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Recent policy history has emphasized the implementation of coherent systems to support students, especially to address key groups such as multilingual learners. However, the educational literature lacks documentation of strategies and descriptions for how to create systems within schools for multilingual learners in the areas of literacy, language development, and social-emotional learning (SEL). Although educators are beginning to understand what is required for multilingual learner success, schools and districts struggle to move from their current reality to one that truly exemplifies the promise of equity in education for all students. In this book, we explore how schools develop dynamic multi-tiered systems that support the academic, social-emotional, and literacy development of English learners (ELs).
While the population of students designated as ELs has grown to 10.1% of public school students in the United States (approximately 5 million students), achievement data show that they lag behind their peers. Nationally, only 68.4% of ELs graduated from high school in the 2017ā2018 school year, compared with an 85% graduation rate for all students, according to federal data (NCES, 2020). While there is an overall upward trend in graduation rates for ELs from 57% in 2011 to 68% in 2018 (OELA, 2020), other metrics suggest that ELs are still not getting access to the same opportunities for learning. Only 12% of ELs scored āat or above proficientā in mathematics in the 8th grade on the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP, 2019) compared with 25% of students not classified as ELs. The reading results from the NAEP that same year showed only 3% of 12th grade ELs and only 4% of 8th grade ELs scored at or above proficient, despite an already long period when school systems worked toward college and career readiness standards for all students (NAEP, 2019) The percentage of ELs who scored below basic in reading was 72% in the 8th grade and 79% in the 12th grade, an indication that the goals of current reforms in standards-aligned curriculum and accountability for improving outcomes for ELs have not yet been realized (NAEP, 2019).
Since ELs are a growing population of students, it is increasingly important to determine the quality of their learning experience and understand their implications more deeply. Too often, ELs are perceived as a homogenous group without attention to differences in linguistic assets or academic preparation and without an understanding of or value placed on their ability to read, write, and speak in their primary language (GarcĆa et al., 2008). Furthermore, some ELs are misidentified as students with disabilities or, in contrast, are not referred early enough due to the complexity of assessing their needs (Losen et al., 2015). For students with limited and interrupted formal education (SLIFE), there are not only cultural and linguistic differences, but as with any student, social-emotional factors to consider in assessing the literacy level of older age and adolescent ELs. Newcomers from other countries with interrupted or limited schooling may not have access to transcripts of their schooling experience, so there is often a gap in understanding what their experience of school has been like (Decapua, 2015). Lastly, a significant number of ELs are born in the United States or come from households that are multilingual, including English as a home language (Menken et al., 2012). The needs of such a culturally and linguistically diverse student population cannot be addressed with status quo curriculum and indeed cannot be addressed even through better pedagogical or instructional strategies alone. In addition to these elements, the complexity of serving multilingual learners also requires a systems approach to school improvement.
This book identifies key systems criteria that not only show what effective practices look like but also outline methods used by school and district leaders to manage the challenging processes required for authentic culturally and linguistically responsive teaching to be sustained. We describe our work partnering with schools to build meaningful, context-specific solutions and coherent but dynamic systems to serve ELs grounded in the stories of classroom teachers and school administrators. We are not the first to propose systems thinking as necessary to school improvement, but we make systems thinking come alive through practitioner stories and examples of how system elements interact to create success. The following vignette of a pair of co-teachers at a small elementary school exemplifies the type of stories we share throughout this book, demonstrating how educators seek ways to improve planning and instruction to serve their multilingual students and how systems thinking can help schools improve at a greater scale for a larger number of students.
Students and Teachers in Need: A Vignette
Lois is a general education 5th grade teacher at Garden Elementary who has been teaching for five years but has found that her current group of students consists of an even more diverse student population than in prior years. She has a 5th grade inclusion classroom with 30 students, including five monolingual English students with Individualized Educational Programs (IEPs), ten EL students at varying levels, and 15 English-only students without IEPs. Lois is overwhelmed by the diverse needs of her students. Although she is constantly planning, she often feels like there arenāt enough hours in the day to tailor the instruction to meet the needs of all her students. Sometimes she is not sure she even knows how to start.
