Students gather once a month at my high school for what we call “equity lunch chats” with teachers and administrators. The students ask about many topics, including tardy policies, access to athletics and clubs, and even treatment by deans and security. Their questions give the adults like me in the room a glimpse into their world. But no matter how the conversation starts, the students — nearly half of whom are Black, Asian, Hispanic or multiracial — often come back to complaints about the lack of diversity in our school’s textbooks and educational materials.

They want to see themselves and their cultures reflected in the books we read, and they don’t want token representation. They want more diverse classroom experiences.

“I appreciate that my teachers try to offer different narratives,” a student said at one of our sessions discussing teaching materials featuring history and stories from all continents, “but they always seem to be about hardship or having to overcome an obstacle. We are never just the average main character.” Another student pointed out that he already knows about the “famous people of color, but never hears about the everyday lives of them.”

As a Colorado secondary school history teacher and former English teacher, I believe, and research shows, that student achievement improves when learners are personally engaged. Higher engagement correlates with higher productivity, work quality and satisfaction — and even improved attendance rates.

Students tell us this every day in ways big and small. I see them clamor for Zheng He, Simon Bolivar, Cesar Chavez, Mary Wollstonecraft and Haile Selassie when they choose research topics. In her research paper this year, a student named Briana who picked Cesar Chavez wrote that she had never been given so many choices before, and that “the choices have never included topics that make me feel like I am learning about my own heritage at the same time. I am so proud to be Hispanic and loved researching a personal hero of mine.”

I also see my students’ hands go up when we study world religions, and they can share a story from home. They nod along as we cover topics that connect to stories their grandparents shared with them, like tales of migration and cultural celebrations.

Related: Teaching social studies in a polarized world

It’s time we listened to our students and strengthened our curriculums to teach a balanced history that honors all cultures and narratives. Here are a few ways we can do this:

Improve instructional materials. Our long-standing curricula highlight a Eurocentric global history and white-centric American history, with only small cameos by the people who were enslaved, harmed and marginalized. Gathering a team of students and educators to advise on an inclusive curriculum would give students a voice in the process and create a starting place for teachers like me as we build our own classroom lesson plans.

Provide all students opportunities to advocate for inclusive sources. When students have voice and choice in their learning, they are more inclined to participate and succeed. Teachers can learn from those choices and adapt long-term lesson-planning to respond to the various needs and interests of all their students. High schools can build student-led spaces like those in our equity lunch chats, where students suggest texts and topics, and history classes like mine can support the mission of making our curriculum more inclusive.

Provide educators with the time and training to be culturally responsive teachers. As schools across the country welcome more diverse student populations (including 2,800 migrant children newly enrolled in Denver schools in January), the need for teachers to be culturally responsive is ever more pressing. States should offer teachers stipends and extra time to diversify their historical knowledge and then build lessons and materials to reflect it. Districts should also consider bringing in students and experts in equity studies as sounding boards and editors for these new curriculums.

Related: STUDENT VOICE: There’s something missing from my Advanced Placement classes, and that needs to change

In the meantime, I look forward to our lunch chats and to learning from our students about how we can listen better and make real gains toward their goal of a more equitable education. We must continue to be advocates for an inclusive learning experience that allows for honesty, connection and relevance for all our learners.

Emily Muellenberg is a social studies teacher at Grandview High School in Aurora, Colorado. She is a 2023-24 Teach Plus Colorado Policy Fellow.

This story about creating more diverse classroom experiences was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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Our nation’s public school population is changing, fueled by growth in the number of multilingual learners. These students made up 10.3 percent of U.S. public school enrollment in 2020, up from 8.1 percent in 2000. Spanish was the most-reported home language among English learners in 2020, followed by Arabic.

Today, there are some 5 million multilingual learners. Across the country, the need for English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) educators is hard to miss.

Yet, some ESOL educators say that they are the only ones in their district, working across multiple schools and struggling to juggle the demands of the position and the needs of their students.

Related: English language teachers are scarce. One Alabama town is trying to change that

We can help address this problem by creating a highly trained, skilled and culturally competent educator workforce. We must overcome barriers to creating this bigger talent pool of educators because what we are doing now is not working.

Many multilingual students face ongoing challenges and discrimination in public school. And the schools are facing their own challenges in serving this population: Some have been sued for failing to properly educate these students.

For example, Boston Public Schools has been under a court order since 1994 to direct a more equitable share of federal funding to multilingual learners. Yet despite some efforts to document the experiences and outcomes of multilingual learners in the district, a legal monitor noted last year that Boston’s school leaders had defied requests for records showing how it spent its funds. Poor data collection practices also led to severely underserving the city’s multilingual learners — often putting them in classes that didn’t match their skill levels.

Similarly, in Newark, a recent investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice found that the district was failing to properly educate multilingual learners — by not providing students with access to the services or supports they need to thrive.

Unfortunately, these failings are all too common. One core underlying issue is the shortage of ESOL educators. Yet, traditional ESOL teacher certification processes are often burdensome, inflexible and financially onerous.

This is especially true in rural communities with few options to support professional learning experiences.

Traditional ESOL training and certification courses are typically based on credit accumulation, focusing on academic knowledge over real time application of learning.

As a result, educators may struggle to put their knowledge into practice in ways that benefit multilingual learners.

Related: OPINION: To solve teacher shortages, let’s open pathways for immigrants so they can become educators and role models

That’s why we should turn to self-paced and practical programs to build our talent pool of ESOL educators. Already, 26 states have some formal policy in place around microcredentials to support either licensure or professional development.

One example: A microcredential program developed by UCLA’s ExcEL Leadership Academy was recently approved for use in Rhode Island. Through a series of 12 microcredentials, educators can submit evidence of their work in and outside of their classrooms. At the close of 2023, 75 Rhode Island educators were enrolled in the new and cutting-edge program. Upon completion, they will receive digital badges that reflect the mastery of the skills they’ve demonstrated; the set of 12 badges is recognized by the state as a form of certification.

This has been a great solution for the city of Central Falls, Rhode Island. The population in Central Falls is constantly changing, as the city continues to welcome newcomers and families seeking asylum from various countries, including Guatemala, Columbia and Cape Verde.

Nearly half of the district’s 3,000 students are officially multilingual, and many more are English proficient but speak another home language. To address this diversity, the current teacher contract requires all teachers to obtain an ESOL certification.

David Upegui, a science teacher at Central Falls High School, noted that the ExcEL program allowed him flexibility to get credit for work he was already doing. By reflecting on and documenting his current practice and spending time with his students — rather than in a seat in a traditional certification program — he was able to obtain the microcredentials he needed.

Additionally, administrative staff have praised their experiences with the ExcEL program because it works for school leaders, not just classroom educators. Though not required to do so, many Central Falls administrators took it upon themselves to participate in the program, modeling the commitment to learning how to better meet the needs of multilingual learners.

Even though administrators have just started the program, they say that it has already resulted in improving their intake process for newcomers and is sparking new insights for better supporting multilingual learners.

Other districts and states should follow suit and consider alternative certification pathways for ESOL educators and expand possibilities for other specialized credentials.

There are several ways to make this happen: Our recent report outlines recommendations for states and districts to get started, and spells out how.

The future of our country depends upon fully supporting and realizing the potential that multilingual learners bring to our communities. They need educators who are properly trained to support them.

Let’s take a lesson from Rhode Island in tapping innovative approaches to grow the population of ESOL educators. Teachers may be the most important factor for in-school success and have the potential to truly change the trajectory of a student’s life.

Laurie Gagnon is a program director of the CompetencyWorks initiative at the Aurora Institute, a national nonprofit focused on education innovation.

This story about educating multilingual learners was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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When Carlos Sanchez immigrated to Grand Rapids, Michigan, from Mexico City 25 years ago, he’d already completed two years of college at Universidad Iberoamericana, and he was determined to finish his degree. Already bilingual, he felt comfortable tackling the second half of his education in English. But the language barrier was only part of the challenge. 

When he tried to enroll, he found that colleges had no idea how to handle his international transcripts and credentials. He recalls finding (and paying a considerable amount for) an outside company that could convert his transcripts into something more comparable to the U.S. education system. 

Eventually, Davenport University recognized the academic work he’d done in Mexico and he was able to finish his bachelor’s degree in international business there, without having to start from scratch. 

Sanchez is now the executive director of Casa Latina, a new bilingual college program at Davenport that will cater to students exactly like the one he was 25 years ago. He hopes it will help many highly trained or qualified people who are underemployed because they believe their English isn’t good enough to earn a college degree.

