The COVID-19 pandemic has disproportionately impacted our nation's 5 million English learners and their families. This page represents a collection of the work our team has penned over the last year to document not only the effect school closures have had on these students, but also highlight key opportunities for leadership specifically geared towards helping multilingual communities across the country.
Considering that ELs have been among those most significantly affected by the pandemic and school closures, it is critical that SEAs take this opportunity to ensure that whatever set of indicators they choose to move forward with are disaggregated for each group of students, such as ELs.
Whether students return in person or continue to learn remotely, local educators must focus on evidence-based strategies that focus on empowering students rather than punishing them for experiencing difficult human emotions, conflicts, and situations.
Over the last year, stories and data have surfaced showing that the technicalities of remote education and as well as higher COVID-19 infection rates in their communities have created disproportionate barriers to ELs’ education.
At a time when schooling has been anything but conventional and in-person interactions between teachers and students are scarce, we must be thoughtful and intentional about how we assess ELs without exacerbating the trauma they have already experienced inside and outside the classroom. Ultimately, civil rights protections like national assessment requirements were created to ensure students are afforded equal opportunity to learn, and in times like these we must ensure these policies are not inadvertently precluding us from fulfilling our responsibility to ELs and their families.
Over 4.8 million English learners (ELs) have been impacted by school closures. ELs have unique learning needs and require specialized services to support their language development. As school districts across the country continue to develop strategies for how to best meet the needs of ELs, we have compiled a list of digital resources to help supplement learning at home.
We will update this list as we learn about new resources.
Federal guidance for ELs clarifies policy mandates but lacks ideas to help shape EL instruction during the coronavirus pandemic.
While many local teachers, school, and district leaders have gone to great lengths to meet the needs of ELs and their families during the coronavirus pandemic, they cannot do it alone. State leaders are well positioned to support districts and schools in ensuring that all schools have the resources, tools, and guidance they need to keep ELs on track.
The federal government has approved $190 billion in relief funding for the K-12 education system. However, as our team recently wrote, we have yet to see how these funds will be put to use to help ELs get back on track. Here are key pitfalls to avoid and recommendations schools and districts should consider to ensure they are maximizing their ability to boost ELs’ learning:
Over the summer, the Johns Hopkins University eSchool+ Initiative released their Analysis of School Reopening Plans that examines K-12 school reopening plans from all 50 states and DC across 12 categories. Using this resource as a starting point, we sought to learn more about the guidance state plans offered specific to English learners (ELs), including identification, reclassification, assessment, instruction, communication with families and more
As school districts prepare to open their doors(either virtually or in-person), here are six considerations that can help strengthen EL instruction in the upcoming school year.
COVID relief funding holds a lot of promise for schools’ ability to provide ELs with much needed supports. By now, it’s clear that remote learning has had a disproportionate impact on ELs’ learning opportunities as evidenced by higher absence rates, greater academic regression/stagnation, and more failing grades. As a result, each iteration of relief has continually identified ELs as a subgroup that should be intentionally targeted with stimulus funds.
As schools return to in-person instruction, the SLIFE field offers key insight on how to equitably serve ELs when time is of the essence.
An initial scan of states' COVID relief education plans reveal mental health, disengagement, and growing opportunity gaps among top issues for English learners as they close out the 2020-21 school year.
Leslie Villegas writes that time and thoughtfulness in spending are critical to ensuring underserved groups' needs are met.
As the anniversary of the nation-wide shutdown passes the one-year mark, many California school systems have taken steps to ensure English learners (ELs) remain prioritized and unforgotten.
It is widely acknowledged among experts that linguistic and academic development go hand in hand; DLLs cannot meaningfully improve one without simultaneously working on the other. Now, more than ever, it is critical for educators to connect the dots: for DLLs, language development must be coordinated within and across the academic content, even within virtual learning.
Through intentional communication and engagement local education leaders can help ensure immigrant children return as schools reopen.
In response to school closures, some states have tasked districts with developing plans for remote learning that pay attention to the needs of ELs, but details of these plans are still to come. A key consideration in the development of these plans is that online learning cannot evenly address all four domains of language development (reading, writing, speaking, and listening).
While extended school closures have upended education for all students, they have weighed even more heavily on English learners (ELs). Many of these learners lack access to electronic devices and the internet and some are taking up jobs to help their families during the economic downturn. Under these circumstances, ELs could fall behind on two fronts: English language development and subject-area mastery. Will these students have the teachers they need to make up for lost ground?