Lois is happy to have the chance to talk with Maia, the English as a New Language (ENL) teacher, about her ten students who are mostly newcomers, since she has little experience teaching this population and does not really know how to meet their language and learning needs. She also co-teaches three days per week with Joan, a special education teacher, but most of their planning time is once a week during lunch, and that just doesnāt seem to cut it. She has no formal planning time with Maia. She shared her frustrations in an interview:
I didnāt get trained in ENL methods, and Iām struggling to know the right ways to support my students. I have many struggling students in the class, and Iām learning how to better differentiate for them. I love working with Maia and getting her input, but it is hard to find a way for her to help since I am doing most of the planning, and she is so busy. The home language assessment I ordered didnāt come through for my Spanish-speaking students until late fall, and I couldnāt find one in the right language for one of my students. Itās hard to know how to see what they know already in order to help them in the right ways.
Maia is a part-time ENL teacher who divides her time between Garden Elementary and a middle school located a mile away. She works 20 hours per week and has a caseload of about 60 students, many of whom are struggling learners, beginner ELs, or newcomers who need a lot of additional support. Many of these students are preparing for state exams and are feeling fear and pressure to do well when they may not be emotionally or academically ready.
A Portrait of Lois and Maiaās Students
Maia described two of her students who are both Spanish speakers at different levels. Miguel and Jorge are both the same age and are Spanish-speaking bilingual students from Mexico. Jorge entered the country three years ago, but Miguel just arrived this year.
According to Maia, Miguel is quiet, thoughtful, and interested, and he responds well to one-on-one conversations about content. He has a very strict stepfather who is very dominant in the household. Miguel is quiet and shy about speaking in English. He is not yet speaking in English as a newcomer and is also shy in general, not as talkative as some of his Spanish-speaking peers even in his home language. He is nervous about getting the work right but collaborates with his group, and they are supportive. Maia says:
When we met, his parents said they felt unsure about his group projects and want him to do a lot more individual preparation for testing so he can succeed. I know it can be challenging to assure them that we are trying to support students in all their needs. Miguel is progressing and writing full sentences. He loves to play sports with a small group of friends on weekends. Teachers notice that he is shy but opens up when he has a friend or two to work with him in class. Miguel is quiet, but he has a lot of resolve. He decided he didnāt want to go to a newcomer school with all English learners because he felt he would learn more of the language in having to work with native English speakers. That was his decision.
Maia describes Jorge, on the other hand, as outgoing and social; he switches comfortably between English and Spanish and is fluent and articulate in conversation. When it comes to written language, Jorge both struggles with reading the texts of his 5th grade reading materials in both Spanish and English and often feels disorganized and a sense of frustration with spelling and various forms of written communication. Although he came to the United States in the second grade, he had not been able to receive any Spanish instruction. He did not have a lot of previous schooling in his home country of the Dominican Republic. He received many foundational language supports as he learned English but was also self-conscious about having teachers work too closely with him in the classroom. He was only willing to work with a teacher one on one in an after-school setting.
Maia said, āI have Jorge visit the kindergarten class once a week to be a helper in hopes that he will also learn more from the curriculum and internalize some of the basic phonemic skills he is missing.ā Jorge also loved to play sports, too. He also very much liked dancing, especially with girls, and had a large group of friends. If he works in a larger group in class, he tends to talk socially for long periods of time so he needs to sit with a group who will help keep him focused. Sometimes he worked alone or one on one with a class partner who is more focused, depending on the task.
Another of Maia and Loisā students, Lila, was a student who was a first-year newcomer. She struggled a bit to adapt to U.S. schooling when she arrived but now at mid-year is having a much better time adjusting to her class. She is a student from Sierra Leone who speaks Krio, a Creole language. She went to school in her home country and is managing well with the transition, even in her first year. Her mother is fluent in English and can help her with the work when she needs help in English, and Lila also has some prior knowledge of English from her mother and from having learned English as a subject in school in Sierra Leone. Lila is very social and has made lots of friends. She is also in the student council and is joining some of the student clubs after school.