“I’ve been here 25 years and I’ve met engineers that are Uber drivers,” he said. “I’ve met accountants that have worked on a manufacturing line. Not that there’s anything wrong with those positions, but these individuals have four-plus years of college in their countries and they are underutilized.”

Beginning this fall, Casa Latina will offer 12 online undergraduate and graduate programs in an entirely bilingual and bicultural format. The curriculum will be offered entirely in Spanish one week and entirely in English the next, and all support services will be available in both languages.

Davenport’s tuition prices will apply to the Casa Latina programs, but accepted students will be awarded scholarships of $9,200 per year to help make the program more accessible financially. Those enrolled part time will receive a proportionate amount of scholarship funding, Sanchez said. Students are eligible for the scholarship award regardless of their immigration status, which Davenport does not ask about, he said. If students are eligible for federal financial aid, they can also use that funding to pay tuition.  

Once students are accepted, Sanchez said, Davenport will assess their education and work experience to see what can count toward degree progressions. The idea is to help students finish their education as efficiently and affordably as possible and get them into the workforce so they can provide better lives for their families. 

Latinos are the fastest growing demographic group in the United States, but data shows they are less likely than other racial and ethnic groups to have earned a college diploma. About 23 percent of Latino adults between the ages of 25 and 29 have a bachelor’s degree, compared to 45 percent of their white peers, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center report.

Davenport, like colleges across the country, has struggled with declining undergraduate enrollment since the pandemic. It has six campuses in Michigan along with its online program. In the 2018-2019 academic year, the university enrolled 6,763 undergraduate students, compared to 5,372 in the 2021-2022 academic year (the most recent year available from the National Center for Education Statistics). And colleges across the country are bracing for a shrinking number of graduating high schoolers after 2025 to have an effect on their enrollment. 

But Davenport’s president, Richard J. Pappas, said that the college has had good enrollment for the last three semesters, and the Casa Latina program is not just about boosting those numbers.

“It’s not a recruiting tool. Because if we don’t retain them and graduate them, this is a failure,” Pappas said. 

About 7 percent of Davenport’s undergraduate students identify as Hispanic or Latino, and 34 percent as nonwhite, according to data from the Department of Education. 

Deborah Santiago, president of the national advocacy group Excelencia in Education, said she’s excited about Casa Latina because it is advancing what it means to support not only Latino students but Latino communities more broadly. 

For these students to thrive in college and afterwards, Santiago said, the bilingual curriculum has to be connected to services that support students’ lives outside the classroom and resources that help them prepare for the workforce. 

“There is intentionality, there’s leadership here,” she said of the Davenport program. “They see the Latino community, they want to connect them to employment, they want to make sure that they get the academic rigor.”

Pappas said Davenport has worked with state and local Hispanic business leaders to make sure that Casa Latina is an opportunity for higher education and career development for “people who don’t feel comfortable, who may feel like they’re not capable because of the language barrier.”

Degree programs to be offered include accounting, business administration, education, human resource management, health services administration and technology project management.

Latino adults with work experience or some higher education in their home country are one of three demographic groups that Davenport expects to serve with this new program. Another is the college-aged children of those immigrants, who speak Spanish at home but are English dominant, and who have not yet harnessed their Spanish skills in academic or professional settings. 

Sanchez said they also expect to serve non-Latino students who attended immersion programs in high school, are bilingual and want to develop Spanish-language proficiency in their field of study and prepare to work as fully bilingual professionals. 

Regardless of their backgrounds, Pappas said he thinks that having a bilingual degree will help set these students apart in the workforce. 

“We still have some heavy lifting to make sure we do it well,” Pappas said. “But I think it’s going to have a big impact, not only on the people who go to our program, but the places that employ them.” 

This story about bilingual college was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education.

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Starting at about 3 p.m. every day, buses line the driveway of this afterschool program for immigrant and refugee children in Charlotte. Kids, who range from kindergarten through eighth grade, hop off the bus and stream into the building. Inside, they get a meal and a chance to relax before starting activities aimed at improving their English. 

Enrollment in the program, ourBRIDGE for Kids, has bloomed over the last few years, from 35 students when it opened in 2014 to about 230 children in 2023, with more on waitlists. More than half the children speak Spanish, but it’s common to hear conversations in Dari, Pashto, Russian and other languages spoken in the hallways, too. 

To attend ourBRIDGE for Kids, students need to meet one simple requirement — they must attend classes during the regular school day before arriving. But in 2020, when a growing number of children stopped showing up for schooltime classes during the pandemic, ourBRIDGE decided to expand its focus.  

In addition to running its afterschool program, staffers and volunteers started working with families to address the issues that prevented kids from logging into class online or showing up to school buildings. The school district noticed the impact: While other students in Charlotte were becoming chronically absent, children in ourBRIDGE were staying connected to school.  

“We realized before trying to address why your child isn’t going to school, we needed to ask, ‘What’s worrying you right now?’ That question really opened up all the reasons why going to school was not the first priority for many families: housing insecurity, food insecurity, job loss,” said Sil Ganzó, the program’s founder and executive director, who emigrated from Argentina two decades ago. 

Before 2020, the school attendance rate for English language learners across the country was high. In many schools, these students were more likely to show up to class than other groups.  

But that changed when schools shut their doors and classes went virtual. 

The number of students who are chronically absent — generally defined as missing 18 or more days in a school year — has swelled since the pandemic, and the problem is even more alarming among English language learners.  

In California, only 10 percent of English learners were chronically absent in 2019. By 2022, the rate had more than tripled to 34 percent. Other states reported similar trends: Forty percent of English learners in Colorado were chronically absent last year, 10 percentage points higher than the rate for the overall student population.  

The problems are similar in Charlotte, a community with a fast-growing immigrant population and the largest share of English learners in North Carolina by a wide margin. Since before the pandemic, the rate of chronically absent English language learners more than doubled, from 16 percent in 2019 to 36 percent in 2022.  

Related: OPINION: Creating better post-pandemic education for English learners 

Those numbers improved slightly in 2023, but nearly 1 in 3 English learner students are still chronically absent from school, while the overall rate of absenteeism for students is down to 1 in 4. 

Overall, many students are chronically absent now for the same reasons they were before the pandemic, such as illness, disengagement from school or unreliable housing and transportation, said Joshua Childs, an assistant professor at the University of Texas, Austin, who studies chronic absenteeism. But the pandemic intensified these problems.  

“It increased existing inequities around students attending schools,” Childs said. “Our schooling system wasn’t adequately prepared for what a different model, or a disruption, in schooling would look like.” 

That lack of preparation was even more evident in instruction for English language learners. Nationwide, schools struggled to provide a remote curriculum in other languages, and translation services faltered under the weight of virtual learning. And teachers had trouble explaining the logistics of remote learning through translators, a report from the Office of Civil Rights detailed.  

One study out of Virginia found schools were also struggling to keep track of English learners during this time. And a report from a federal watchdog agency on the challenges English learners faced offered, as an example, a district that mailed a workbook home to students in English and Spanish, intending to help Spanish-speakers access the online learning curriculum. However, the effort did nothing to help students who spoke any of the other 90 languages used in the district. 

In the midst of these challenges, ourBRIDGE for Kids found that it could fill some of those gaps. 

The afterschool program, which Ganzó started in 2014, now has more than three dozen employees and over 100 volunteers. The center rents its main campus from a Methodist retirement community for $1 and operates an additional program out of an elementary school.  

Within the last couple of years, the group has hired a few employees to lead its new family services program. 

“We realized we needed to help the families address those and provide some stability so that the kids can actually go to school,” Ganzó said. When parents lost their jobs, volunteers helped connect them to resources, delivered groceries to students’ homes and acted as a call center when families needed help navigating the online learning system.   

Because of its success, the Charlotte school district hired ourBRIDGE to help track down English language learners who haven’t been showing up to school. Charlotte uses a small portion of its ESSER funds to help pay for the services, but the overwhelming majority of ourBRIDGE’s funding comes from donations and grants. The services it provides to families and students are free. 

Related: International newcomer academies offer lessons on how to quickly catch up children who are learning English 

The district contacted ourBRIDGE when staff noticed the positive effect the group had on students and their families, said Nadja Trez, director of learning and language acquisition in Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools.  

“I took the initiative to reach out and say, ‘I need your help,’” said Trez, who also partners with the nonprofit Latin American Coalition for similar services.  

