Education Week - May 3, 2023 - 13

languages coming to my classroom and thinking,
'Oh, they might have trouble learning,' "
Castro said.
To better understand how labels and their
connotations can impact classroom experiences,
researchers look to gifted and talented
programs.
The gifted and talented label tends to carry a
positive connotation compared to the generally
more negative connotation tied to the English
learner label.
That could be because one gives a student
access to advanced coursework, while the
other has been known to create barriers to
those things, said Leslie Villegas, a senior
policy analyst with the left-leaning think tank
New America. Anecdotally, she has heard of
families concerned over their children being
labeled as English learners, fearful that the
students would essentially receive a remedial
education.
" Language learning broadly, in the United
States, is looked down upon for some populations
and not others, " Villegas said.
Yet language learners are gifted and talented,
especially given they must process grade-level
academic content rapidly in a second or third
language, said Kathleen Leos, former assistant
deputy secretary and director of the Education
Department's Office of English Language Acquisition.
The
issue at hand, then, isn't about the students
themselves; it's about longstanding challenges
in the public education system. Such
issues include insufficient training for general
classroom teachers; insufficient staffing of
specialized language instructors; a lack of sufficient
funding for English-language-support
programs; and instructional models that do
not adequately prioritize English learners'
needs.
Take the classification of long-term English
learners, which emerged out of the Education
Department's need to track the impact of federal
funding for English learner support. The
term describes students who have remained
in an English learner program for five or more
years. But to researchers such as Villegas, the
"
Why is it that in 2023, in many school systems
in our country, we treat our English learners
as students with deficits-rather than assets
in a globally competitive world?
MIGUEL CARDONA
U.S. Secretary of Education
classification is a sign of a failed system of
instruction, not students' difficulty learning
English.
That's why researchers say asset-based terminology
matters.
" If I'm using a term like [multilingual learner]
that means that I'm valuing the [home] language, "
Castro said. " But if in my classroom,
all my instruction is just again centering English
and giving value to English through assesslights
students' existing language abilities while
they develop another language.
It's also more inclusive in that students fluent
in English seeking to acquire a second language
would also fall into the multilingual learner
category, not just peers in need of English-language
support. That said, researchers including
Lisa Hsin, a senior researcher at the American
Institutes for Research, caution that there still
needs to be a clear distinction between these
ments, then we haven't changed anything. It's
just semantics, we're using a word. "
" So what we're trying to make through these
changes in labels is not just semantics. We're
trying to change practice. "
The hope in the term 'multilingual learner'
Generally speaking, the term multilingual
learner is more asset-based because it hightwo
types of students for legal purposes.
" The assets and strengths that accompany
the multilingualism of both groups can and
should be celebrated, but we mustn't let that
celebration get in the way of ensuring that all
students receive the supports they need to
meaningfully access education, " Hsin said.
" English learners have a right to languagefocused
supports. And if that group is not distinguished
using some specific term, it will be
harder to convey the importance of providing
those supports to the policymakers and practitioners
responsible for doing so. "
There are also concerns of a sort of appropriation
in the works.
Debates have raged over the merits of bilingual
education for English learners to support
both English learning and as a way to develop
their home language. But when researchers
found it helps with cognitive development, and
a host of other benefits, the priority shifted from
dual-language programs are needed for English
learners, to dual-language programs are needed
for all students, Castro said.
" Some people feel like by the idea of multilingualism,
you are watering so much down,
that you're not recognizing all the work that
has been done around policy, and research, "
she added.
A shortage of educators prepared to properly
educate students in multiple languages at
a time remains a key challenge to scaling up
access nationally to programs that would truly
encompass multilingual education, Hsin said.
It's partly why Cardona announced at his February
appearance that boosting the number of
bilingual and multilingual educators is a department
priority.
" The emphasis is on the limitations of the students, "
Aguirre said. " So instead of valuing the
students for their linguistic assets ... we're focusing
on the need, the area that they need to grow. "
At one point, bilingual educators in Illinois
pushed back by using PEP, or potentially-English
proficient, instead, said Diep Nguyen, director of
WIDA educator learning, research, and practice.
Advocates sought terminology that didn't view
the ability to speak more than one language as
a detriment to learning. And even though researchers
and educators adopted and coined
more asset-minded terms for students receiving
English-language support in the intervening
years, policymakers didn't start to shift gears
until the 2000s.
LEP is still used today in particular by researchers
citing federal data sets such as U.S.
Census data, said Leslie Villegas, a senior policy
analyst with the left-leaning think tank New
America.