Maia concluded, āAll three students have different needs. It is amazing how rich their experiences are and how they respond differently to the way instruction happens in class. Their personal experiences become so important to the decisions we make in teaching.ā
Combatting Teacher Isolation
Lois and Maia do their best to talk in the hallway, after school, or occasionally on the phone or by email about the students. Lois is trying to learn how to adapt her curriculum but is unclear about how to incorporate language objectives into her content objectives for so many different levels of ELs. Miguel, Jorge and Lila each need a different approach to the lessons and subject areas in the class.
Maia has 15 years of experience but feels the constraints of the role she has in the school and the kind of impact she can actually have:
I work part time and have little time to collaborate with the five to six teachers I work with across the two schools. Often it feels like the kind of work I am doing is crisis intervention. I feel like I am putting a bandage on a gaping wound. In our elementary school, there is a need to priori-tize special education, since we have a 25% special education population. ENL is seen as less of a priority since we have fewer students; however, they have real needs, and I worry about some of them falling through the cracks. I spend a lot of time with the struggling students and newcomers. However, students like Lila could use more support with some of the language skills, and Iām not finding the time since there are more high-needs students in my caseload. I feel that these students are left to sink or swim and that I am drowning.
Lois adds her experience:
The parents are trusting me to do a job ā teach their children English but also help them learn and prepare them for the state tests. Iām not sure that I can do that properly without getting the right information about them and the right materials to support their learning. I am overwhelmed and am wondering if Iām in the right job after all. Maia and Joan are great, but I donāt have enough time with them for it to really make a difference [in my instruction]. I often feel very alone in this.
Teacher Stories as Public Structures
The struggles of Lois and Maia are not unique. Many teachers express feelings of being overwhelmed by the needs in their classroom and liken teaching to running on a treadmill to keep up with their studentsā needs but not always having the strategies and resources to support them in the process. In a critical analysis of public education, it is illuminating to see the individual troubles faced by teachers like Lois and Maia as representative of larger institutional challenges and their classroom struggles as symptomatic of the way in which the larger system is functioning and failing (Mills, 2000).
Indeed, the U.S. Department of Education (2010) reports about 13% of the American workforce of 3.4 million public school teachers either moves (227,016) or leaves (230,122) the profession each year. According to the MetLife Survey (Markow & Cooper, 2008), more principals found it challenging to maintain an adequate supply of effective teachers in urban schools (60% vs. 43% in suburban schools and 44% in rural schools) and in schools with two-thirds or more low-income students (58% vs. 37% in schools with one-third or fewer) (p. 6). Even in situations in which there is a co-teaching model in place such as at Garden Elementary, a lack of community or not having a systematic method for collaborating around studentsā needs may lead to loneliness and dissatisfaction with the profession. In addition, lack of supportive communication and structures may prevent teachers from effectively identifying learning issues that come up in the classroom and impact their ability to set goals with students and build coherent, personalized learning plans. Newer teachers in particular lack experience or knowledge of school-specific resources.
Lois and Maia are not alone in feeling ill-equipped to serve ELs. The Council of Great City Schools found through a survey on serving ELs that only about 51% of educators feel āpreparedā or āvery preparedā to use specific strategies to ensure that ELs meet the requirements of the Common Core (Council of Great City Schools, 2013). Only 49.1% of public school teachers are certified at the masterās degree level to teach ELs. Only 27% of K-12 teachers reported participating in EL-focused professional development compared with 85% of teachers participating in subject-area professional development activities. In the meantime, 73.9% of all U.S. public schools serve ELs in their buildings, and 64.9% of schools offer instruction specifically designed to address the needs of ELs (NCES, 2017). This demonstrates that while schools are enrolling and programming students for services mandated by federal guidelines, teachers are still at a loss for how to address the studentsā needs in day-to-day instruction.
Lois and Maia are like many educators who need each otherās help in making sense of how to assess and inform instruction based on student academic, social-emotional, and cultural needs. Often teachers have an overwhelming amount of information in the form of state-wide test data, classroom assessment data, or information forged from school inquiry teams or conversations in the hallway. Yet the...