The district’s English learner population has grown significantly in the past year, from 27,405 students to 30,151. And for the first time in years, the make-up of student languages is changing. In prior years, the top spoken languages in Charlotte schools were Spanish and Vietnamese, Trez said. Now, schools are welcoming a large proportion of Russian speakers, refugees fleeing the war in Ukraine. Overall, students in the district speak 194 different languages.   

But it’s hard for schools to track down families in every community, and families often have needs that go beyond the scope of what a school can offer.  

“Many of our multilingual students, especially at the high school level, have circumstances outside of their control,” Trez said.  

When ourBRIDGE reached out to one family whose student hadn’t been attending class, the group learned the absences were due to a combination of setbacks: both parents were laid off from work, their youngest child recently had a medical emergency that required surgery, and the owners of the apartment they lived in were filing to evict them. The afterschool program connected the family with an organization that provides crisis emergency funding for low-income families and attended court hearings with them to help translate. The family was able to raise the money they needed and stay in their home. 

Another absent student ourBRIDGE was able to locate had a chronic illness, and the family didn’t know how to submit a medical excuse on the online portal. 

“The biggest part of what we do is say, ‘You have to speak up about things,’” said Yeferline Gomez, a family support manager who works at ourBRIDGE. “It’s your right to know these things. It’s your right to ask questions, and it’s your right to have things translated in a way that you understand.” 

Related: Seeking asylum in a time of Covid 

Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools has its own teams to knock on doors and try to find students who have been missing from class for long periods of time. But it can be difficult for schools to gain trust with families who speak another language and are new to the country, said Brian Harris, a social worker with Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools who speaks Spanish.  

“When I show up to the door, I represent something to the Latino population that is not always good — I’m a tall white guy. I look like immigration or police, and I sound like it,” Harris said. “Once you gain their trust, you have it. You’re in, it’s like you’re family. And you can go knock on their door and they’ll answer. But it takes a while to get there.” 

Part of the reason ourBRIDGE has been successful is a simple change the program made a few years ago — it doesn’t communicate with families through translators. Instead, it hires staff and volunteers who are immigrants themselves and speak the same languages. When a new student arrives who speaks a language the current staff do not, the program makes an effort to hire someone who can talk to them.   

“It was day and night. Because parents have a trusting relationship with people from the same country and they have shared experiences,” Ganzó said. “They come to the events and we all have a relationship with them, but they know that person that speaks their language is going to be there, and it’s not a different person every time.” 

On a Thursday in December, third and fourth grade students sat at half a dozen tarp-covered tables at ourBRIDGE’s main campus, paint up to their elbows: red, green, yellow, and a muddy combination of all three.  

Some were talking to each other excitedly in Spanish, others were using their fingers to draw in the paint. 

Flags from various countries are strung across the campus’ hall and classroom ceilings, large letters spelling out “diversity” sit in the entryway across from a painting of a woman in a hijab. Teaching English to students who are new to the country is just one goal of ourBRIDGE, another is to make them feel welcome and celebrate their heritage.  

“We want them to feel proud of their background and their cultures and their traditions and their language and their accents as they learn English and get used to living in the United States,” Ganzó said.  

This story about ourBridge for Kids was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter. 

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Mireya Barrera no quería pelear.

Durante años, se sentó en las reuniones con los docentes de educación especial de su hijo, luchando por mantener una sonrisa mientras entendía poco de lo que decían. En las ocasiones poco comunes en que se pedía ayuda a otros docentes que hablaban el idioma de Barrera, el español, las conversaciones seguían siendo vacilantes porque no eran intérpretes calificados.

Pero cuando su hijo Ian entró en la escuela secundaria, Barrera decidió invitar a un voluntario bilingüe de una organización local sin ánimo de lucro para que se sentara con ella y recordara sus derechos al equipo escolar.

“Quería a alguien de mi lado”, dijo Barrera, cuyo hijo tiene autismo, a través de un intérprete. “Durante todo este tiempo, no nos estaban facilitando las cosas. Eso provocó muchas lágrimas”. 

Independientemente del idioma que hablen los padres en casa, tienen el derecho civil de recibir información importante de los educadores de sus hijos en un idioma que entiendan. En el caso de los estudiantes con discapacidad, la ley federal es aún más clara: las escuelas “deben tomar todas las medidas necesarias”, incluidos los servicios de interpretación y traducción, para que los padres puedan participar de forma significativa en la educación de sus hijos.

Pero, a veces, las escuelas de todo el país no prestan esos servicios.

Las familias que no hablan inglés se ven obligadas a asistir a las reuniones sobre el progreso de sus hijos sin poder opinar ni preguntar a los educadores cómo pueden ayudar. Las diferencias culturales y lingüísticas pueden convencer a algunos padres de no cuestionar lo que ocurre en la escuela, un desequilibrio de poder que, según los defensores, hace que algunos niños se queden sin un apoyo fundamental. En caso de ser necesario, no es infrecuente que las escuelas encarguen a los estudiantes bilingües la interpretación para sus familias, poniéndolos en la posición de describir sus propios defectos a sus padres y tutores.

“Eso es totalmente inapropiado, en todos los sentidos posibles, y poco realista”, dice Diane Smith Howard, abogada principal de la Red Nacional de Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad. “Si al niño no le va especialmente bien en una asignatura académica, ¿por qué confiaría en que su hijo adolescente se lo contara?”.

Los distritos escolares culpan a la falta de recursos. Dicen que no tienen dinero para contratar a más intérpretes o a agencias de servicios lingüísticos y que, aunque lo tuvieran, no hay suficientes intérpretes calificados para hacer el trabajo.

En Washington y en algunos otros estados, la cuestión ha empezado a recibir más atención. Los legisladores estatales de Olympia presentaron este año una ley bipartidista para reforzar los derechos civiles federales en el código estatal. Los sindicatos de docentes de Seattle y Chicago negociaron recientemente, y consiguieron, servicios de interpretación durante las reuniones de educación especial. Y los distritos escolares se enfrentan a una creciente amenaza de demandas de los padres, o incluso a una investigación federal, si no se toman en serio el acceso lingüístico.

Aun así, los esfuerzos por ampliar el acceso lingüístico en la educación especial se enfrentan a una ardua batalla, debido al escaso número de intérpretes capacitados, la falta de cumplimiento a nivel estatal y el escaso financiamiento del Congreso (a pesar de que en 1974 prometió cubrir casi la mitad del costo adicional que supone para las escuelas proporcionar servicios de educación especial, el gobierno federal nunca lo ha hecho). El proyecto de ley bipartidista de Washington para ofrecer más protecciones a las familias fracasó repentinamente, después de que los legisladores estatales lo despojaran de disposiciones clave y los defensores retiraran su apoyo.

El sistema de educación especial puede ser “increíblemente difícil para todos”, dijo Ramona Hattendorf, directora de defensa de The Arc of King County, que promueve los derechos de las personas con discapacidad. “Luego todo se agrava cuando se introduce el idioma en la mezcla”. En todo el país, aproximadamente 1 de cada 10 estudiantes que califican para recibir servicios de educación especial también se identifican como estudiantes de inglés, según datos federales de educación, y esa proporción está creciendo. Cerca de 791,000 estudiantes de inglés participaron en educación especial en 2020, un aumento de casi el 30 % desde 2012. En más de una docena de estados, incluido Washington, el aumento fue aún mayor.

A medida que crece su número, también aumenta la frustración de sus padres con los servicios lingüísticos.

Durante el año escolar 2021-22, la defensora del pueblo en materia educación del estado de Washington recibió casi 1,200 quejas de los padres sobre las escuelas. Su principal preocupación, en todos los grupos raciales y demográficos, fue el acceso y la inclusión en la educación especial. La defensora del pueblo principal en materia de educación, Jinju Park, calcula que entre el 50 % y el 70 % de las llamadas que recibe la agencia son sobre educación especial, y que el 80 % de ellas son de clientes que necesitan servicios de interpretación.

Mientras que la mayoría de los estados conceden a las escuelas un máximo de 60 días desde que se remite a un estudiante a los servicios de educación especial para determinar si califica, las escuelas de Washington pueden tardar hasta medio año escolar. Y si un padre necesita servicios de interpretación o traducción, la espera puede durar aún más.

“Las leyes actuales no apoyan la participación plena de los padres”, escribió Park a los legisladores estatales en apoyo a la primera versión del proyecto de ley 1305 de la Cámara de Representantes, propuesta que finalmente fracasó. “Los padres para los que el inglés puede que no sea su lengua materna”, añadió, “a menudo, se ven abrumados por la información e incapaces de participar de forma significativa en el proceso”.

Barrera, cuyo hijo asistió al distrito escolar de Auburn, al sur de Seattle, dijo que, a menudo, se sentía excluida de su aprendizaje.

