Teachers and Financial Resources to Support EL Success

“We went with an all-hands-on-deck kind of philosophy.” —Laura Feichtinger McGrath

Teachers were Spread Thin

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. A majority of states face shortages of English as a second language (ESL) and bilingual teachers.¹ At the same time, a large number of general education teachers are not provided with preparation and professional development on effective practices for ELs.² These preparation gaps had implications for how teachers were able to respond during the shift to remote learning and the need for school systems and states to provide resources and training to support teachers in this transition.

Experts we spoke with highlighted a variety of issues that impacted teachers, along with how they adapted and developed new approaches to supporting EL students. A key observation was that ESL teachers took on more responsibilities and were sometimes pulled away from supporting ELs to fill in for general education teachers. Some school districts in Michigan, for example, reported having to reassign their specialized ESL teachers to general classrooms throughout the pandemic, which resulted in reduced language services for EL students. In Harrisonburg, ESL teachers in one school were reassigned to a first grade class and a second grade class, which meant they were not providing direct ESL support. “We went with an all-hands-on-deck kind of philosophy that took away from some targeted instruction for some students,” admitted Feichtinger McGrath. In other cases, ESL teachers saw their workloads increase during remote learning as they became responsible for multiple grade levels and had to figure out how to provide grade-level instruction to those English learners.

The all-hands-on-deck approach also meant the school system staff was providing more direct support to teachers in the classroom. Percy Calaff described the work she and her colleagues at Highline Public Schools engaged in to help ease teachers’ workloads by writing units for them:

They were desperate for materials; they were like, “every lesson is taking me forever to plan.” So we started taking our science units or social studies units, our literacy units, and building them on the virtual platform, giving them all the Google Slides and all the resources, and “you can just click here, and here's the read aloud for you and here's the electronic book for the kids, and here's the form you can have the kids use.” You know, putting all the GLAD strategies and things right into it so that a teacher could literally just click and follow.

Some interviewees also noted that the school day “went out the window” during remote learning, as teachers and school system staff were having to work long hours to accommodate this new mode of teaching and learning. One described meeting with parents at 7 or 8 o’clock in the evening, a practice that was framed positively because it provided the opportunity for more direct engagement with parents at times that were convenient for them. Asynchronous learning opportunities gave students, particularly those in high school, greater flexibility around when to engage in and complete their schoolwork. But that flexibility had an impact on teachers’ work schedules and made it challenging to fully disconnect from the workday.

Teachers Adapted to Using New Tools and Strategies

The shift to teaching online required new approaches to support student engagement and learning. 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 to receive one-on-one support. Others used text messaging and WhatsApp to maintain and increase communication with students and their families and develop community among students in a class. Klapholz said that teachers rallied together to provide the resources that EL students needed to support their learning, a sentiment shared by the majority of the experts we spoke with.

As the pandemic dragged on, some teachers became adept at navigating and using technological tools such as Zoom, Google Classroom, Nearpod, and Seesaw and embedding videos within their lessons. The use of video and digital tools proved useful for providing access to instruction that could be revisited when needed, said Anya Hurwitz of SEAL. “Using Google Classroom allowed teachers to share their slides [so] students could revisit them,” she said. “Teachers were making little videos, and kids could go back and look at them. Students were also making videos of their language and learning, and sharing it with their teachers,” she said. A lingering question for educators was how to maintain some of these approaches to learning and providing resources post-pandemic.

At some schools within the Internationals Network, teachers adapted resources to ensure digital accessibility.³ For example, one teacher shared a graphic organizer that she had used many times in her classroom. She put it up on the screen so that students could access it online. As she reflected on the lesson later, she realized that “a lot of the students were looking at the document on their phones. What looked great on an 8 ½ x 11 piece of paper,” Luft said, “condensed onto this little thing didn't work anymore. So she had to totally redesign the graphic organizer into smaller chunks, so students could actually use it on the phone, if that's what they were doing,” he said.

At the same time, teachers were working harder than ever and, in some cases, not seeing the same results with students, which made them feel ineffective. Some of the school system leaders and staff that we spoke with indicated that teacher retention and staff shortages were an issue they were following closely. A handful reported that schools were seeing teachers leaving mid-year; higher rates of turnover; difficulties with hiring; and a lack of bus drivers, custodians, and substitute teachers. Nationally, much has been written about a looming mass exodus of educators, but it remains unclear whether this threat will materialize.⁴ But what is clear is that teachers have faced an enormous amount of stress throughout the pandemic and have seen their jobs politicized in new ways. States across the country are working to increase teacher pay⁵ but more will need to be done in order to promote teacher retention in the long term.

“Districts are tripping over money, but I don’t get the sense that there is a clear and compelling vision about how to use the money.” —Joe Luft

State and District Decision-making Processes have been a Black Box

The federal government provided $190 billion one-time funds to K–12 education through three rounds of COVID-relief stimulus packages.⁶ Each iteration of relief has identified ELs as a population that should be targeted with stimulus funds.⁷ As of the writing of this paper, all education stabilization funds have been disbursed.⁸ However, information about how funding is being put to use at the school and student level is still scarce, particularly for English learners.⁹

According to David Holbrook, executive director of the National Association of English Learner Program Administrators, there has been a “disconnect between who's deciding how this money is spent and where the needs are, especially when it comes to ELs.” This disconnect is not at all surprising, considering that the majority of EL education leaders that we interviewed were not meaningfully included in determining how these funds would be spent in their own jurisdictions. Indeed, only a couple of our interviewees were consulted in initial stages and asked to compile a sort of EL wish list. These requests sometimes materialized, but usually only partially, and overall, the resounding message about the decisions that followed these initial consultations was that they were done in a “black box.”

Programs, Curriculum, and Staffing Need Investment

Whether consulted or not, all of our interviewees prioritized investing in human resource and programmatic needs over commodities. As Feichtinger McGrath of Harrisonburg, stated, “I don't want to buy anything else; we need more space and more adults to spend more time with kids, and you can't just buy those positions for a year." Indeed, when consulted, she said she asked for wraparound services for students, including mental health support, and funding to hire 11 new teachers. The district also spent a lot of money on summer school which was not focused on academics but on students’ socio-emotional needs. Ultimately, only about $250,000 was available to spend out of the millions allocated to the district after all other funding priorities were exhausted.

In Washington, DC, Passante and her team also made recommendations to get more adults into their buildings because they are understaffed and simply need more people to do a range of things. They also invested in specialists and social workers, as well as a tutoring program which, though not specific for ELs, could help meet their needs. The team tried to maximize federal COVID-relief funds by increasing overall academic and socio-emotional programs and making sure ELs are included, rather than buying something that will be used as a Band-Aid over a gaping hole for ELs.

In Washington State, Percy Calaff said that in addition to closing the digital divide and providing basic necessities like PPE and free meals at the district level, the SEA decided to use stimulus funds to maximize its long-term impact through a $10 million injection into dual language programs. Over the next two years, COVID-relief funds would supplement about $1.5 million that is already earmarked annually for such programs in the form of grants, up to $200,000, to LEAs to use for new or existing programs. The state also spent $3.5 million to design a curriculum on environmental education that can be used for migrants and bilingual students and done in partnership with the science department.

Unfortunately, though, as Holbrook stated, ELs are not usually considered until decisions are already made and then things are retrofitted to include them, which is not a way to equitably meet their needs. Instead, states and districts could develop a long-term vision for these funds, which could include developing dual language and bilingual programs, hiring teachers and paraeducators to work with students in their home languages, and developing materials in students’ home languages. According to Holbrook, "these are the types of programs that actually produce the kind of results we want to see in the long term.”