS tests administered. Educators say they have to weigh costs and time constraints when deciding whether to request a rescore. Reviews are free if they result in a better score; if they don’t, schools have to pay $50 per rescoring request.

In addition, educators say it’s not easy to decide which results to challenge because they haven’t had access to students’ audio responses. This contrasts with STAAR results: Written student responses are readily available online to districts.

“If we can’t hear how they did on TELPAS, we can’t say if this is where they really are or not,” Dillon said.

The TEA says district testing coordinators can request listening sessions, but some educators said the agency’s director of student assessments told them only parents can request the files. A TEA spokesperson said that person misspoke.

In response to district feedback, the TEA spokesperson said districts and parents will have easier access to all TELPAS responses starting in the 2024-25 school year.

Not an “accurate reflection”

Edith Treviño, known affectionately as Dr. ET, used to be the ESL specialist for the TEA’s education service center in Edinburg. Now she runs a private consulting practice helping students pass TELPAS.

Treviño said she worries that the automated scoring system penalizes students who are fluent in English but speak with an accent, mix in a few words from their native tongue or stray from using academic language.

“Children are not supposed to answer like regular people, according to TELPAS,” she said.

To score advanced high in the test’s speaking portion, students must respond to each prompt with answers that last 45 to 90 seconds. They have two chances to record a response and they need to use academic language fitting their grade level.

But Treviño said the prompts are often simple and do not require long answers. In a recent , she said some questions were like asking students to identify an orange.

Because passing TELPAS is not a graduation requirement and scores only account for a small portion of campus and district accountability ratings, some schools do not prioritize helping students prepare for the test. But the results can affect students’ educational journey.

Many school districts enroll English-learning students in ESL courses, which can prevent them from taking certain electives and advanced courses because of scheduling conflicts. Teachers or staff might also hesitate to recommend a student to advanced courses if they are still taking ESL courses, Phillips said. Those advanced courses, especially at the high school level, are crucial to being competitive in college admissions.

She said any school policies that keep English learners from participating in advanced courses would amount to language-based discrimination. Nevertheless, she said it’s a common practice she’s observed in her career as an educator and while studying for her doctorate in education.

“It’s not in the law, but it’s in practice,” Phillips said.

Not being able to test out of TELPAS can also impact students’ experience in school. Kids failing to pass the test could internalize the failure, which in turn makes them vulnerable to further academic struggles, Phillips said.

“What this does to children’s self-esteem is horrible,” Treviño said, particularly for students who can speak English well but have test results that tell them they are not proficient.

Carlene Thomas, the former ESL coordinator for the TEA who now is the CEO of an education consulting company, said she would like to see the TEA use more sophisticated tools that enable more conversational student responses to ensure TELPAS is “meaningful in how students interact socially and with content material.”

She added that educators should also help students by giving them more opportunities to practice speaking English during class, relying less on direct translation and ensuring they understand the stakes and structure of the test.

But as of now, she said, “TELPAS is not giving us an accurate reflection of where our students are.”

The full program is now LIVE for the , happening Sept. 5–7 in downtown Austin. Explore the program featuring more than 100 unforgettable conversations on topics covering education, the economy, Texas and national politics, criminal justice, the border, the 2024 elections and so much more.

This article originally appeared in at . The Texas Tribune is a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

California is, by almost every measure, one of the United States’ most diverse and vibrant states. The country’s , it also has . 

The combination of public investments in the University of California system and the state’s welcoming approach to immigration have created a dynamic, technology-infused economy that is the of any U.S. state. Its also reflects that dynamism, serving . In 2021, California enrolled more K–12 ELs than . 

And yet, from 1998 to 2016, the state’s schools belied its cosmopolitan reputation, enacting an English-only mandate for ELs amid a . Unsurprisingly, the policy did little to change the state’s demographic trajectory — and . 

That’s why California voters passed Proposition 58 in 2016, a referendum that reopened the possibility of bilingual education for California’s ELs. Supporters sold the measure as an opportunity for the state to deliver a multilingual school system befitting its reputation as a plural and diverse society preparing students to succeed in the global economy. 

This is the first in Âé¶čŸ«Æ·‘s series on California’s effort to build a bilingual education system worthy of its culturally diverse reputation. 

Eight years after Prop. 58’s passage, . Nearly two decades of actively subtracting languages from the state’s classrooms created myriad challenges. And yet, the state’s embrace of bilingualism has brought public narratives closer to . California launched the now-national , which provides public recognition for K–12 graduates who demonstrate proficiency in more than one language. Efforts like these are changing California’s public discourse around languages and increasing demand for bilingual learning opportunities. 

Part 1: An 18- year ban on Bilingual Education in California begins

When Proposition 227 made California an English-only state in 1998, suggested that roughly half of Latino voters supported the move. Subsequent exit polls suggested, but the measure passed all the same. 

The number of ELs in bilingual education classrooms . While the new English-only policy permitted communities to offer bilingual education if enough ELs’ parents “opted out” of English-only education, only a small fraction of were able to meet that threshold. Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Cantonese, and other non-English languages vanished from schools. 

But the state’s decision didn’t erase many Californians’ desire to have their children’s emerging bilingual abilities recognized and cultivated at school. Persistent demand from Latino parents launched and/or maintained bilingual and DLI programs, such as Los Angeles’ Camino Nuevo Charter Academy’s Burlington campus. 

The school opened in 2000; community interest in bilingualism pushed leaders to prioritize students’ development in both English and Spanish. “We were getting kids that were coming from programs that were all over the city,” says former Camino Nuevo CEO Ana Ponce. “And parents wanted their kids to keep their native language. We were not bound by Proposition 227’s limitations because we were a charter, so we embarked on exploring different bilingual education models.” 

The school settled on a DLI model that begins with a majority of instruction in Spanish and gradually increases English-language instruction until the languages are evenly balanced in later elementary grades. Decades later, the Central Los Angeles campus effervesces with chatter swinging from Spanish to English. Fourth-graders pair off to practice division problems in math class to decide who goes first by playing Rock, Paper, Scissors or Piedra, Papel, Tijeras. 