En el kínder, tras el diagnóstico de autismo de Ian, su equipo de educación especial llegó a la conclusión de que necesitaba un paraeducador asignado a tiempo completo, dijo Barrera. Recurrió a Google Translate y a otros padres para que la ayudaran a redactar correos electrónicos preguntando por qué no recibió ese apoyo hasta tercer grado. Sus solicitudes de copias traducidas de documentos legales quedaron en gran parte sin respuesta, mencionó, hasta que un director le dijo que la traducción era demasiado costosa.

Cuando Ian entró en la escuela secundaria, el acoso escolar y su seguridad se convirtieron en la principal preocupación de Barrera. Una vez llegó a casa sin un mechón de pelo, cuenta. A pesar de las repetidas llamadas y correos electrónicos a sus docentes, Barrera dijo que nunca recibió una explicación.

Además, cuando pidió ir a la escuela para observar, un docente le dijo: “Ni siquiera habla inglés. ¿Qué sentido tiene?”. Vicki Alonzo, portavoz del distrito de Auburn, afirma que el auge de la población inmigrante en la región en los últimos años ha llevado al distrito a destinar más recursos a ayudar a las familias cuya lengua materna no es el inglés. Casi un tercio de sus estudiantes son multilingües, dijo, y hablan alrededor de 85 idiomas diferentes en casa.

En el año 2019-20, el distrito gastó alrededor de $175,000 en servicios de interpretación y traducción, dijo; el año escolar pasado, esa cifra fue de más de $450,000.

Alonzo señaló que el distrito no recibió financiamiento adicional para esos servicios, que incluyeron alrededor de 1,500 reuniones con intérpretes y la traducción de más de 3,000 páginas de documentos.

El problema del acceso lingüístico es “un fenómeno nacional”, dijo Smith Howard, de la Red Nacional de Derechos de las Personas con Discapacidad. “Es un problema de recursos y también una cuestión de respeto, dignidad y comprensión, que todos los padres deberían recibir”.

Los docentes también están frustrados.

El sindicato de docentes de Seattle protestó y retrasó el inicio de las clases el año pasado por unas demandas que incluían servicios de interpretación y traducción en educación especial. El contrato final, que dura hasta 2025, exige que los miembros del personal tengan acceso a diversos servicios que proporcionen traducción telefónica (un intérprete en directo) o de texto (en el caso de documentos escritos). El objetivo de esta disposición es garantizar que no se pida al personal bilingüe que traduzca si no forma parte de su trabajo.

Los docentes dicen que estas herramientas han sido útiles, pero solo en cierta medida: en ocasiones poco comunes hay intérpretes telefónicos disponibles para los idiomas menos comunes, como el amárico, y son frecuentes los problemas técnicos, como la interrupción de las llamadas.

La disponibilidad de intérpretes “no es tan constante como nos gustaría”, afirma Ibi Holiday, docente de educación especial de la escuela primaria Rising Star de Seattle.

También hay una cuestión de contexto. Es posible que los traductores no tengan experiencia en educación especial, por lo que las familias pueden salir de una reunión sin entender todas las opciones, lo cual puede ralentizar el proceso significativamente.

“Para muchas familias, la escuela de su país funciona de forma completamente diferente”, explica Mari Rico, directora del Centro de Desarrollo Infantil Jose Marti de El Centro de la Raza, un programa bilingüe de educación temprana. “Traducir no bastaba; tenía que enseñarles el sistema”.

Muchas escuelas del distrito de Seattle cuentan con personal multilingüe, pero el número y la diversidad de idiomas hablados no es constante, afirma Rico. Y existe un mayor riesgo de que el caso de un estudiante se pase por alto o se estanque debido a las barreras lingüísticas. Dijo que ha tenido que intervenir cuando las familias han pasado meses sin una reunión del programa de educación individualizada, incluso cuando su hijo estaba recibiendo servicios.

Hattendorf, de The Arc del condado de King, dijo que las soluciones tecnológicas más económicas, como las que utiliza Seattle, ofrecen cierta ayuda, pero su calidad varía mucho. Y los servicios pueden no ofrecer a los padres tiempo suficiente para procesar información complicada y hacer preguntas de seguimiento, explicó.

Al sur de Seattle, los Barrera decidieron cambiar a Ian de escuela secundaria.

Se graduó este año, pero la ley federal garantiza sus servicios de educación especial tres años más. Ian asiste ahora a un programa de transición para estudiantes con discapacidad, donde aprenderá habilidades para la vida, como conseguir un trabajo.

“Sabemos que, con ayuda, puede hacer lo que quiera”, dijo Barrera.

Ya, añadió, “todo es diferente. Los docentes intentan encontrar la mejor manera de comunicarse conmigo”.

Este artículo sobre los servicios de interpretación fue elaborado por The Hechinger Report, una organización de noticias independiente y sin ánimo de lucro centrada en la desigualdad y la innovación en la educación, en colaboración con The Seattle Times.

The post Los padres de estudiantes de educación especial que no hablan inglés se enfrentan a otro obstáculo appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

For parents applying to the dual-language program at Rochester, New York’s public school No. 12, where students learn in both English and Spanish, the process can be both bureaucratic and baffling. After listing the program as a top choice, parents must schedule a testing appointment at the central office, where an instructor gauges such skills as whether each incoming kindergartener can hold a book properly and turn its pages, identify that a sentence is made up of words and spaces, use words to describe the scene in a picture, identify sounds in a word, and other pre-reading skills.

Families never receive a “score” on the test, which is available in both English or Spanish, or any information about how it is used in the admissions process — just word on whether their child made it in. (The district communications office did not respond to multiple queries about the process.)

After her 5-year-old son took the test several years ago, Rochester parent Llerena Searle was convinced that the news wouldn’t be good. He had a meltdown when asked to go with an unfamiliar instructor, acquiescing only when allowed to “test” from his mother’s lap. The boy was admitted, though, and is now in seventh grade; Searle believes he received a wonderful education at school No. 12. “I just wish it were more accessible,” she said. 

In some communities across the country, dual-language programs — one of the best means of ensuring equity for underserved groups, especially English learners — have taken an elitist turn. And with the Biden administration eager to help districts expand such programs, questions about who they help — and who gets left out — are becoming more urgent. 

In too many places, admissions processes send a message that dual-language learning is not for everyone (when research shows that actually it is). In Mamaroneck, New York, for instance, the local dual-language school at one point published information asking families to consider whether their child’s native language is developing within “normal” limits when deciding whether to apply. (After this article published, school officials reached out to say that has not been their practice for some time, and the program is open to all interested families.) In Boston, the dual-language programs significantly under-enroll students with disabilities, partly out of a misconception that learning in two languages isn’t appropriate for many students with special education needs.*

Related: A Spanish-English high school proves learning in two languages can boost graduation rates

In other districts, the sin is one of omission rather than commission: failure to market the dual-language programs sufficiently to newcomer families; failure to locate the programs in communities where newcomers actually live; time-consuming admissions processes that can seem labyrinthine and opaque — even if they don’t involve testing recalcitrant preschoolers. 

Most experts recommend reserving at least half of seats in dual-language programs for English learners, who benefit most from programs partly in their native language, and dividing the remainder through random lottery after aggressive outreach to underrepresented communities, including Black families, low-income students and those with disabilities. Yet English learner enrollment shares are shrinking in most dual-language schools in large cities including New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, according to a report released last spring by The Century Foundation and the Children’s Equity Project. 

Meanwhile, the share of white student enrollment was up in several other cities, most noticeably Washington D.C. “Many dual-language programs are at risk of tilting toward language enrichment for English-dominant children, instead of advancing linguistic equity and expanding educational opportunity for ELs,” the report’s authors wrote. Overall, the number of dual-language schools in the country has nearly quadrupled since 2010, and currently numbers more than 3,600. 

“[P]rograms that were ostensibly created to help English learners have turned into an extracurricular for native English speakers.”

Alina Adams, parent

There’s no one solution to this troubling shift — dual-language programs are gentrifying in many cities partly because the cities themselves are gentrifying. In some communities, English learner enrollments are depressed because of the lingering effects of hypocritical policies in the U.S. banning bilingual education for non-English speaking newcomers. Many immigrant families absorbed the “English only” message, and remained hesitant to try dual language even after the policies changed.

But school districts need to be far more vigilant in designing admissions processes and programs that favor the least privileged rather than the most. Otherwise, one of the most proven ways to combat the achievement gap, particularly for English learners, is at risk of playing a perversely opposite role: expanding educational opportunity for the elite.

