U.S. Departments of Ed and Justice Release ELL Toolkit

The number of English language learners (ELLs) in the U.S. has grown by over 60 percent— an increase of more than 2 million students— in the last two decades. But, as the population of ELLs rises, many schools find themselves ill-equipped to support these students and have struggled to comply with related civil rights laws.

To help meet the needs of these students, the U.S. Departments of Education and Justice released their completed 10-part English learner toolkit yesterday, providing a wide array of tools and resources for states, districts and schools supporting ELLs. Specifically, the toolkit shares best practices on: identifying ELLs, developing high-quality English language programs, integrating ELLs with monolingual peers, monitoring and exiting ELLs from language services, and ensuring effective communication with families of ELLs.

The toolkit comes as a follow-up to the federal guidelines issued in January that reminded states of their obligations under civil rights law to support ELLs. In particular, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 require public schools to provide services to help students gain English fluency and ensure equal access to schools’ educational programs. (For more information, on ELLs and federal policy, see here and here.)

At a total of 156 pages, the toolkit is a strong signal that the U.S. Department of Education takes ELLs’ success seriously. With the release of the toolkit, the Department of Education emphasized its “commit[ment] to equity and access for all students, and in particular, English learners.”

“In our country, we have a valuable yet untapped resource in our EL student population,” said Libia Gil, assistant deputy secretary and director of the Office of English Language Acquisition.

This is true. And the strength of the toolkit is that it provides concrete examples of best practices for supporting these students as opposed to vague policy recommendations. The toolkit has multiple samples of home language surveys, checklists for selecting placement tests, self-monitoring aids, diversity self-assessments and direct links to a variety of services to digitally monitor ELLs’ progress.

As a former general educator who worked with dual language learners, I recognize the new toolkit as a convenient, comprehensive resource to strengthen teachers’ practice. One particularly helpful portion shares examples of teacher evaluation frameworks embedded with specific examples of what high-quality teaching for ELLs looks like. This is part of a project underway by the American Institutes for Research (AIR) to ensure teacher evaluation systems pay sufficient attention to educating ELLs. The frameworks provide clear targets and systematic reflection on how to support ELLs in the areas of planning, instruction, behavior management, data tracking and more.

However, it is unclear to what extent the toolkit’s suggestions and resources will be implemented at the state, district and local level. Every chapter of the toolkit explicitly reiterates that the Department of Education “does not mandate or prescribe particular curricula, lesson plans, assessments, or other instruments in this toolkit” and the resources are only “provided for the reader’s convenience.” While this level of flexibility is important, it also leaves a lot of gray area in terms of what states and districts will actually put into practice. And, as my colleague Conor Williams wrote in January, federal guidance that is “broadly encouraging” may prove “too broad to meaningfully alter how schools, districts, and states serve DLLs.”

Nonetheless, the toolkit is a useful springboard to encourage best practices nationwide for ELLs. It signifies a recognition at the federal level that ELLs are a vital asset that should not be overlooked. While court cases can reactively settle issues of non-compliance, we must also work to proactively equip schools to serve ELLs well. The toolkit is a step in that direction.

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This post is part of New America’s Dual Language Learner National Work Group. Click here for more information on this team’s work. To subscribe to the biweekly newsletter, click here, enter your contact information, and select “Education Policy.”"