“I hope that God keeps these schools from disappearing, because they really help our children,” says 13-year Camino Nuevo parent Maribel Martinez in Spanish. “I don’t want to talk down the district’s schools, they also teach well, but their big mistake was cutting bilingual education
two languages are worth so much.” 

Some of that value is academic. Research suggests that dual language immersion programs are the best way to support young, non-native English speakers in U.S. schools. But Camino parents say that this is only one of the reasons they prize their children’s emerging Spanish and English skills. Gloribel Reyes’ first child started at the school twenty years ago and her youngest is enrolled in fourth grade. “It’s very important that the children learn both Spanish and English,” she says in Spanish, “because if they only learn English, they forget their own language, the language their parents speak. Some of their parents don’t speak English—how can we speak with them?”

Martinez agrees—and notes that the school’s bilingualism makes it easier for Spanish-dominant families to engage with teachers and staff. That is, decades of hiring to staff Burlington’s DLI program have produced a fully bilingual staff. 

After years of serving as a bilingual outpost, Camino Nuevo has become a bilingual quarry for other schools to mine. Kylie Rector, Camino Nuevo’s Director of Biliteracy and English Learners, says that “the buzz to invest more in bilingual education” has brought administrators from districts from San Diego to Northern California to the school. 

Still, while bilingual and dual language immersion (DLI) programs are relaunching across the state, they are not growing anywhere fast enough to meet of building a system of at least 1,600 DLI programs to have “half of all K–12 students
participate in programs leading to proficiency in two or more languages.” Last year, the state devoted for launching new DLI schools — the state estimates it will produce . 

This is partly because California’s eighteen-year ban on most bilingual programs also flatlined the job market for bilingual teachers. This meant that K–12 school systems produced more monolingual, English-dominant graduates, and it meant that the state’s bilingual teacher training programs largely shuttered. 

This presents California leaders with a chicken-and-egg problem. They cannot grow bilingual classrooms around the state without more bilingual teachers, but the state’s K–12 system remains mostly English-only and is not producing enough bilingual graduates to rapidly grow the linguistic diversity of the state’s teaching force. As a result, California’s K–12 teaching force is much whiter and more native English-speaking monolingual than California’s K–12 student body. . 

The increased demand for bilingual educators has also made Camino Nuevo staff valuable across California’s public education sector. Some erstwhile Camino Nuevo employees have gone on to launch dual language schools of their own, like Yu Ming Public Charter School founder . Others are in and other . Still others are working in education advocacy at non-profit organizations like , , , , and the . 

Cross-Pollinating Bilingualism in San Diego County

Just a ten mile drive from the U.S.-Mexico San Ysidro border crossing, Chula Vista Learning Community Charter School’s (CVLCC) campus is another hotbed of bilingualism. The school was founded by the Chula Vista Unified School District in 1998 as a way to maintain bilingual options once the state’s English-only mandate arrived. 

Eddie Caballero joined CVLCC a year later as a 5th grade teacher. “It was a rough start,” he says, as the school struggled to focus its academic and linguistic instructional approaches. But by 2004, the school had coalesced around a vision — putting extra campus emphasis on foundational early literacy skills in both languages . 

In 2005, Caballero moved to San Diego Unified School District to work in administrative roles. In 2008, a number of families of ELs were organizing to sign waivers to start a bilingual education program at Sherman Elementary, on San Diego’s east side. The school needed an experienced bilingual educator; Caballero was a natural fit. He was eager to use what he’d learned at CVLCC to replicate high-quality bilingual education — now in a district setting. 

Just as at CVLCC, “We didn’t see success immediately,” Caballero says. He warns that just any bilingual education program won’t automatically succeed just by virtue of being bilingual. Too often, he warns, district leaders think they can “rebrand” their schools by launching DLI programs, “but no, you have to implement it carefully.” This requires careful planning around curriculum, staffing, family engagement efforts, and much more. That’s why, in 2016, Caballero hired former CVLCC teacher Nicole Enriquez to be his assistant principal; she stepped in as principal when he left San Diego Unified. 

Now, in 2024, Caballero is back as CVLCC’s CEO, which continues to serve as a flywheel for the local bilingual education ecosystem. He says that bilingual teachers often come to his school from nearby districts with the goal of developing their expertise teaching in bilingual or DLI settings. However, many leave after five years, because staying longer would cost them contractual seniority back in the districts where they began their careers. 

“CVLCC is an exemplary dual language school that not only has a culturally and linguistically responsive curriculum—but also prepares students’ global critical consciousness through innovative and impactful approaches,” says Cristina Alfaro. “At its inception
we called it the Dream School.”

Building Back

In the 26 years since California voters launched their state’s monolingual era — and eight years since they ended it — it’s clear that the ground of public opinion has shifted. Polling before the 2016 Proposition 58 referendum found that .

found that 65% of Latino families “would enroll their children in a bilingual program if it were available.” In a separate 2023 poll of mostly Spanish-dominant Californians, 59% of respondents listed “access to bilingual programs” as an “essential” or “high” priority for their families. 

Bilingual strongholds like CVLCC and Camino Nuevo are essential resources for helping make that hope realistic for more of those families. “I’m second-generation Chicana,” says Sherman principal Enriquez. “And this generation of parents says things like, ‘I never got this opportunity as a kid. I wish that I could speak more Spanish. I want my kids to be able to be bilingual, to get the opportunity that I never had.’ And I’m that parent too! I brought my kids here, through Sherman, so they could be bilingual.”

Picture this: kindergarten students are excitedly discussing the life cycle of a tree. In a whole-class discussion, paired “turn and talk” chats with a partner, and responses to sentence stems, they describe bare limbs, falling leaves, and a tree’s dormant winter season. They compare evergreens and deciduous trees, using vocabulary that reappears in related texts. In this joyful learning community, students at all reading levels practice grade-level oral and literacy skills, grow vocabulary, and gain access to a common base of information.

This is what reading lessons look like today in the Roswell Independent School District, where I oversee elementary education. It’s a major difference from the not-so-distant past.

In Roswell, more than 75% of students are Hispanic and about one-third are English language learners. More than one-third are from low-income households. For many of our students, kindergarten is their first classroom experience. They haven’t yet mastered the oral-language skills needed for learning, like answering and asking questions in complete sentences, turn-taking, and following directions. Because these skills form the foundation for academic learning, building oral language and vocabulary are urgent priorities.