Dual-language programs have never been monolithic in their demographics or their goals. When they began to appear in significant numbers in the U.S. in the 1980s and 1990s, some opened with the intent of serving English learners and working-class Latino families. Others hoped to enroll a significant number of white, English-speaking families, and even deter white flight from urban areas. Some wanted to meet both goals. One-way language schools enroll predominantly students from a single language group, while most two-way programs try to enroll a roughly equivalent number of students from English-speaking households and the target language.

Widespread gentrification in the 1990s and early 2000s also brought many white and well-off families back to some urban neighborhoods where dual-language schools were taking root. That coincided with a growing recognition by privileged families of the economic and career benefits of bilingualism, and a particular interest in affluent communities in studying Spanish and Mandarin. Research shows that learning multiple languages early in life has cognitive benefits extending beyond language acquisition and helps children develop stronger social skills, including empathizing better with others. In sum, bilingualism is good for both the brain and the heart.

In New York City, meanwhile, some middle-class and affluent families have come to see dual-language programs as an alternative to gifted and talented education, particularly as the latter has become harder to access, said Alina Adams, a parent and creator of the website NYCSchoolSecrets.com. Over the last decade, “gifted and talented became more competitive every year and suddenly there were many more dual-language programs,” she said. Ambitious parents perceived it as a more rigorous, challenging curriculum. And at some locations, “programs that were ostensibly created to help English learners have turned into an extracurricular for native English speakers,” Adams added.

Related: Students with disabilities often left out of popular ‘dual-language’ programs

Yet recent decades have also brought a growing research base showing that it’s precisely the students least likely to seek out gifted and talented programming who can benefit most from well-designed, supportive dual language programs. “Dual language is the one program we’ve found that truly closes the [achievement] gap” between English learners and the rest of the student population, said Virginia Collier, an emeritus professor of education at George Mason University.  Her research, done over the course of four decades in collaboration with her husband and GMU colleague Wayne Thomas, also shows that dual-language learning can be particularly effective for Black students, low-income students, and those with special needs — three groups that are often underrepresented in the programs. 

There’s a misconception among some educators and parents that bilingual education is inappropriate for students with developmental delays, or those predisposed to fall behind in an English-only curriculum. Yet a 2021 study found that dual-language “education can benefit … even students who often struggle in school because of special education needs.” And a 2018 paper found “no credible evidence that bilingual education adds or creates burden for children. Yet it is “incontrovertible,” according to the paper, that bilingual learning comes with decided advantages.

Spanish dual-language programs, the most common kind in the U.S., can be especially beneficial for students who struggle with reading. That’s because the Spanish language is more phonetic than the English one, with much less variation in the sounds that letters make. But some programs send the message — whether intentional or accidental — that dual language schools aren’t appropriate for children without strong early literacy skills.

“You might hear a parent say, ‘My kid didn’t start talking until age three and a half. They are already struggling — it would be too confusing to be in a dual language program,’” said Emily Bivins, former principal of a dual-language school in Chapel Hill, North Carolina whose company provides professional development for dual-language programs. “We all know the research is counter to that. These are the students who absolutely need to be in our bilingual programs.”

Bivins’ own three children attended dual-language programs, and she said it was most helpful for the child with an attention deficit diagnosis and early reading struggles. “Learning to read in Spanish was much better for her … the rules were clearer,” Bivins said. That’s part of the reason it’s so frustrating when she hears from colleagues at dual-language schools that use reading screeners where, if students “don’t score high enough [they] don’t get in.”  

Widespread interest in dual-language schools, including among the affluent, is a good thing, say proponents of bilingual education. But it becomes problematic if students from underserved groups are neglected or squeezed out of programs. Many communities lack sufficient bilingual educators to meet the desire for dual language. “It’s an iron law of education policymaking: nothing exacerbates educational unfairness like scarcity,” wrote the authors of the report released last spring.

The history of the Amigos School, a dual-language program in Cambridge, Massachusetts, shows that even seemingly minor changes to admissions processes can significantly shape how a school is perceived — and who applies — tilting preference toward privilege.

Thirty-five years ago, scores of first- and second-generation immigrant families from Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, along with others, came to see Amigos as the place to send their kids. The school was located near subsidized public housing, where many of the families lived. And the school’s founder, Mary Cazabon, engaged in constant grassroots outreach, attending community events and churches, like Cambridge’s bilingual Saint Mary’s church, where she spread word about the school and the benefits of learning in two languages. “We wanted to make sure that we were going to address the needs of the students who were most vulnerable,” Cazabon says. “The priority was on them.” To that end, Spanish-speaking students designated as English learners were given priority in admissions, Cazabon says.

Then the biotech boom hit Cambridge in the 1990s, and a growing number of white and wealthier families began to take an interest in Amigos, drawn by the allure of raising bilingual children. At some point in the 2000s, the school district also made a pivotal switch: Instead of giving priority to English learners, as Cazabon had done, they introduced a system that awarded “Spanish points” to children who could show some knowledge of Spanish when applying to the school’s pre-K or kindergarten. 

Related: Once criticized, ‘Spanglish’ finds a place in the classroom 

The change opened the door to a much broader group of families gaining admissions preference: Families with some Hispanic heritage whose toddlers were exposed to both English and Spanish in the home, but also families with no Hispanic heritage who sent their children to a Spanish-language child care or hired Spanish-speaking nannies with the goal of getting a spot at Amigos. By 2010, the demographics of Amigos had shifted dramatically, and it enrolled fewer low-income students than almost all the schools in the district. Penn Loh, a lecturer at Tufts University, said that in his son’s class at that time, only two of 44 children qualified for free and reduced lunch.

In 2011, one mother filed a complaint with the Cambridge Human Rights Commission, alleging that Amigos no longer served the Hispanic community. And Loh and other parents at Amigos petitioned the school board to change the admissions process, worried that Amigos increasingly catered too much to the children of Cambridge’s elite. “The pool of Spanish-proficient applicants became more unbalanced, with more wealthy, privileged families having children qualify in this pool,” Loh said in a recent email.. “We heard that working class Latinx families, often in Cambridge for generations, were not … getting into the school.”

The school district changed the policy to give “points” to children from lower socioeconomic backgrounds.

The number of dual-language public schools in the U.S. has quadrupled since 2010, to more than 3,600. 

“We are on our way to being much more balanced,” said Sarah Bartels-Marrero, the school’s current principal. “To me, it’s very important that we have a very diverse group of Spanish-speaking students. That’s a core pillar of our school.” The Spanish points system helps ensure that, she added, although she acknowledged that some English-only parents have also employed it as a workaround. “Certain individuals with privilege and knowledge may look for a loophole,” she said. “That is a thing, but we work really hard to combat and mitigate that.” 

Amigos continues to enroll slightly fewer English learners and about 10 percent fewer low-income students than the district average. Although the current formula would virtually guarantee a low-income Spanish speaking student admission, only one such incoming kindergartener listed Amigos as their first choice in January 2022, according to data published by the district.  However, Bartels-Marrero pointed out that about 60 percent of families identify as Hispanic or Latino, a group that is incredibly diverse. “To me it’s fundamentally important that [Amigos] is an option and opportunity for every kid in Cambridge regardless of race or background,” she said. 

Some states and communities also suffer from a location problem when it comes to dual language. The predominantly white town of Maynard, Massachusetts created a Spanish dual-language school with its English speakers in mind — not its growing population of Portuguese-speaking students, for instance. But the thousands of Spanish-speaking English learner students in the much larger and heavily Hispanic city of Lawrence, located just 35 miles to the north, have for two decades lacked access to even a single dual-language Spanish program (two are slated to open in the next year or so). States and the federal government could, and should, incentivize districts to open programs where there is the most need, and discourage programs targeted mostly at English speakers.

But starting new programs takes time, and there are steps that school districts can take right now to help ensure that English learners, low-income students, Black students, and other underrepresented groups have equal, if not greater access, to dual-language programs. They should engage more in grassroots outreach and marketing of dual learning, tailoring the message as needed to different communities. They should make the admissions process as transparent and accessible as possible, avoiding complicated or burdensome steps that advantage those with flexible schedules and knowledge of school system bureaucracy.

And they should eschew any kind of elitist framing, intentional or not. 

Llerena Searle, the Rochester mother, liked the dual-language program at School No. 12 well enough to enroll her younger child there, too. This time, there was a pandemic going on and the child was tested over Zoom. Her daughter dutifully cooperated with the process. With little doubt of a successful outcome (the school also has an admissions preference for siblings) Searle was more relaxed this time, yet hardly sanguine about the admissions process. She never figured out exactly what district officials were trying to accomplish, but in the end worried that the test mostly measured privilege. 

