Teacher Workforce

As a nation, we are facing a shortage of educators who are prepared to effectively tailor their instruction and assessment practices to the English learners in their classrooms. In 2019, 32 states and the District of Columbia reported shortages of English as a second language and/or bilingual teachers.¹ While these data present an overall picture of shortages, they do little to illuminate whether practicing teachers have the requisite competencies and knowledge needed to help ELs thrive. According to Patricia Gándara and Julie Maxwell-Jolly, “teachers must understand the challenges that EL students face in adapting to a new culture, learning a new language, and integrating both the linguistic and cognitive demands of schooling simultaneously. Teachers must also have the pedagogical skills and strategies to address these challenges. And…the skill to organize their instruction in a way that meets the needs of both English learners and English speakers at the same time.”² Just as we need for all teachers to receive EL-specific training, bilingual teachers must also receive specialized preparation and ongoing professional development focused on bilingual teaching methods that promote students’ bilingualism and biliteracy.

A handful of states have developed programs, created policies, and amended existing regulations to increase EL students’ access to qualified teachers. New York State, for example, updated its regulations in 2014 to specify that English language development strategies be integrated into content area instruction through the use of co-teaching models that pair general education teachers with EL specialists.³ Likewise, in Washington State, the legislature has made investments in both the development of high school teacher academies focused on recruiting bilingual students into the teaching profession and in pathways for bilingual paraeducators to earn a teaching credential.⁴ These pathways include job-embedded learning where bilingual teacher candidates are able to work closely with experienced bilingual teachers.

To be sure, these state-level efforts will help boost the supply of bilingual teachers and enhance the skills of all teachers. Complementary investments and initiatives will be needed at the federal level focused on recruiting and preparing teachers who will support EL students from early education through high school.

Current federal investments in teaching include Title II of the ESSA, which is dedicated to enhancing teacher quality, and Title II of the Higher Education Act (HEA), which aims to strengthen teacher recruitment and preparation. Both lack a specific focus on preparing and supporting teachers to effectively serve ELs. The National Professional Development (NPD) grant program is the only federally funded program geared towards teachers of ELs. Part of Title III of ESSA, the NPD program provides competitive grants to institutions of higher education (IHE) to partner with local school districts and community-based organizations to train teachers to better support English learners. The grant competition is run every five years on back-to-back cycles. For example, past competitions were run in 2016 and 2017 and in 2011 and 2012. Many of the programs funded under NPD are working to help general education teachers earn an additional certification in the area of EL instruction, provide certification in dual language education, or help bilingual paraeducators become licensed teachers.

The federal government should do more to support the development of a teacher workforce prepared to meet the needs of English learners. We propose the following actions:

1) Expand the National Professional Development grant program to serve more IHE and school district partnerships and to reach teachers in every state. The last round of the NPD competition, in 2017, served only 42 grantees out of thousands of teacher preparation programs and school districts across the country who are in need of teachers prepared to effectively serve ELs.

2) Promote and fund community-based Grow Your Own programs for bilingual educators across early education and K–12; promote related ways to train teachers including community college baccalaureate programs.⁵

3) Amend Title II of HEA to include a grant program that would support partnerships to improve teacher preparation for working with English learners.

4) Expand the National Teacher and Principal Survey to include items related to the bilingual education workforce. The current survey should be modified to disaggregate whether teachers work in bilingual education (versus English as a second language). Questions should be added to ask if they hold a bilingual credential and/or speak a language in addition to English, to provide a better understanding of the linguistic diversity of the workforce.

5) Provide guidance and resources to states and districts on how to leverage federal funding including Title I, Title II, and Title III of ESSA to provide general education teachers with professional development geared towards strategies for supporting ELs. These strategies should include integrating language development and academic content, increasing their knowledge of second language acquisition, and supporting students’ home languages.

Early childhood programs have an advantage over the K–12 education system in that they employ staff who are more racially and linguistically diverse, thus offering greater capacity to support DLLs’ home languages. Yet the early childhood workforce is highly stratified, with immigrant and racially and linguistically diverse providers taking on lower-paid and lower-skilled (e.g., teacher assistant) roles.⁶ Coupled with the academic, bureaucratic, and linguistic barriers to obtaining academic degrees, these educators face challenges in earning the credentials needed to advance in the profession.⁷

Beyond the need to assist bilingual staff members in earning additional credentials, there is also a need to ensure that early educators receive ongoing professional development geared towards working effectively with DLLs and their families. States such as California have invested in evidence-based professional development and training to help teachers learn strategies and skills for supporting DLLs’ development, with a focus on how to support the home language.⁸ Federal efforts like the Early Head Start-Child Care Partnership grant program have been leveraged to offer family child care providers professional development on how to be an effective bilingual teacher and target DLLs’ bilingualism.⁹

We recommend the following actions to support the early childhood educator workforce in meeting the needs of DLLs:

1. Expand the National Teacher and Principal Survey (NTPS) to include teachers who work in pre-K and preschool programs that serve three- and-four-year-old children and to include information on the linguistic diversity of the workforce.
2. Encourage states to use child care quality dollars (e.g., Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF)) to incorporate DLL content in their professional development systems and to develop Grow Your Own programs that support bilingual teacher assistants in attaining credentials to become lead teachers.
3. Fund research to examine and highlight effective teacher preparation and professional development models focused on preparing early education teachers to work effectively with DLLs.
4. Provide guidance on early educator preparation and development, strongly encouraging states and workforce preparation systems to meaningfully incorporate content, training, and coaching on DLL-specific content as a requirement, not an optional add-on.