Five years ago, teachers would group students and assign texts by skill level and rotate between groups to offer targeted supports. While this approach was familiar to many of our educators, we also recognized that it wasn’t accelerating learning for the students who needed it most. Learning is a social activity, and students thrive when they can participate fully with their classmates. By keeping students separated, we were perpetuating differences in their levels of preparedness for school.

Today, our teachers are using a new, knowledge-based high-quality reading curriculum and students of all language levels work together with texts on a common topic. Students’ interaction with these texts can vary — some read independently, some in pairs, some in small groups, and some listen as the text is read to them. But they are working with the same vocabulary and building the same knowledge. In these classrooms, it’s hard to spot students who are working to catch up with their peers, because the entire class is working together on the same grade-level content. 

This transition didn’t happen overnight. There were three major moves that have helped us to adopt and implement a high-quality, knowledge-based reading curriculum.

Go Grassroots—But Be Ready to Leverage Leadership

Before we entertained switching curriculum, we invested in building knowledge and expertise about the science of reading in our district. Along with two-dozen colleagues, I participated in the LETRS professional learning program to learn about structured literacy. Some of those educators had been working to nudge our instruction toward evidence-based practices, but there was little momentum to do so across the board.

When our leadership changed and New Mexico passed a new literacy law, there was an opportunity to reassess current practices. Because we had already built a deep understanding of the science of reading, we were able to make the case for a new curriculum and include a variety of perspectives in choosing the right program for our students. 

Administrators, reading coaches, and teachers worked together to ensure the curriculum we chose, Amplify CKLA, is truly aligned to the science of reading. Better yet, we could base on decision on our earlier studies, not a sticker or marketing slogan.

Begin With the Believers and Share Their Success

Changing teacher practices is hard. But changing teacher beliefs is even harder. Teachers are motivated by seeing evidence of success from trusted colleagues. And so we rolled out the new curriculum in three waves, not all at once, and were intentional in deciding which educators went first. We also established internal communications channels to share their success stories across the district.

Our first group included principals who were fully on board with the switch and teachers who were part of that grassroots science of reading movement. They were excited to shift instruction and share their experiences with colleagues. The second group included educators who were hesitant and looking for someone else to take the first step. The last group included teachers who were not eager to move away from traditional instruction.

We capitalized on the energy and expertise in our first group of curriculum switchers by sharing their experiences with educators in the second and third waves of the rollout. Our internal communications director filmed teacher testimonials, which were posted on our website. I shared these videos with our elementary principals, and they also were featured in grade-level professional learning communities.

Respond to Teacher Concerns

A knowledge-based curriculum is necessarily topic-driven. Some teachers were concerned that parents could object to certain topics. For example, a second-grade unit about early civilizations includes information about archeology and world religions. Teachers flagged that reading about various religious could be a potential point of contention for families.

We reviewed our policies and reassured teachers that they would be fully supported and had established procedures to follow if a question was raised. Teachers could share the curriculum with parents and, if a family objected, did not have to resolve the issue on their own. An administrator could help provide an alternative. We reassured them that their job is to teach the curriculum as it is written. If there’s a question or concern, a principal or administrator like me is ready to handle it. And we haven’t experienced this sort of issue to date.

All students deserve to have access to grade-level rigor, vocabulary, and content. But not every child gets to experience holiday travel, weekend museum trips, or other opportunities to build their knowledge about the world. High-quality, knowledge-based curriculum empowers students with new tools to communicate and shared knowledge to speak and write about. If we don’t provide this opportunity to all students, we are essentially shutting the door on those least prepared to thrive in school. 

Karla Stinehart is the director for elementary education at New Mexico’s Roswell Independent School District and a member of the . 

The reported late last month there was a 78% increase in multilingual students for the 2023-24 academic year compared to the last two years.

“From 2020 to 2023, the District has witnessed a staggering 78% surge in the Multilingual Learner population,” according to a press release.

District spokeswoman Nancy Deering told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· the majority of new multilingual students come from Spanish speaking countries.

District officials would not say if the influx of multilingual students come from migrant families, but immigration cases have increased in the . 

And reported in the last year it has doubled the number of families they have helped, with about half migrating from Ecuador, Haiti, Mexico and Chile.  

In the 2022-23 academic year, there were more than , with 9,000 multilingual students and 6,000 — about 24% and 15% respectively.

With a 78% surge, the previous 9,000 multilingual students comes to more than 16,000 for the 2023-24 academic year, with Latino students comprising the majority of the district’s enrollment. 

In the 2022-23 academic year, there were nearly 23,000 Latino students, about 55% of the student population — compared to 36% of Black students and 7% of white students, according to the .

Newark superintendent Roger LeĂłn told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· the district hired close to 1,000 teachers in the past two academic years but currently has 80 vacancies mostly for multilingual and special needs teachers. 

English Language Learners

LeĂłn said educators must be certified to teach multilingual students, slowing down the hiring process.

To ease these staffing shortages, LeĂłn said the district has created incentives for current teachers to get the certification.

“We have a pool of staff members that are in route to get the endorsement and once they’re done that’ll be how we solve our problem,” said LeĂłn.

Neither LeĂłn nor Deering would elaborate on what the incentives were. 

The district also held its in August for more than 250 teachers to help English language learners pass an English proficiency test and transition out of needing multilingual services.

Special Education

One parent said staffing issues in the district has prevented her two high school children with special needs from fully thriving, oftentimes needing occupational therapy among other services that aren’t always available.

“I just see the district harboring kids on the spectrum from high functioning to low functioning all in the same classroom which is not a good idea,” she told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· anonymously to protect the identity of her children. “My kids have a different level of learning and they need to be with that particular group.”

Another parent added how staffing problems prevented her 6th grade son from attending a specialized district school. 

“It’s been issue after issue after issue,” she told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· anonymously to protect the identity of her son. “Every single thing, all the support I’ve been advocating for, has been a fight.”

León believes the district wouldn’t have to worry about finding special education teachers if Newark’s charter schools didn’t contribute to the problem.