*Clarification: This article was updated to reflect the fact that the dual language program in Mamaroneck, New York, is now open to all interested families, including those with disabilities.

This story about dual language programs was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter

The post How to keep dual-language programs from being gentrified by English speaking families appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

As our country continues to struggle with historic teacher shortages, we ought to consider an untapped pool of aspiring teachers: Young immigrants who want to become educators.

They can connect with other newcomers by sharing their stories and serving as role models, like the ones I had when I arrived in Queens from Ecuador at the age of 14.

The bustling pace of rush-hour commuters, the tangled mix of languages and the loud rhythm of a sleepless city disoriented me for months.

Thanks to Mr. Bello, my supportive math teacher at Newcomers High School in Queens, I was able to quiet the cacophony with the anonymity of numbers.

Mr. Bello taught me much more than trigonometry and geometry. He taught me about probability, and helped me see that I could succeed as an undocumented student despite the uncertainty of my status.

Mr. Bello, himself an immigrant from the Dominican Republic, helped me build confidence in my potential, which allowed me to face a higher education and workforce system that systemically shuts doors to undocumented immigrants.

Another teacher, Mr. Palau, an immigrant from Paraguay, patiently guided me through my college application process. He made sure I understood that I was eligible for the in-state tuition rate despite my undocumented status.

Eventually, I qualified for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. That allowed me to get a work permit and pursue a career in the immigration research field.

Today, I am the project director at the Initiative on Immigration and Education at the City University of New York (also known as CUNY-IIE), which produces research and resources that center the strengths of immigrant communities.

In this role, I see firsthand the importance and urgent need in our schools for more teachers like Mr. Bello and Mr. Palau.

Related: Teacher shortages are real, but not for the reason you heard

Congress’s inability to pass any kind of immigration reform that would help undocumented immigrants become teachers makes easing the path of immigrants into educator roles a tough ask, especially as the 11-year-old DACA program is in peril of being eliminated for good by judicial decree.

Currently, immigrant educators may be granted work permits only if they qualify for DACA or Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which has been extended to people from 16 countries. State and local lawmakers and policymakers can and should be creative in expanding options.

The situation is urgent. According to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, the state needs to hire 180,000 new teachers over the next decade to keep up with the demands of the workforce. Enrollment in New York State’s teacher education programs has declined by 53 percent since 2009.

Congress’s inability to pass any kind of immigration reform that would help undocumented immigrants become teachers makes easing the path of immigrants into educator roles a tough ask.

Most disconcerting for our newest students: There is a significant shortage of bilingual teachers. In 2022-23, approximately 134,000 students who were enrolled in New York City’s public schools identified as English Language Learners, yet the United Federation of Teachers reported that the school system had fewer than 3,000 certified bilingual educators.

This shortage intersects with a political and social upheaval in the city. Since April 2022, New York has received more than 116,000 asylum seekers, including approximately 20,000 children who have now entered the public school system.

The majority of these students are from Latin America and the Caribbean and speak languages other than English.

Bilingual education is considered the best approach for immigrant students, according to Tatyana Kleyn, professor of Bilingual Education & TESOL at The City College of New York. Kleyn favors bilingual education because it allows students to continue learning in their home language while they also learn English.

For all New York teachers, an initial certification is valid for just five years. From there, they are expected to get a professional teaching certificate. For a while, DACA beneficiaries were not eligible for professional certification.

In 2016, the New York State Education Department began to allow undocumented students who are DACA beneficiaries to get professional teaching certificates.

Last year, the state expanded that guidance, allowing undocumented students without a social security number (and who are not DACA holders) to do fieldwork in certain schools and obtain initial certification.

These are two steps in the right direction.

Related: OPINION: In an era of teacher shortages, we must embrace and develop new ways to unleash educator talent

However, undocumented educators who are not DACA holders can’t make use of their education degree and initial certification because they do not have access to work permits.

In addition, some undocumented immigrants just missed the cutoff for DACA or have not been allowed to apply due to the litigation battles about the program.

Our working group, UndocuEdu, produced a report in 2021 titled “The State of Undocumented Educators in New York” that outlines the challenges undocumented educators face navigating teacher education programs.

One suggestion in the report is to eliminate testing fees for NYS certification exams for those in financial need.

Another recommendation is for policymakers to create municipal or state exceptions so that our city’s schools can hire educators who have training and certification but lack a work permit.

State legislators and advocates in New York are already discussing the creation of municipal work permits for recently arrived asylum-seekers.

We urge the city and state to embrace these types of solutions and find others to address the current educational need. It’s time to give more opportunities to a group of trained educators who are already in our communities.

Now more than ever, we need to expand our teaching pool for students who urgently need help. Undocumented teachers can become the Mr. Bellos and Mr. Palaus that every immigrant student deserves.

Daniela Alulema is project director of the CUNY-Initiative on Immigration and Education in New York City.

This story about immigrant teachers was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

The post OPINION: To solve teacher shortages, let’s open pathways for immigrants so they can become educators and role models appeared first on The Hechinger Report.

SEATTLE — Mireya Barrera didn’t want a fight.

For years, she sat through meetings with her son’s special education teachers, struggling to maintain a smile as she understood little of what they said. On the rare occasions when other teachers who spoke Barrera’s language, Spanish, were asked to help, the conversations still faltered because they weren’t trained interpreters.

But by the time her son, Ian, entered high school, Barrera decided to invite a bilingual volunteer from a local nonprofit to sit with her and to remind the school team of her rights.

“I wanted someone on my side,” Barrera, whose son has autism, said through an interpreter. “All this time, they weren’t making things easy for us. It’s caused a lot of tears.”

Regardless of what language parents speak at home, they have a civil right to receive important information from their child’s educators in a language they understand. For students with disabilities, federal law is even more clear: Schools “must take whatever action is necessary” — including arranging for interpretation and translation — so parents can meaningfully participate in their kid’s education. 

But schools throughout the country sometimes fail to provide those services.

Families who don’t speak English are forced to muddle through meetings about their children’s progress, unable to weigh in or ask educators how they can help. Cultural and linguistic differences can convince some parents not to question what’s happening at school — a power imbalance that, advocates say, means some children miss out on critical support. In a pinch, it’s not uncommon for schools to task bilingual students with providing interpretation for their families, placing them in the position of describing their own shortcomings to their parents and guardians.

“That’s totally inappropriate, in every possible way — and unrealistic,” said Diane Smith-Howard, senior staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network. “If the child is not doing particularly well in an academic subject, why would you trust your teenager to tell you?”

“Parents for whom English might not be their primary language are often overwhelmed with information and unable to participate meaningfully in the process.”

Jinju Park, senior education ombuds, Washington State 

School districts blame a lack of resources. They say they don’t have the money to hire more interpreters or contract with language service agencies, and that even if they did, there aren’t enough qualified interpreters to do the job.

In Washington and a handful of other states, the issue has started to gain more attention. State lawmakers in Olympia earlier this year introduced bipartisan legislation to bolster federal civil rights in state code. Teachers unions in Seattle and Chicago recently bargained for — and won — interpretation services during special education meetings. And school districts face an escalating threat of parent lawsuits, or even federal investigation, if they don’t take language access seriously.

Still, efforts to expand language access in special education face an uphill battle, due to the small pool of trained interpreters, lack of enforcement at the state level and scant funding from Congress. (Despite promising in 1974 to cover nearly half the extra cost for schools to provide special education, the federal government has never done so.) Washington’s bipartisan bill to add more protections for families suddenly failed, after state lawmakers stripped it of key provisions and advocates pulled their support.

The special education system can be “incredibly difficult for everybody,” said Ramona Hattendorf, director of advocacy for the Arc of King County, which promotes disability rights. “Then everything is exacerbated when you bring language into the mix.”

Related: Special education’s hidden racial gap

Nationwide, roughly 1 in 10 students who qualify for special education also identify as English learners, according to federal education data, and that share is growing. About 791,000 English learners participated in special education in 2020, a jump of nearly 30 percent since 2012. In more than a dozen states, including Washington, the increase was even higher.

As their numbers grow, their parents’ frustration with language services is rising too.

During the 2021-22 school year, the Washington State education ombudsman received nearly 1,200 complaints from parents about schools. Their number one concern, across all racial and demographic groups, was access and inclusion in special education. Senior education ombuds Jinju Park estimates that between 50 and 70 percent of calls the agency receives are about special education — and 80 percent of those calls are from clients who need interpretation services.

