Executive Summary
The COVID-19 pandemic upended the education of students across the United States. While early reports bordered on catastrophic, school systems gradually adapted and innovated to close gaps in access to technology, strengthen instruction, and enhance family communication and engagement. Nevertheless, disruptions to in-person learning had a disproportionate impact on English learners (ELs) due to challenges in accessing and engaging with remote learning and limitations in delivering language services online.
To date, state and local assessment data for ELs has been lacking, which has made it difficult to truly understand how the pandemic affected their opportunity to learn. We interviewed 20 EL advocates, experts, and researchers across the country to understand how screening, identification and reclassification, assessment, instruction, engagement and digital access, and funding for EL students was affected.
EL Screening and Assessment
The processes used to screen and identify ELs were adapted to overcome barriers to in-person screening. Virtual alternative procedures offered schools and districts a lot of flexibility but there was a lot of room for error due to limited and imperfect information. In response, many of our interviewees erred on the side of caution to ensure that no student fell through the cracks. Provisional identification procedures led to an inflation of the number of currently identified ELs going into the 2021–22 school year.
Unlike screening, the majority of school districts were not able to offer a remote option for the English language proficiency (ELP) exam that all ELs are required to take each year. In 2021, the federal government granted significant flexibility in this area, which resulted in uneven test administration within and across states.
Of students who were tested, exam outcomes show that language development was mixed. Interviewees said that the pandemic did not impact all grades or language domains evenly. Productive skills, such as speaking and writing, were negatively impacted the most, with some speaking scores actually going negative. Receptive skills, such as listening and reading, remained relatively steady, with reading growth actually increasing for some students.
Remote Learning
Research has identified a divide in internet access and technology among low-income and immigrant-origin students, groups that have significant overlap with the EL population. These gaps disrupted student attendance and learning and school districts around the country worked diligently to provide devices and hotspots to students.
EL experience with remote instruction varied considerably. Younger students appeared to be the most negatively affected by remote learning due to their limited experiences with formal education and shorter attention spans. Many school systems also did not feel it was developmentally appropriate to have younger students on screen for most of the day, so they had less English instruction because of reduced direct virtual instruction from teachers due to limitations in screen time. Older ELs on the other hand, were impacted most by lost opportunities to interact with and learn from their peers.
Remote learning made it challenging to provide ELs with the full spectrum of instructional tools to support their learning. For example, interviewees noted that teaching without the usual classroom visual scaffolds, such as charts, pictures, and diagrams, was difficult and that many English as a second language (ESL) educators were eager to teach in person. Others emphasized the fact that remote learning did not provide sufficient opportunities for students to receive targeted English language development (ELD) instruction, to engage in conversations with peers, and to practice and use academic language. School districts also had different policies about unsupervised breakout groups.
Teacher Support
Even prior to the pandemic, states and school systems faced challenges in employing a teacher workforce equipped with the specialized knowledge and skills to support ELs. Experts we spoke with highlighted a variety of issues that impacted teachers and described how they adapted and developed new student support approaches. ESL teachers took on more responsibilities and were sometimes called to fill in for general education teachers. In other cases, ESL teachers became responsible for multiple grade levels. The all-hands-on-deck approach also meant that school system staff was providing more direct support to teachers. For example, one district helped ease teachers’ workloads by writing instruction units for them.
Teachers across the country extended themselves to meet students where they were, working with children on the sidewalk in front of their homes, meeting up with students in parks and parking lots, and setting up times for them to come to school for one-on-one support. As the pandemic dragged on, teachers became adept at using technological tools and embedding videos within their lessons, which could be revisited when needed. Some adapted resources to ensure digital accessibility.
COVID-relief Funding for ELs
The federal government provided $190 billion one-time funds to K–12 education through three rounds of COVID-relief stimulus packages. Each iteration of relief has identified ELs as a population that should be targeted with stimulus funds, yet information about how funding is being put to use at the school level to support EL students is still scarce. Most of the experts we interviewed were not meaningfully included in these discussions. Instead, products and services were most often retrofitted to include ELs, which is not a way to equitably meet their needs.
All of our interviewees placed a heavy emphasis on investing in human resource and programmatic needs over commodities. Many spoke to the need for wraparound services for students, including mental health support, and funding to hire new teachers, specialists, and social workers. Others mentioned summer school and tutoring programs, closing the digital divide, and providing basic necessities like personal protective equipment and free meals. Unfortunately, however, there were few tangible investments in new asset-oriented language programs, such as dual language, and inclusive curriculum for ELs.
Conclusion
The educational experiences of English learners during the pandemic were complicated, even conflicting at times, which can make it difficult to understand opportunity gaps. However, the barriers that ELs faced before and during the pandemic will persist unless there is a fundamental shift in how these students are viewed by policymakers and other local leaders across the country away from deficit oriented approaches and towards practices that acknowledge the assets they bring to the classroom.