“Students that have an IEP are not afforded an opportunity to have an education in Newark charter schools because they get kicked out,” said León. “So if we want to help solve this problem, the charter schools need to get it together.”

It’s 3:45 p.m., an hour since the final bell rang at Ella Risk Elementary School, but Patricia Montalvo’s classroom is still full.

She points to the white board, prompting the class of third and fourth graders — many of whom immigrated to the country within the last year — to read a word that’s broken down by syllable: ex | er | cise.

Hands shoot into the air and Montalvo cues them to read together. Voices echo through the classroom, but most pronounce the last syllable with a short vowel, “siz” instead of “size.” The teacher, who herself grew up in nearby Providence after moving from Bolivia when she was 3, reminds her students that the last letter is a “bossy E” that makes the “i” say its name.

“Ełæ±đ°ù-cise.” She exaggerates the last syllable and lets the class repeat her pronunciation. “What’s exercise?”

“When you work out,” a student offers.

“Ejercicio,” another calls out, providing the Spanish translation.

“In Spanish it’s ‘ejercicio,’ ” Montalvo nods. “Did you guys do exercises today?” Her class had just come from their recreation period. “What did you do?”

“Play with balloons,” a young boy responds. “It was taking a lot of energy,” he adds, smiling as he manages to incorporate another piece of vocabulary, “energy,” from the whiteboard.

This lesson is exactly the sort of English-learning opportunity Central Falls parents have been requesting for years. Now, thanks to pandemic stimulus funding, the district has finally been able to deliver — and leaders hope the programs can close long-standing achievement gaps between English learners and native speakers.

More than a third of the city’s residents were born in another country and some 45% of the school system’s 2,900 students are classified as multilingual learners. 

There’s a “clear discrepancy,” Superintendent Stephanie Toledo said, between the testing outcomes of students who are proficient in English versus those who are not, and English learners perennially lag behind.

But in the pandemic’s aftermath, Central Falls has gotten the chance to reimagine its programming with $23 million in federal grant money — its share of the unprecedented $190 billion nationwide for K-12 education delivered through three COVID stimulus packages.

For decades, state officials have considered Central Falls among Rhode Island’s most challenged school systems. The per capita income of the one-square-mile, 22,500-person city is Rhode Island’s lowest, below $18,000 a year, and financial control of the district has been in the state’s hands since the 1990s. In 2010, the district made national headlines when its leadership as part of a federal push to turn around low-performing schools.

With the infusion of COVID funds, leaders recognized the unique opportunity to uplift the school system. They crunched academic data to identify what student investments might deliver the highest impact. About 600 multilingual learners, they found, remained below the minimum English proficiency level to succeed in English-only classes, and many had languished there for years. 

Boosting these long-neglected students could address a “root cause” of the district’s years of underperformance, Toledo believed.

“We wanted to focus in on kids who have been with us but are not yet developing in English,” she said.

Afterschool language learning academies like the one where Montalvo teaches have become a key component of that new strategy. Research shows longer school days can improve students’ , and . Since October, some $308,000 has funded programs across all five of the district’s K-12 campuses, according to spending records the district provided to Âé¶čŸ«Æ·, with $1.4 million devoted to their continuation.

Though the programs are voluntary, more than 225 students have already enrolled, the district said, adding two hours of English learning to their daily schedules. The elementary school offerings are at capacity and have lengthy waitlists. The high school program, where some students work jobs or play sports after school, still has open seats. At full scale, the district says it will be able to serve all 600 English learners that the intervention targets.

It’s the right approach, believes Jannet Sanchez, who works as a guidance counselor for multilingual learners at the high school and coordinates the extended day program there.

“The amount of hours in the day that students get for English acquisition isn’t enough,” she said. The “biggest request” she gets from students and parents is for more language learning opportunities, she said.

Compiled over the course of the year, the afterschool sessions will add roughly 50 extra school-days’ worth of instruction, more than doubling the English-learning time students would likely get otherwise.

“Two extra hours a day is a lot,” said Buddy Comet, principal of Ella Risk. He had long advocated for a program like the one they now run and is thrilled the new funding makes it possible. “It allowed us to do something I already wanted to do,” he said.

Montalvo, who teaches multilingual learners both during the school day and in the afterschool program, recognizes what makes the afterschool sessions special. In her experience, youth who are still picking up English typically have a “silent stage” while absorbing the language. But in the extended day program, with 10 or fewer students per teacher, youngsters have a safe environment to develop their speaking skills. 

The context conveys to students, “Here we’re practicing. Make those mistakes. We’ll practice, we’ll learn and we’ll learn from each other,” Montalvo said.

That’s exactly what’s happened for Maribel Gregorio’s son David, who is 5. Speaking through a translator, she told Âé¶čŸ«Æ· she enrolled him because he was shy, but the elementary schooler has already “loosened up” and is now “more expressive” in English.

Once when she picked him up early from the program, he cried because he didn’t want to leave, she said.

An investment in equity

The afterschool program consists of three 40-minute blocks: one for speaking, one for reading and one for recreation. Every month or so, the leaders coordinate a field trip. In November, they brought students to watch Lyle Lyle Crocodile. For many, it was their first time ever going to a movie theater. So many friends and family wanted to come that the school had to upgrade to a bigger theater. Students were glued to the film and parents pitched in by forming a spontaneous popcorn-passing brigade, Principal Comet said.

To finance the operation, the district has so far spent roughly $8,000 on field trips, $17,000 on staff professional development, $71,000 on contracts with vendors and $212,000 on employee salaries, according to its expenditure records. Teachers who work at the afterschool program earn $40 per hour plus a stipend to compensate their lesson-planning time. Other afterschool staff such as paraprofessionals can earn $35 or more per hour thanks to overtime pay, Toledo said.

Receiving some $1,000 more in her monthly take-home pay is like “the extra whipped cream on top” for Montalvo. The work in itself is meaningful, she said, but as a teacher who already works long hours, she’s glad for the additional compensation.

Simultaneously, she knows the time also gives a reprieve to working families. “It’s a time for parents to have their kids here until 4:30,” the teacher said. “They can work a little longer.”