While most states allow schools up to 60 days once a student is referred for special education services to determine if they qualify, Washington schools can take up to half a school year. And if a parent needs interpretation or translation, the wait can last even longer.

“Our current laws do not support full parent participation,” Park wrote to Washington state lawmakers in support of an early version of House Bill 1305, the proposal that ultimately failed. “Parents for whom English might not be their primary language,” she added, “are often overwhelmed with information and unable to participate meaningfully in the process.”

Barrera, whose son attended the Auburn School District, south of Seattle, said she often felt cut out of his learning.

In kindergarten, after his diagnosis for autism, Ian’s special education team concluded he needed a paraeducator assigned to him full time, Barrera said. She relied on Google Translate and other parents to help her compose emails asking why he didn’t receive that support until the third grade. Her requests for translated copies of legal documents largely went unanswered, she said — until a principal told her that the translation was too expensive.

When Ian entered high school, bullying and his safety became Barrera’s top concern. He once came home with a chunk of hair missing, she said. Despite repeated calls and emails to his teachers, Barrera said she never received an explanation.

Barrera said that when she asked to come to the school to observe, a teacher told her, “You don’t even speak English. What’s the point?’ ”

“That’s totally inappropriate, in every possible way – and unrealistic. If the child is not doing particularly well in an academic subject, why would you trust your teenager to tell you?”

Diane Smith-Howard, senior staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network

Vicki Alonzo, a spokesperson for the Auburn district, said that the region’s booming immigrant population in recent years has prompted the district to commit more resources toward helping families whose first language isn’t English. Nearly a third of its students are multilingual learners, she said, and they speak about 85 different languages at home. 

In the 2019-20 year, the district spent about $175,000 on interpretation and translation services, she said; last school year, that figure was more than $450,000.

Alonzo noted the district received no additional funding for those services, which included about 1,500 meetings with interpreters and translation of more than 3,000 pages of documents.

“Families are our partners,” she said. “We need them to have student success.”

Related: Students with disabilities often left out of popular ‘dual language’ programs

Lawmakers in other states have tried to address language access issues.

Proposed legislation in California would set a 30-day deadline for schools to comply with parents’ requests for a translated copy of their child’s individualized education program, or IEP, which details the services a school will provide for a student with disabilities. Similarly, lawmakers in Texas introduced a bill earlier this year to expand translation of IEPs if English is not the native language of the child’s parent (the bill died in committee).

“It’s a nationwide phenomenon,” said Smith-Howard of the National Disability Rights Network. “It’s a resource problem and also a matter of respect and dignity and understanding — that all parents should receive.”

In New York City, parents turned to the courts in pursuit of a solution.

Four families there filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in 2019, claiming the nation’s largest school district failed to provide translation services for families that don’t speak English. Like Barrera, one of the New York City parents asked for a Spanish interpreter at an IEP meeting; their school provided one who spoke Italian, according to M’Ral Broodie-Stewart, an attorney representing the families for Staten Island Legal Services.

In 2020, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation into New Bedford Public Schools in Massachusetts after students and families who speak K’iché, an Indigenous Mayan language, complained about discriminatory practices. 

A settlement reached last year commits the Massachusetts district to using professionally trained interpreters — and not students, relatives or Google Translate — to communicate essential information to parents.

Related: Is the pandemic our chance to reimagine special education?

Teachers are frustrated too.

In Washington state’s largest school district, the Seattle teachers union picketed and delayed the start of school last year over demands that included interpretation and translation in special education. The eventual contract, which lasts through 2025, requires that staff have access to various services that provide telephonic (a live interpreter) or text-based translation (for written documents). The provision was to ensure that bilingual staff weren’t being asked to translate if it wasn’t a part of their job description.

Teachers say these tools have been helpful, but only to a degree: There are rarely telephone interpreters available for less common languages, such as Amharic, and technical issues like dropped calls are common. 

The availability of interpreters is “not as consistent as we would like it to be,” said Ibi Holiday, a special-education teacher at Rising Star Elementary School in Seattle.

There’s also an issue of context. Translators may not have a background in special education, so families may come away from a meeting not understanding all the options. This can slow down the process significantly. 

“For a lot of the families, they attended a school in their country that functions completely differently,” said Mari Rico, director of El Centro de la Raza’s Jose Marti Child Development Center, a bilingual early education program. “Translating wasn’t enough; I had to teach them about the system.”  

Many Seattle district schools have multilingual staff, but the number and diversity of languages spoken isn’t consistent, Rico said. And there is a greater risk of a student’s case getting overlooked or stagnating because of language barriers. She said she’s had to step in where families have gone months without an IEP meeting even as their child was receiving services.

Hattendorf, with the Arc of King County, said that cheaper tech solutions like those Seattle is using do offer some assistance, but their quality varies widely. And the services may not offer parents enough time to process complicated information and ask follow-up questions, she said.

South of Seattle, the Barreras decided to move Ian to a different high school.

He graduated earlier this year, but federal law guarantees his special education services for another three years. Ian is now attending a transition program for students with disabilities, where he will learn life skills like getting a job.

“We know, with help, he can do whatever he wants,” Barrera said. 

Already, she added, “it’s all different. The teachers just try to find the best way to communicate with me.”

This story about interpretation services was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education, in partnership with The Seattle Times.

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House Republicans recently returned to one of their favorite targets for spending cuts: the country’s most vulnerable youth and the schools that serve them. Their plan would represent a major setback to efforts to achieve racial equity in our nation’s public schools.

During the latest battle over preventing a government shutdown, Republicans called for cutting Title 1 education grants earmarked for low-income students by 80 percent, which would mean a loss of nearly $15 billion in funding for schools with sizeable populations of these students, disproportionately affecting schools that serve more children of color.

We already see this racial logic playing out in the efforts of red states to use school funding as a political football. In Tennessee, the house speaker and lieutenant governor have teamed up to explore rejecting federal education funds altogether. They hope to shirk federal oversight on matters related to inequality, including civil rights protections based on race.

Given the patterns in funding schemes across the country, it is clear that we need to set aside targeted school funding on both the state and local levels with the express purpose of remedying injustices inflicted upon particular groups of students.

Yet the reality is that government funding decisions about education have long been a way to install and preserve racial inequality in our society. And since these inequalities have origins in funding malpractice, to remedy them, the government must use targeted funding for racial equity going forward.

Related: ‘Kids who have less, need more’: The fight over school funding

School funding stems from three major sources: federal, state and local. Looking at average breakdowns from recent data, we see that U.S. schools receive about 47 percent of their funds from their state government, 45 percent from local and 8 percent from federal.

This means that states and districts can counteract any proposed federal cuts with concerted efforts to reinvest in vulnerable youth. But even states with Democratic leadership have struggled to do so.

For example, in Pennsylvania, where I call home, the state’s funding scheme has been found unconstitutional for providing inadequate and unequal funding. Recent investigations have revealed how damaging the effects of this system have been on districts where a majority of students are students of color; one study, from the advocacy group The Education Trust, found that “districts with the most students of color on average receive substantially less (16 percent) state and local revenue than districts with the fewest students of color, equating to approximately $13.5 million for a 5,000-student district.”

Related: OPINION: Pennsylvania’s school funding is a case study in the future of inequality

The state of California, and its largest city, Los Angeles, however, have initiated thoughtful and large-scale efforts to right the wrongs of governments past. California’s funding formula and Los Angeles’ program to holistically support Black students are both concrete efforts to tinker with school funding to move towardequity, rather than away from it. In a nutshell, these programs exemplify meaningful, targeted investments in marginalized populations and represent a significant course reversal from much of United States history.

Though these two programs in California have flaws, which I detail below, there are real lessons that leaders across the country can glean from them in order to make real, lasting change in their own locales.

I spent the previous five years in California training teachers and studying school improvement. This year, we are arriving at the 10th anniversary of the state’s Local Control Funding Formula, which changed how schools were funded and allows for greater flexibility in how local education agencies meet the needs of three targeted student populations: low-income, foster youth and English learners.

These programs exemplify meaningful, targeted investments in marginalized populations and represent a significant course reversal from much of United States history.

Results so far include a demonstrable gain in test scores for these “high-need” students, including a 13 percentage point increase in the number of students meeting or exceeding standards on state tests in districts where 95 percent of students are high-need.

These numbers could have been even higher, however, had there been greater compliance at the district level. The same report noted that roughly 60 percent of districts reported spending “less money on high-need students than they were allocated for these students. Nearly 20 percent spent about half or less.”

