Recruiting enough teachers certified to teach English-language development has historically been a challenge for schools across the country.
New national survey data from the EdWeek Research Center show this staffing challenge persists as the national English-learner population has grown to more than 10% of the public-school student enrollment.
In a March survey of 1,122 educators who work directly with English learners or oversee instruction for students including English learners, 55% said the number of staff in their district or school who have been appropriately trained to serve those students is insufficient.
While specially trained staff can help meet their linguistic and academic needs of English learners, researchers point to an even greater need: ensuring that general education teachers—who spend the most time with English learners in a school day—are also trained in teaching language through academic content.
“A lot of the usual strategies that the most common district leader might have for improving schools for the students they’re really targeting for extra support aren’t necessarily going to be designed with English learners in mind,” said Conor Williams, a professor of practice at the Children’s Equity Project, who specializes in English-learner research.
“They are a unique group that sits outside of our kind of big toolkit of strategies we might use.”
Shifts in English-learner population complicate staffing
Part of the staffing challenge stems from shifting demographics.
For example, in the Jefferson County school district in Louisville, Ky., the English-learner population went from about 5% of the student population to more than 20% in the span of 20 years. This forced the district to shift recruitment and teacher training priorities to meet the sudden demand for language instruction, said Gwen Snow, principal of the Newcomer Academy in the district.
These demographic shifts, driven by families pursuing work opportunities, have been taking place across the country where small and mid-sized districts were not previously equipped to serve English learners, Williams said.
Large urban districts, meanwhile, might have already had experiences working with English learners and immigrant students to know how to best recruit more trained staff.
The March EdWeek Research Center survey found some of those tensions reflected in responses.
Smaller districts of less than 2,500 students were the most likely to report not having enough staff appropriately trained to serve English learners (61% compared to 57% mid-sized districts and 53% in large districts, serving 10,000 or more students).
Rural districts were the most likely to report not having enough staff appropriately trained in serving English learners (67%) compared to suburban (54%) and urban districts (49%).
In further assessing these challenges, Williams points to one persistent issue: a limited supply of bilingual teachers.
The costs of higher education and inflexible teacher training pathways make it hard for bilingual young professionals to become some of the teachers best equipped to work with English learners, Williams said. Yet bilingual educators, even if working as gen ed teachers, can help students connect their home language and culture to academic settings.
“We have a lot of bilingual people in the United States, some of whom might want to become teachers,” William said, “but many of [them] face policy and systemic obstacles, structural obstacles that keep them from being able to get into the front of the classroom.”
Staffing solutions include more flexible teacher pathways
Students at the Newcomer Academy in Louisville all require English-language development services. Yet Snow has rarely struggled to staff the school with sufficiently trained personnel.
That’s because the school has developed a strong reputation for being a welcoming environment for students and educators alike, Snow said.
For instance, about a third of the school’s staff started as paraprofessionals. The school supported them by connecting them to local universities offering affordable alternative certification programs and working to offer them micro-teaching experiences while working as paraprofessionals.
Almost all the paraprofessionals the Newcomer Academy supported in becoming fully certified teachers are immigrants or refugees.
“They know right away kind of what it’s like, and they can definitely connect with students,” Snow said.
Williams’ research on growing bilingual teacher pipelines also highlights districts investing in supporting paraprofessionals to address staffing shortages for English learners.
In general, Williams said teacher training and licensure pathways need to become more flexible. That can involve waiving the teacher licensure exam requirement for bilingual teacher candidates, replacing it with an enhanced observation protocol for the first two years of teaching.
Or it can focus on counting paraprofessionals’ classroom time as student teaching hours so as not to make them go through a practicum of unpaid work in addition to the paid work they’ve been doing for years.
Districts have also been investing in structural changes that emphasize language instruction for general education teachers. These include co-teaching models where a gen ed teacher and an English-learner teacher work together in a mainstream classroom, or coaching models that offer continuous training and feedback on how all teachers are supporting English learners.
“When you make the structural change, you require the skill sets development [of all teachers],” Williams said.
Data analysis for this article was provided by the EdWeek Research Center. Learn more about the center’s work.