The afterschool lessons work in tandem with another new program for English learners — called a “newcomer academy” — which operates during school hours. Recently arrived immigrant children learning English alternate between bilingual classes and general education classes, meaning they get the chance to both learn in their native language and also be integrated with their English-speaking classmates. 

Now in its second year, the results have been immediate and dramatic. At Ella Risk, where the newcomer academy operates, multilingual learners outperformed their native English-speaking peers on the most recent state exams and had proficiency rates five times the state average for that group, Superintendent Toledo said, adding that the results “thrilled” her.

It’s too soon for quantitative outcomes from the extended day program, which launched just months ago. But Principal Comet already sees students’ growth. One of his main goals is to build students’ speaking abilities, an area where his multilingual learners have struggled on tests, historically. Classroom by classroom, the school leader sees students’ newfound confidence. 

As Comet walks into a new classroom where youngsters are playing with blocks, the principal is met with calls of, “Look!” as kids motion for him to see their block structures.

On his way over, a student pulls the principal aside to deliver a message and grins to reveal a gap in his smile.

“My tooth go out.”

Bumpy progress

The scene is more tempered at the high school, where about two dozen students stay for afterschool lessons one late November afternoon. 

In one classroom, students take turns reading aloud from a graphic novel. Most mumble, and several scroll on their phone or whisper among themselves while the teacher’s attention is elsewhere. When it’s time for a written reflection, the instructor resorts to begging.

“It’s no stress, write.” She walks from table to table pointing at the students’ worksheets, which sit mostly empty. “Even if it’s one sentence. One word.”

Next door in Jessica Olarte’s classroom, the vibe is more upbeat. She teaches multilingual learners during the school day and now leads a dozen students in a game of , quizzing them on English vocabulary and grammar. Students are unable to contain themselves and yell out when they know the answer. One names his avatar “The Best” and Olarte puts the nickname in ironic air quotes every time she reads the leaderboard. She appreciates the casualness of her time in the afterschool program.

“It’s not too strict. Like if they want to check with their Snapchat or their Instagram, go ahead. It’s not school.” It helps teachers “connect a little more” with their students, she said.

But the energy level is not the only difference between her classroom and the one next door. Olarte is the only instructor at the high school program whose racial and linguistic identities match the majority of her students. She is Hispanic and grew up in Pawtucket, the city that borders Central Falls. Meanwhile, the other teachers are white and monolingual. 

Research shows that educators of color and those who speak multiple languages improve outcomes for all students, but provide a particular boost to students who share the same identity. Central Falls has invested in helping its teaching assistants, who are predominantly Hispanic, earn their bachelor’s degrees and teaching licenses, but the process takes several years.

Teacher diversity — or lack thereof — is “something I wish would change over time,” said Montalvo, who, aside from several paraprofessionals, was also the only Spanish-speaking teacher at the Ella Risk extended day program. 

“When you have that background of, you’re undocumented, you’re from the same culture, you understand the social cues.”

Even for the handful of youth who speak Portuguese, not Spanish, Olarte makes an effort to learn some of their language as well as teach them English.

Stacy Lopes is one such student. The high school senior moved to Central Falls four months ago from the Cape Verde islands off the west coast of Africa. She’s clear why she spends the two extra hours after school each day.

“I want to learn English because I’m going to college and I will need it,” she said, looking up from a game of tic tac toe during recreation period.

Marvin Hernandez Trinidad shares her motivation. The 12th grader moved from Mexico a year ago and intends to go to college for engineering. He is “happy” during the afterschool lessons because he learns new English words, he said.

Montalvo, who works with the elementary schoolers, reminds young people of any age to take pride in their native tongue as they hone their skills in new one.

“Being bilingual is their superpower,” she said.

A 2021 from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research and the Latino Policy Forum argues that policymakers should consider prioritizing English learners for access to pre-K programs, especially those arriving with lower English skills and students with identified disabilities. Any plan to increase access to those services should include recruiting and retaining a bilingual workforce for the early childhood settings, the report adds.

Researchers examined attendance, grades, test scores and English proficiency among 14,058 English learners in pre-K, and 16,651 English learners in kindergarten through third grade in Chicago Public Schools, to determine which factors were associated with stronger outcomes for English learners and how schools can identify English learners who would benefit from additional support. In the 2021-2022 academic year, 330,411 students enrolled in Chicago Public Schools with 15,430 in preschool and 21,405 in kindergarten, according to . At least 46.6% of CPS students are Hispanic and 21% are English learners.

The report emphasized the positive effect of attending full-day preschool for English learners, which was associated with stronger attendance, English language development and early literacy. Between 2016 and 2018, 19% of English learners enrolled in CPS pre-K attended a full-day classroom compared to the district average of 34%, according to the report. English learners who enrolled in full-day pre-K attended 2.5 more days of school than their peers who enrolled in half-day classes.

Enrolling students in pre-K before age four also supported English learners’ language development and early reading skills. At least 90% of the students who had enrolled before age four scored almost one level higher on an English proficiency test. The study also found that those students were more likely to demonstrate reading proficiency in the beginning of kindergarten.

“We’re trying to open more and more classrooms and more and more seats that are full-day seats,” said Marisa de la Torre, managing director and senior research associate at the UChicago Consortium. “So we really think that this population of students will benefit from a full day pre-K classes.”

The students who attended CPS pre-K before age four still led their peers in reading proficiency even as far as third grade, according to the report. They also had better attendance, reading and math grades, test scores, and were more likely to demonstrate English proficiency, the report stated.

The 2021 report builds on a 2019 report from the University of Chicago and the Latino Policy Forum, a nonprofit promoting educational outcomes, affordable housing and immigration reform for the Latino community in Chicago and across Illinois. The earlier study examined 18,000 Chicago Public School students who began kindergarten as English learners and tracked their academic development through eighth grade. The study found that students who began kindergarten as English learners progressed to eighth grade on an academic achievement level that was similar or better than their peers who began kindergarten with English proficiency. Almost 80% of Chicago Public School English learners achieved English proficiency by eighth grade, with 76% earning proficiency by fifth grade. The research helped change the narrative about English learners, said Rebecca Vonderlack-Navarro, director of education at the Latino Policy Forum.

