Experts Highlight Persistent Challenges in English Learner Education

Starting in July, I was able to spend an hour twice a week with prominent experts in English learner (EL) education, policy and language development thanks to a 6-week interview series conducted by Aída Walqui, senior research scientist at WestEd. These scholars have made it their life’s work to study and document the theories, processes and instructional practices that guide the education and language development of ELs. Many have influenced, informed and challenged my own thinking around EL education and policies, including in their discussions with Walqui. These scholars have a long-view, with many having worked in the field for thirty or more years, and have been witness to the pendulum swings that have defined EL education.

While there has been progress, some of the challenges facing EL education and policy have long persisted. Here are four key challenges that were raised during the interview series:

• The focus on academic language can lead to inequities in ELs’ education. Many of the scholars interviewed for the series reflected on how language is socially constructed to reflect the dominant power structures in society. For students whose languages are marginalized, their experience of schooling can be marked by constant corrections to their languages and forms of expression. When we talk about ELs trajectory there is often a demarcation between conversational English and academic English. George Bunch, professor of education at the University of California-Santa Cruz, elaborated on this issue,
  
  “The notion of academic language was based on Jim Cummins’ research and the idea that ELs quickly learn conversational English and it takes them many years to learn academic language. This was for good reason, there were important problems going on that that framework helped address...But as many things in education, these things take a life of their own and become problematic...If you have already assigned the student as not having the language needed supposedly to be able to engage in academic work well it’s pretty much all over then...by definition you have to go somewhere else and do something more minimalist until you have that special magical language to be able to come and do the real work of school.”
  
  In other words, when the focus is placed on the acquisition of and proficiency in academic language, ELs often get pushed into less academically rigorous work and into more language instruction, explained Bunch. The discussion was a good reminder that it can be easy to just say that it takes an EL a certain number of years to achieve proficiency in academic English and ignore the consequences of the statement. We have elevated models such as the Internationals Network for Public Schools precisely because of their focus on integrating language instruction with content instruction and holding EL students to high expectations using rigorous instruction.
  
• English learner assessment systems are flawed. Due to the pandemic, many English learners did not have an opportunity to take their end of year English language proficiency exam or to participate in state standardized assessments. These data are used to track ELs’ progress in learning English, make reclassification decisions, highlight ELs’ academic performance and as school accountability indicators.
  
  However, standardized assessments fail to present the full picture of what EL students know and can do. As Ofelia García, emeritus professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, pointed out, “With bilingual children, every time you assess a child in only one language you have to remember that what you’re doing is really quite unjust because you’re preventing that child from using their whole repertoire.” While ESSA does allow states to develop and administer assessments in students’ home languages, the development and implementation of these assessments comes with a host of policy and practical considerations.
  
  EL students as a subgroup often have poor performance on standardized assessments and many advocates argue that these opportunity gaps serve as evidence that ELs are being underserved. But as we have written about many times, the issue of ELs’ academic performance is much more nuanced and reflects accountability and data systems that fail to take into account their entire academic trajectory.
  
  Kenji Hakuta, professor emeritus at Stanford University, captured the idea in comments related to the need for policies to include a vision for what EL students should achieve, “If you look at our reclassified ELs in almost every state, they are doing better than the English only students on a lot of these academic measures. Currently research doesn’t focus on those students as much as they should, tracking and monitoring [focus] on current ELs and not former ELs—our system for understanding and looking at the problem is excluding from the sampling space the kids who will help us fuel the vision of where we want to go.”
  
• Many English learner policies are deficit-oriented. English learners now represent 10 percent of the K-12 student population and over 30 percent of the young child (0-8) population. Yet ELs still remain at the margins of many policy conversations and decisions. The history of English learner education in the United States is marked by court cases that set precedent for school desegregation, enshrined their rights to an equal education, and set criteria for monitoring compliance in providing ELs with required language services. Federal policy has mandated services for ELs dating back to the Bilingual Education Act of 1968 and increased attention to ELs in state accountability systems. States and districts have then interpreted these laws and policies in a variety of ways leading to disparate educational experiences for EL students.
  
  As Magaly Lavadenz, director of the Center for Equity for English Learners at Loyola-Marymount University, stated in her conversation with Walqui, the inequities ELs face are not simply due to poor implementation, but due to deficit-oriented policies, “A majority of our policies...were framed around what [EL students] were missing. English learner education was marked primarily as compensatory education to make up for something they were lacking.” By framing ELs in terms of what they lack, the effect has been to make segregation and assimilation normative practices in U.S. schools, which then “trickle down into the classroom, to deficit practices, to the lack of representation of students of color and their history in our curriculum and our instructional materials, in teacher preparation and actually in the professional development of teachers as well,” she argued.
  
  One way to address these issues in the classroom is by strengthening teacher preparation. Lavadenz emphasized that pre-service teachers must become aware of who their students are and the resources and linguistic skills they have. She highlighted the concept of ideological clarity, “So this idea of beginning in per-service education and continuing through your career as an educator is constantly reflecting and examining your own beliefs and the ways we have been socialized...to believe certain ways about others and...the way that institutions have really served to oppress our most vulnerable student populations including English learners...We need to prepare our new teachers to reflect on those systems and to know what they are.”
  
  Asset oriented approaches towards English learners require shifts not only in teacher preparation but also in the instructional methods used to facilitate their language development. Luckily, states like California and Massachusetts have shifted away from English-only policies to embrace the opportunity that bilingual education offers to help advance ELs’ academic and linguistic growth.
  
• The terms we use to describe and categorize English learners are problematic. In the field of education, the term English learner is used to identify and categorize students who require specialized instruction to help them acquire and become proficient in English. ELs are considered a specialized subgroup of learners that receives targeted federal funding and in many states, additional funding to support their learning needs. The label EL, in other words, is a tool for separating and distinguishing these students from the general student population.
  
  But has the term EL done more harm than good? “I worry a lot about labels. If you think about it, why it matters is teachers' perceptions of students really depend a great deal on the mechanisms we use to categorize students,” said Stanford professor Guadalupe Valdés, “And once you put students into a category it’s very hard to think of them in any other way.”
  
  Indeed research has demonstrated that teachers' perceptions of ELs may lead them to water down instruction and utilize less rigorous teaching methods. EL classification has led students to be segregated from their non-EL peers in classrooms focused on language instruction at the expense of academic content. And the focus on learning English had led to policies that eliminated bilingual education in favor of English-only approaches.
  
  The arguments against the term EL is linked to the deficit perspective that has long been used to define these students. García, who proposed the term emergent bilingual, shared the history behind it. “When I started talking about emergent bilinguals it was because the field had totally silenced the word bilingual, it was all about English language learners. How do you bring bilingual back in an era when it had been completely silenced?” She wanted to emphasize to the larger field of English as a second language educators that ELs were not simply learning English but becoming bilinguals in the process.

The challenges highlighted in the interview series reflect the difficulty of aligning research, policy and practice. While we can dismiss the term English learner as inadequate and bureaucratic, our current education system is shaped around policies (e.g. accountability, assessments, funding) that identify and categorize students in order to highlight the gaps and inequities in the system. The question is how to reimagine and redesign our education system to focus not simply on perceived deficiencies but to elevate the considerable assets that students bring into schools and classrooms.

States that have been successful in promoting bilingual education have framed the issue in terms of the individual and societal benefits. And the message seems to be catching on: the Biden/Harris educational platform includes a plan to help teachers earn additional certifications, including in bilingual education. More bilingual teachers will mean more bilingual programs that can support ELs’ full linguistic repertoire and develop their considerable linguistic assets.

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