Further, advocates argue that California’s funding formula does not do enough to target the needs of Black students in the state, who continue to face an accumulation of disadvantages both in and out of school. This was one impetus for even more targeted funding in California’s largest district: Los Angeles Unified.

In February 2021, Los Angeles approved a reform initiative known as the Black Student Achievement Plan. This plan set out to address rampant racial disparities in the district, pulling together $36.5 million in funds from the school police department budget and the district’s general fund.

The money went toward many important endeavors, including reforms of school discipline and curriculums and hiring support staff such as counselors, school climate coaches and nurses.

Additional resources were provided according to need, with schools serving the highest number of Black students also receiving psychiatric social workers, attendance counselors and funding for restorative justice programs.

Early data found some notable gains, including increases in graduation rates, completion of courses required for admission to California State universities, enrollment in Advanced Placement courses and attendance. These successes, while modest, provide evidence that targeted funding for Black students can improve how schools serve them.

But the problems with LA’s program are also instructive. An April report found that, similar to the deployment of the state funding formula, nearly 40 percent of the allocated funds were not used after the first year of the program, while the rollout and follow-through varied greatly across school campuses.

Those findings were later corroborated by an ongoing evaluation study, which noted that several LA schools dealt with unfilled positions related to the Black Student Achievement Plan while others tended to overwhelm program staff with responsibilities beyond their job descriptions.

These struggles show how, to fulfill their promise, programs like California’s targeted funding formula and Los Angeles’ plan for Black students must: (1) hire appropriate numbers of staff with clear job responsibilities, (2) communicate actively with communities about the purpose of the funds, (3) check-in regularly with schools to keep track of the funds they have left to spend and (4) consistently support the educators making use of the funds.

While there will certainly be differences in state policies, school district size and budgets, more states and districts should heed the lessons, both good and bad, from California.

Given how much pressure we collectively put on schools to improve society, setting aside specific funds for programs to support the most systematically disadvantaged students constitutes an educational imperative. These important California models can pave a path forward with more explicit commitments to racial justice.

 Julio Ángel Alicea is an assistant professor of sociology at Rutgers University-Camden. A former public school teacher, his research interests include race, urban education and organizational change.

This story about equitable school funding was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for Hechinger’s newsletter.

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BANKE, NEPAL — English and health studies are 14-year-old Dilip Godiya’s favorite subjects. Unlike other subjects taught at his school in the city of Nepalgunj, they don’t require him to be effortlessly fluent in Nepali. Dilip grew up speaking Awadhi at home, the mother tongue of half a million Nepalis and millions more in northern India, so adjusting to Nepali as a language of learning was a major challenge. Until fourth grade, he found it difficult to read and hesitated from speaking up in class.

“Sometimes, I still struggle with speaking proper Nepali,” he says, an eighth grader now.

As many as 123 languages are spoken in Nepal, a linguistic diversity evident in the multicultural Banke district, where 3 out of every 5 residents are non-Nepali speakers. Despite a provision in the 2015 constitution mandating that all children have the right to education in their first language — as well as a national curriculum plan introduced in 2019 that mandates localized curricula and recommends multilingual instruction to facilitate learning for non-Nepali speakers — all eight municipalities in Banke district have yet to do so. 

“Repeating a grade or leaving school altogether may not be the direct result of the language barrier, but it is a side effect.”

Bikram Mani Tripathi, education expert

Consequently, many non-Nepali speakers send their children to schools across the border in neighboring India. Bhupendra Singh Sodi, who runs a dental clinic in Nepalgunj, is one of them. The Sodis migrated from the Indian region of Punjab five generations ago for business and, over time, Awadhi and Hindi — dominant in Banke — replaced Punjabi as their first languages. Despite the presence of a nearby government school, Sodi’s son and two daughters study at the Assembly of God Church in the Indian border town of Rupaidiha, where Sodi himself once studied. Hindi, the medium of instruction there, is easier for Awadhi speakers to comprehend than the Nepali used at the local school.

Sodi went on to pursue a bachelor’s degree in sociology at an Indian college. “I know all the Indian political history,” he says. “I know the Indian national anthem by heart; I know it was written by Rabindranath Tagore. But I don’t know who wrote the Nepali national anthem.” It saddens him to know so little about his own country — and he worries his children will experience this sense of alienation too. He wants his daughter to become a dentist and told her she could study in Kathmandu, where dental education is cheaper. “But she said she can’t succeed there due to the language barrier and expressed interest in pursuing dentistry in India.”

Related: Once criticized, ‘Spanglish’ finds a place in the classroom

Non-Nepali speakers consistently underperform at school. In the last five years, according to government data, rates of class repetition among elementary school students in Banke were higher in areas such as Nepalgunj, Narainapur, Duduwa and Janaki, where the proportion of non-Nepali speakers is higher. An analysis of the last three years of Banke district’s final secondary education exam results—conducted at the end of 10th grade—found that only 30 percent of students who scored a GPA higher than 3.0 were non-Nepali speakers. If learning outcomes were equal, that number would be closer to 60 percent, the percentage of Banke residents who are non-native speakers, according to the 2011 census. (2021 census language data was unavailable.)

Nepali-language instruction isn’t the only reason for these results, says Bhagwan Prasad Paudel, chief of the education development and coordination unit in Banke, a government entity. “Students are present during admissions season but have low attendance throughout the year, due to farmwork and festivities,” he says. “This rate is higher among members of the Madhesi community [who tend to be non-native Nepali speakers] than among people from hill communities.” In one school in Nepalgunj, for instance, 53 students are enrolled in the third grade but only 20 or so attend regularly.

But Bikram Mani Tripathi, an education expert and himself a non-native Nepali speaker — Awadhi is his mother tongue — says the language barrier manifests itself in more than one way. “In the past, each caste had an occupation: some worked with wood, some with iron, and others with leather or soil,” he says. “As these traditional occupations started dying, the burden of sustenance fell on farming activities, especially for communities who could not speak Nepali or English and could therefore not compete for government jobs. As their income dried up, parents started making their children work from a young age. Repeating a grade or leaving school altogether may not be the direct result of the language barrier, but it is a side effect.”

Satish Maharjan, a teacher at Shree Secondary School in Lagdahawa, says a poor grasp of Nepali sets students back. “In an eighth-grade science exam, if a student uses the Awadhi word for bullcart rather than the Nepali word, a teacher from a different community would deduct points,” he says. “This is why non-Nepali speakers don’t get good results.” Students tend to struggle with Nepali grammar and accent marks, and they have difficulty reading lessons out loud, says Kriparam Barma, assistant principal at Mangal Prasad Secondary School, adding that “as Nepali, Hindi and Awadhi share a written script, students tend to write cognate words the way they are written in their mother tongues, which is considered incorrect in Nepali.”

Related: A Spanish-English high school proves learning in two languages can boost graduation rates

Teachers who speak the same language as their students could improve learning outcomes, but multilingual instructors are hard to find. In the school where Maharjan teaches, for instance, 5 out of 17 teachers are non-Nepali speakers compared to 70 percent of students. Municipal authorities, who decide what is taught in schools in their jurisdictions, cite this as a primary obstacle in implementing local curricula in languages other than Nepali.

There also is the challenge of having multiple languages spoken in a community. In Banke district, four of eight municipalities — Kohalpur, Rapti Sonari village, Khajura and Nepalgunj submetropolitan — developed their mandated local curricula this year. But neither they nor the other four municipalities have produced textbooks in languages other than Nepali, in part because of the linguistic diversity of local students who speak Awadhi, Urdu and Tharu, among other languages.

In Banke, Nepal non-Nepali speakers make up close to 60 percent of the population, but only 30 percent of students who scored a GPA higher than 3.0 at the end of 10th grade.

“Starting this year, we have implemented the local curriculum,” says Jeevan Neupane, head of the education branch in Rapti Sonari village, “but not in mother tongue.” Some municipalities are preparing to develop curricula in Awadhi, spoken by nearly 24 percent of Banke residents. The curriculum for grades one through 10 has been developed, says Tripathi, who has worked with the government on this project.

Fourteen-year-old Dilip may have graduated by the time Awadhi-language instruction is implemented in Banke, but it would be a boon to many who come after him. Even a teacher who would take the time to explain that “aama” is the Nepali word for “maa” in Awadhi — “mother” in English — would be a rare relief for children trying to follow an unfamiliar tongue. “Some teachers spoke very fast in Nepali,” he says. “I was often very nervous. When an Awadhi-speaking teacher stood in front of the classroom, it was easier to speak and ask questions.”

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