“For so long, English learners have been looked at through a real deficit lens,” she said. “It was always this comparison. But they’re always doing a snapshot of looking at a child at one point in time and how they were doing on a test.”

Those studies didn’t account for students who were still in the process of learning English and exiting English learner services, she added.

“So it was a really great kind of shift of narrative, that if we look at the data differently, we actually find these kids can and will do well when they’re given appropriate services and support.”

The latest study also builds on the advocacy work of the Latino Policy Forum, which has pushed to expand universal pre-K in Illinois, a in his run for office.

“No matter where that kid is in the system, they deserve to have these services,” said Rebecca Vonderlack-Navarro, director of education at the Latino Policy Forum. “They deserve to be identified for support with a common home language screener, and then they deserve this teacher who will know how to serve them.”

Earlier this spring, the Illinois State Board of Education to boost the bilingual teacher pipeline. Using federal covid relief funding, the grant covers the cost of tuition so current teachers can earn a full license to teach English learners.

Today there are 2,220 bilingual educators throughout Illinois who hold a non-renewable five-year provisional license: the Educator License with Stipulations with a Transitional Bilingual Education endorsement. But to continue teaching beyond that five-year term, teachers must earn a Professional Educator License. Teachers with a PEL can also earn a supplementary English as a Second Language endorsement. The two-year grant allows school districts to pay tuition for both teachers with the five-year license and those who hold the PEL but want to earn the bilingual endorsement as well.

Illinois requires a home language survey, a questionnaire given to parents and guardians that helps schools identify which students will need an English language proficiency assessment to determine their eligibility for English learner services. The pre-K assessment can begin as young as age three.

“What’s so important is that the teacher is explicitly prepared on how to build language in both the home language and in English,” Vonderlack-Navarro said.

In Illinois, teachers must be licensed by the State Board of Education and take 18 hours of courses to specialize in building both home language and English language acquisition. As policymakers look at expanding preschool opportunities not just in Illinois, but across the country, they should examine how the workforce is equipped to teach specialized priority populations like English learners, said Erika MĂ©ndez, associate director of education for the Latino Policy Forum.

“That has been the nuance that has been unpacked through some of the research as we’ve been disseminating,” MĂ©ndez said. “Just having someone with a bachelor’s degree in early childhood who might speak different languages doesn’t necessarily mean that they know how to teach building that language.”

Get together a bunch of policy researchers, though, and what do you have? It’s one of the less well-known ones. When we gather, we’re a “fracas” of policy wonks. Not an ounce of cohesion in the bunch. This is most fully true at the most focused levels: the more specific the topic, the more fractious the fracas. 

It’s certainly the case in my field, English learner policy, where years of serious research and debate have not yielded anything recently like a coherent manifesto or policy agenda to guide federal education leaders. Our work is too often vague and detached from English learners’ real needs. 

To that end, I spent much of the past year sharing a short draft of policy recommendations with more than 100 folks who know and care about English learners’ success — educators, researchers and advocates — to collect feedback and develop a slate of concrete reforms to significantly improve how the country and its schools serve these students. The result, , was published at The Century Foundation today. It provides a much-needed starting point for overhauling the Every Student Succeeds Act and other federal policies governing English learners’ education.

Above all, the report calls for a significant expansion in federal English learner investments. In the field of education policy, it’s not exactly fashionable to be direct about this. Policy wonks generally earn their way in this work by creatively reimagining existing systems, not simple, direct calls for resources. But in a moment when nearly one-quarter of U.S. children speak a non-English language at home, it’s clear that English learners deserve more federal funding. Much more.

, ESSA’s Title III, the core funding stream dedicated to English learners’ linguistic and academic development, was never sufficient to adequately support their success. It’s even failed at a more rudimentary level: since its inception in 2002, Title III funding hasn’t even kept pace with growth in the English learner population. The $664 million appropriated that year worked out to roughly $175 for each of the ~3.8 million English learners in U.S. schools in 2002. As of 2018 — — there were more than 5 million English learners, so the $737 million appropriated that year worked out to just $147 per child. What’s more, this analysis doesn’t take inflation into account. 

It’s not a complex situation: the United States is spending less per pupil on English learners now than we did in 2002, and that base amount was paltry to begin with. The solution should be commensurately simple: , Title III should at least triple in size, to roughly $2.2 billion per year (still just $440 in federal dollars per student). 

Atop this fundamentally critical funding increase, the report also calls for a series of targeted federal investments to shift how English learners are educated. Above all, these focus on rewiring the federal “English-only” approach to these students’ learning to instead support students’ English development and their emerging bilingualism. This tracks the suggesting that well-implemented bilingual education programs are the best means of supporting English learners’ linguistic and academic development. In particular, that integrate English learners and native English speakers in bilingual settings to be . 

Here’s the good news: public demand for bilingual education has grown in recent years. Here’s the bad news: every local and state effort to expand access to bilingual programs has been limited by the of the American teaching force. There simply bilingual teachers to go around. And, of course, scarcity almost inevitably produces inequity in public education — true to form, suggests that are increasingly slipping away from linguistic integration .

The project of expanding dual language programs in the United States is, at base, a subset of the broader goal of increasing teacher diversity. To that end, the report recommends two new federal grants programs: 1) a $200 million investment in creating and growing linguistically diverse teacher training pipelines, and 2) a smaller, $50 million funding pot for states willing to “pilot, redesign, and implement new bilingual teacher certification and licensure policies.”

As the country works to finally get the educational inputs right for English learners — more funding and better instructional programs — it’s also critical to update . At present, American schools only track the performance of linguistically diverse students up until the point when they reach their state’s definition of proficiency in English. After that, they are soon “reclassified” as former English learners and “exited” from that defined student group — meaning that their academic progress gets lumped in with the general student population. But this offers an incomplete picture, since former English learners’ performance in U.S. schools  tends to improve with their English abilities.

To address this challenge, the report recommends including “former English learners” in federal requirements for school transparency and accountability systems. That is, local and state leaders should be required to keep track of how English learners perform academically after they become proficient in English. This would provide a more complete picture of their linguistic and academic development — and how well schools are supporting each.

