English Learners Need More Federal Support to Succeed, Not Less

In March 2025, President Trump signed an executive order to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education (ED). Officially eliminating ED, however, requires congressional approval—a fact that the administration is trying to sidestep by outsourcing core education programs to other federal agencies. Among the programs moving from ED to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is Title III, the only federal grant program specifically geared towards supporting English learners (ELs) and recent immigrant students. 

According to the administration, these new partnerships are intended to break up the federal education bureaucracy and streamline activities to ensure students are being served efficiently. At this point there are more questions than answers about how these organizational shifts will work, though some expect these moves will create more bureaucratic mess. When it comes to English learners, whether the DOL will truly be “best positioned” to ensure states and schools are meeting these students’ academic and linguistic needs remains an open question. A new report evaluating research evidence on Title III suggests that the program’s ability to achieve its goals has more to do with inadequate funding than ED’s ability to effectively administer it.

The report, authored by researchers from Education Law Center, Research for Action, and the Center for Outcomes Based Contracting, investigates how federal support through Title III has impacted ELs’ educational opportunities. This study was part of a broader body of work seeking to understand the “implications of reducing the scope and nature of federally funded education programs.” The research team screened and reviewed empirical studies between 2015 and 2025, including textbooks, policy guidance, advocacy documents, policy critiques, and demographic profiles of ELs in different contexts. Their aim was to assess whether the goals of Title III have been achieved.  

Unfortunately, the researchers’ ability to answer this question was hampered by the cancellation of a comprehensive evaluation of Title III last year. This study would have provided insight into how states, districts, and schools are implementing Title III, especially in light of changes mandated by the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) of 2015. ESSA modified key aspects of Title III, including accountability and EL entry/exit criteria, and heavily encouraged using research evidence to select and support language instruction. Despite the gap left behind by this cancellation, the available evidence led the researchers to conclude that implementation challenges and inadequate funding have held back the program’s ability to meet its goals. 

As a reminder, Title III is supposed to help ELs attain English proficiency and academic achievement, build teacher and administrator capacity, and support family engagement. The researchers found a robust evidence base detailing the types of programs, practices, and instructional strategies that work best in helping these students improve their English language proficiency (ELP) and academic learning, particularly in the early grades. For example, research increasingly favors bilingual approaches over English-only instruction, a finding that has only strengthened over the past several decades. However, less than 20 percent of ELs nationwide are currently educated in bilingual settings. According to the report, limited access to bilingual programs for ELs stems from obstacles such as staffing difficulties and political considerations.  

Despite the overwhelming evidence on what works best for ELs, research-informed practices are not necessarily showing up in the classroom. The researchers cited a shortage of specialized educators equipped to address ELs’ diverse needs may be behind this limitation. Additionally, evidence showed that general education teachers and school leaders are often not trained on how to adequately serve ELs. These gaps in staffing and training mean that schools struggle to implement strategies proven to help ELs develop English proficiency and high academic achievement.

And lastly, inadequate Title III funding was identified as a chronic barrier to delivering evidence-based practices for ELs. As the report notes, funding has remained relatively flat over the years even as the EL population has increased. When adjusted for inflation, Title III funding levels have actually decreased by 24 percent since 2002. Previous research has found that simply maintaining the funding standard set by Congress in the early 2000s would require bringing Title III funding levels up to $1.21 billion, while pushing the standard closer to adequate funding levels would require that figure to be closer to $2 billion. 

Historically, the federal government has played an important role in supporting the nation’s ELs and immigrant students. It has provided dedicated funding, bolstered accountability and reporting, and offered legal protection through civil rights oversight, enforcement, and guidance. It has also invested significantly in data, research, and technical assistance to advance the quality of ELs’ education. And as the brief notes, the last comprehensive review of Title III in 2012 found that the grant program has been successful in increasing awareness among schools and districts on the particular needs of EL students. 

The policy and research landscape has changed considerably since 2012, and it is hard to say how Title III should be improved—regardless of which federal agency is doing the work—without an updated evaluation of the program. 

One thing is clear: shrinking the federal government’s role in EL education will not help Title III meet its goals. Improving ELs’ education opportunities and outcomes in line with Title III’s goals requires increased federal funding and targeted technical assistance to help states and districts implement evidence-based instructional practices for ELs—conditions the researchers found to be perennially lacking. Recent actions may only compound this challenge. This includes the spending bill passed by Congress—and signed by President Trump—that maintains Title III spending at $890 million. Although this is a “win” compared to the alternative (President Trump’s budget zeroed out Title III funding altogether), this static amount clearly falls short of the type of investment needed to fulfill Title III’s goals.