English Learner (EL)
When the Department of Education's Office of
English Language Acquisition was created in 2002
as part of the No Child Left Behind legislation, the
agency's original guidance was to use " Englishlanguage
learner " to classify students who needed
English-language instruction based on an assessment
that determined their level of Englishlanguage
proficiency, said Kathleen Leos, former
assistant deputy secretary and director of OELA,
who was there for the agency's start.
Similarly to LEP, the term is specifically used
to identify those students who are legally eligible
for English-language acquisition support in public
schools.
The term English learner became the official
label at the federal level under the 2015 Every
Student Succeeds Act and remains the preferred
term used in the Education Department's policy
communications.
But some agencies and organizations, including
WIDA, use the variation of EL: English-language
learner (ELL). WIDA includes the word " language "
in the label because it conveys that these students
are not just learning English, but they are understanding
a second or third language, said Mariana
Castro, deputy director of the Wisconsin Center for
Education Research at the University of WisconsinMadison.
After all, technically, every student in the
United States is an English learner in the sense that
they all take grammar, reading, and writing classes.
Compared to LEP, EL does a better job of portraying
students in an asset-minded way, researchers
said. It emphasizes how they are acquiring
English to add to whatever language they speak at
home.
However, " English learner as a term doesn't
emphasize the diversity and the richness of the language
experience that multilingual learners have
and bring to their schooling, " said Lisa Hsin, senior
researcher at the American Institutes for Research.
(AIR's research on students acquiring English in
schools is housed in its Center for English Learners.
The naming convention is meant to align with federal
terminology, just as New America uses EL.)
Attempts to acknowledge those cultural and linguistic
assets has led some to use the term culturallylinguistically
diverse students, Aguirre with WIDA
said. That evolved into bilingual learners, with some
arguing these students weren't fully bilingual because
they still needed to attain English proficiency.
There was also the term emergent bilingual, coined
back in 2008 by academics. But these conversations
eventually led to the newest umbrella term.
Multilingual Learner (MLL)
The term multilingual learner (MLL) is meant
to note that students speak many languages. It's
one of the newer terms used by researchers and
agencies. Cardona, the education secretary, has
also used the term multilingual education when
speaking of federal priorities for the Education
Department.
" Cardona, he's paying attention to the research,
he's saying, 'Look, kids out here, it doesn't matter
what your first language is,' " said Leos, formerly of
OELA. " Everybody here should be learning more
than one language, because that's how you're going
to get the highest academic achievement for every
student. "
MLL is a term that acknowledges multiple
languages and dialects, including those that are indigenous,
and is built around social justice efforts to
elevate these methods of cultural communication
purposely erased or looked down upon historically,
said Castro at Wisconsin-Madison.
It's also the most inclusive term in the sense
that a multilingual learner can be a student in a
dual-language program who is completely fluent
in English and learning a second language. So
it doesn't just cover those who, according to a
language assessment, require English-language
acquisition support.
To that end, some researchers warn that, for legal
purposes, there still needs to be a precise designation
for those who need specialized services to
ensure they acquire English.
It's why the education consulting firm SupportEd
has, in a recent report, suggested using multilingual
learner as the umbrella term for all multilingual
students, while also using emergent multilingual
learner for those who still need to learn English.
Many questions also remain around how education
practices such as dual-language programs can
be expanded and brought to scale nationwide to
truly promote multilingual education in a way that
allows those legally eligible for English-language
support to also develop their home languages.
But with such programs currently limited across
the country, some researchers also caution that
multilingual education must not end up prioritizing
access to students with no need for specialized
English support because historically, English
learners have struggled with access to quality
language and academic instruction.
The hope however is that there can be a vision
for public education where every student has access
to multilingual education as a primary goal
for public education, Leos said.
Emergent Bilingual and Programmatic
Labels
The academic Ofelia Garcia coined the term
" emergent bilingual " in a 2008 paper she co-authored
called " From English Language Learners to
Emergent Bilinguals. " Around the same time, Kathy
Escamilla coined " emerging bilinguals " to discuss
the dynamic nature of dual language learners from
the perspective of early young learners who are
learning more than one language in an interconnected
way, said Castro at Wisconsin-Madison.
Some scholars and advocates still prefer these terms.
But beyond the labels for students acquiring
the English language, educators might also
come across a variety of programmatic labels that
categorize the specific program in which students
are participating. For instance, if a school has an
English-as-a-second language department, students
receiving services there may be ESL students.
Those in a transitional bilingual program may be
called transitional bilingual students. A student in a
dual-language program? Dual-language learner.
However, researchers, especially those in the
early education field, might use " dual-language
learner " to describe children up to age 8 who are
learning English in addition to their home language,
said Villegas with New America.
MAP: The online article includes a map
that shows which states use which terms.
> edweek.org
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Education Week - May 3, 2023

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