To be sure, today’s report doesn’t fully represent the views of any one of the scores of people who read and responded to it. Everyone suggested fixes, and no one person’s changes were wholly adopted — I even cut a few of my own favorite ideas. But the document does include a battery of ideas supported by most of the English learner stakeholders who engaged with the text. The ideas are as specific and actionable as we could keep them, and — if adopted by policymakers in Congress and the U.S. Department of Education — would make a real difference for millions of linguistically diverse children across the country. 

More than 56 percent of respondents said these students’ formal education was significantly disrupted, but they were not the only children to have suffered: Most did not believe they were disproportionately affected as compared to their English-speaking peers, despite evidence to the .

The answers were gleaned from a survey conducted in October by Off2Class, a company that provides curriculum, assessments and professional development tools to ESL teachers. The seven-year-old for-profit is headquartered in Canada but serves more than 90,000 students in 120 countries.

Nearly three-quarters of survey respondents were teachers: The others were tutors. Roughly half live in the United States though many are Americans living and working in other countries. 

Several of the questions were answered on a sliding scale though teachers were able to write their responses to open-ended queries. The results reveal their concerns about the long-term consequences of lower expectations for English language learners — and about their backsliding, especially in the area of grammar.

Some respondents were concerned about students’ mental health and the return of behavioral problems usually seen in elementary school — getting out of their seat at inappropriate times and name-calling — while others wondered whether students’ enthusiasm for school would return.

“Most of them just logged in on Zoom, left the computer and pretended not to care,” one educator wrote. “My main concern is that it has made them less interested in studying/engaging in future classes.”

Still others focused on the difficulty of learning a new language without close interaction with school staff.

“I think ESL learning is extremely difficult over the internet when it comes to pronunciation,” another educator said. “Students benefit from being able to mimic mouth movement and that can get lost on video chat.”

More than 44 percent of survey-takers said their schools supplied them with sufficient technology to weather the shutdowns. But more than a quarter disagreed.

It’s not surprising, then, that more than 62 percent of respondents paid out of pocket for some of the tools they needed to serve their students during the pandemic: They spent hundreds — or, in some cases, even thousands of dollars — on additional materials, including books, computers, routers, printers, webcams, headsets and memberships to online educational resources.

But no matter what they purchased, problems persisted. Motivation was a significant hurdle for students learning at home. Not only did they face a massive disruption in their lives because of school closures, but they also wrestled with a faltering economy and in many cases, lost wages for themselves or their families.

Educators said they, too, felt the strain: While many respondents reported an even greater passion for their work — one said the pandemic, “has only increased my desire to improve myself so I can be of further use to my students” — some were clearly overburdened.

Not all teachers received the help they needed from their schools. While more than 48 percent said they were supported by their employers during the crisis, nearly 20 percent strongly disagreed with the statement. More than 58 percent of respondents said their stress levels rose sharply during the crisis.

“The way we are treated, the amount of work versus pay, the disrespect and disregard of teacher’s mental health,” one teacher began, “I feel like quitting for good every single day.”

Despite the burnout, there were bright spots: Nearly half the respondents — 46 percent — said their confidence in online teaching skyrocketed during the pandemic. Kris Jagasia, CEO and co-founder of Off2Class, was glad to see teachers build their skills in this area.

“Looking forward, now that ed tech is here to stay, it’s really important that technology be considered very purposefully to make sure the right investments are being made for ELLs,” he said. 

Some respondents were reached through a Facebook group founded by Off2Class while others were contacted by email through the company’s customer database. Most use its software and were incentivized to participate through T-shirt giveaways and/or a $25 credit toward the purchase of the company’s goods.

Âé¶čŸ«Æ· contributed several questions to the survey, including those on student retention.

The results, collected between Oct. 22-29, were telling: While some educators might have wished for English language learners to have repeated a grade, only 22 percent recommended this for their own students.

Tim Boals is the founder and director of , an organization that provides language development standards, assessments, and resources to those who support multilingual learners. Based out of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, WIDA has 41 member states and territories which use their language standards and follow their guidelines for teaching these children. 

Boals is well aware of the disproportionate impact of the pandemic on traditionally underserved populations, including multilingual learners, but does not believe retention is the answer: He said schools should remember language acquisition takes time.

The real problem, he said, is some educators’ lack of faith in these children: If teachers label them unsuccessful, the children themselves will believe they are destined to fail.

“If we see kids as ‘behind their peers,’ the danger is that it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that denies them the future opportunities they need,” he said. “There are plenty of anecdotal examples of people going through most of their school careers at the bottom and then something happens that shows them their potential greatness and they turn it around.”

Success depends on a schoolwide buy-in, with every adult on campus working to create a welcoming and engaging environment for newcomer children and committing themselves to helping them learn English while they master content subjects. All this, Boals said, while respecting and building upon their students’ own languages and cultures.

“It’s a big job, but there are plenty of examples of schools that are succeeding,” he said. “We need to share those examples and ensure that educators have the resources and understanding to create and sustain those learning spaces for multilingual learners.”

The , derived from numerous sources that track immigration, details these students’ challenges and their impact on districts. Their number, difficult to ascertain on a national basis, represents a fraction of the 491,000 children under age 18 who arrived at the southern border in that same time period and remained in the country with unresolved immigration status in early 2020, according to RAND. The youngest among them were ineligible for school while some of the oldest never enrolled.

Roughly 75 percent of the children in the RAND study landed in just 10 states, including California, Texas, Florida, New York and Louisiana. Their arrival prompted the need for additional hires: RAND calculated that seven states would need at least 2,000 more teachers and other personnel to maintain student-staff ratios.

The need was even more acute in Los Angeles County and Harris County, Texas, which includes Houston: Each would need 1,000 additional educators, the organization concluded.

RAND researchers said they decided to study this population in part because their numbers have grown in recent years—and because their challenges are unique.

“Their needs are fundamentally different from those of many other immigrant children, and they are part of the future of the United States,” said senior policy researcher Shelly Culbertson. “They also have resilience and hopes and dreams—and by federal law they have a right to a public education.”

Despite a in 1982 that prohibited discrimination against students based on their immigration status, many young newcomers have been unlawfully turned away or shunted into inferior programs by school administrators who fear they will not graduate.

Oliver Torres, senior outreach paralegal at the Southern Poverty Law Center, an organization that has fought for the educational rights of newcomer children, said anti-immigration laws proposed and enacted across the country in recent years have had a chilling effect on many families, discouraging their participation in all elements of public life, including school.

Torres, a former English as a second language teacher, said new immigrants are so focused on simply reuniting with their loved ones — especially in the case of children separated from their parents at the border — that education has become less of a priority, a phenomenon he called “heartbreaking.”

Looking back to the years covered in the RAND study, he recalled the case of a 17-year-old boy from Guatemala held for more than six months at the controversial in Florida. The teen, who was only allowed outside for one hour a day, said he was pressured by staff to take medication to quell the emotional outbursts he suffered after being repeatedly told he would be reunited with his father only to see that promise broken. By the time of his release, the boy was too distressed to tend to his education.

“The idea of going to a two-hour night school class for English a couple of times a week seemed overwhelming,” Torres said. “It was such a level of trauma, that it was clearly going to take a significant amount of time to heal. All he wanted was just not to cry every day.”

Two districts serving new arrivals well

The teen’s experience echoed that of many undocumented children who have fanned out across the country in recent years. RAND, in addition to its nationwide view, also homes in on Jefferson Parish Schools in Louisiana and Oakland Unified School District in California, both of which have served these children for years. It lauded each for their admissions processes and for the academic support their immigrant students receive, including referrals for outside assistance.

RAND also praised the districts’ efforts to address students’ social-emotional needs, but administrators from both point to numerous ongoing challenges even prior to the pandemic, which caused a massive drop in enrollment among newly arrived students.

Veronica Garcia-Montejano, principal at Oakland International High School, a campus designed for newcomers, said her concerns for her students expand well beyond academic goals to their fundamental needs, including food and housing. Many are transient, moving between family, friends or the foster care system.

“They have a huge hurdle to overcome in developing that relationship with the person who is caring for them,” she said. “And if you are not an unaccompanied minor but haven’t seen your parent in years, you are in the same situation.”

Many newcomers are pulled into the workforce to manage financial obligations: Some have to pay back the smugglers who brought them to America, send remittances home, support themselves and contribute to their household, Garcia-Montejano said.

Her current students include two brothers, ages 16 and 18, living on their own. They have to balance their studies with earning enough money to pay rent.

“They are all they have,” she said.

During COVID-19, some students have qualified for rent relief but others have less formal agreements and are unable to seek official help, Garcia-Montejano said.

“We all have to assume the students are coming to the classroom with complex trauma, which presents itself in many ways, from overstimulation to withdrawal,” she said. “The most important thing for the adults in the building to do is to begin developing positive relationships with these students.”

Deborah Dantin, principal of Alice Birney Elementary School in Metairie, Louisiana, part of Jefferson Parish Schools, said one of her biggest struggles is in communicating with parents who do not speak English. Roughly 90 percent of her newcomer students and their families speak Spanish.

“We have lots of people on campus who speak Spanish, but it’s not the same as a direct call with a teacher or principal,” Dantin said. “We have someone translating, but it’s complicated, confusing and long.”

The communication barrier extends to the students themselves. Dantin would love to have a Spanish-speaking educator inside every classroom but until then, her school must employ other means to serve these children: Teachers sometimes use supplemental materials in Spanish to give students the support they need to make the leap to English.

And her school also offers dual-language classes for native English speakers and newcomers in younger grades. The offering helps Spanish-speakers read and write in their native tongue, a skill that will help them learn English because literacy is a transferable skill.

‘Don’t think of us as aliens’

Sua Ramos, a 17-year-old senior at Oakland International High School, remembers those early days trying to adapt to a new culture. Ramos, who identifies as non-binary, fled Honduras with their family after sixth grade rather than risk injury or death because of gang-related shootouts, common in their community. It was a difficult transition: they left friends and family behind and could barely utter a word in English.

“It was like I was on a different planet,” Sua said. “I didn’t know what the teacher was teaching. I was so confused. But as I got to know people, they helped me. I learned English little by little.”

RAND, in an extensive, expensive wish list, recommends the federal government improve the tracking of these students and create a records-sharing agreement with the Northern Triangle countries of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras similar to the one already in place with Mexico.

It says schools should work closely with local resettlement groups, federal and state agencies to help families access social, medical and legal services — and that the federal government should provide schools with additional funding for these students on a rolling basis as the money often lags their arrival.

RAND’s estimate includes those children who immigrated to the United States between Oct. 1, 2016 and Sept. 30, 2019 and was derived using data from spring 2020, just prior to the pandemic-related school closures that began in mid-March.

It combined three sources of data to formulate an “informed estimate” of where these children live. The first came from the , which had already examined where earlier groups of immigrants settled throughout the country. The second was the , which kept records on where unaccompanied children were placed with sponsors at the state and county level and the third was which gathers data on immigration proceedings throughout the country, collecting records from the departments of Justice and Homeland Security.

RAND found more than three-quarters of children who arrived with their families were under the age of 12 while 74 percent who came without a parent were between 15 and 17 years old.

Excluded from their study are the thousands of new immigrants who have crossed the border in the years since. Though the flow slowed during the pandemic, it skyrocketed upon news of Biden’s election. Persistent crime, political chaos and ongoing economic catastrophe, sometimes made worse by natural disasters, also played a role.

Some who were part of a massive encampment in Del Rio, Texas, have been admitted to the United States in recent weeks. Their arrival came around the same time that America welcomed thousands of newcomers from the Middle East, a trend that is expected to continue: Biden seeks to bring to the country through 2022.

The president just introduced new rules to for undocumented people brought to the United States as children and plans to admit next year, a figure that will no doubt include a sizable number of school-aged newcomers.

Ramos, the 17-year-old student from Oakland, hopes native-born Americans will reconsider old prejudices about the new arrivals.

“I’d ask them to be patient with us,” they said. “It’s not like we are dumb or something. It’s just there’s a language barrier. Give us a chance. Don’t think of us as aliens. We are people just like them who want a better life.”