Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) and its new superintendent, former Miami-Dade boss Alberto Carvalho, recently unveiled their new strategic plan for the next four years, titled “Ready for the World,” which is exactly what all students should be by the time they finish school—but what does that mean, and how can you achieve it in one of the most beleaguered school districts in the nation?
Bearing in mind that LAUSD is the second largest school district in the country, with 575,000 students of whom only 10% are White, the answer, hopefully, is by providing an environment that recognizes the district’s diversity as an asset that can be leveraged to open the minds of every student and inspire them to make the most of the global village in which they will live. According to the plan, its first core belief is that “each student arrives with a unique and diverse range of strengths, skills, and perspectives that we must honor and uplift.” This may sound like a tall order, but there’s nothing wrong with having high expectations, as long as realistic investments and supports are put into place to help achieve such lofty goals.
So far, the process looks promising—to develop the plan, more than 20,000 stakeholders were consulted between February and June 2022 through a variety of listening and learning sessions, including more than 100 face-to-face or virtual meetings with parents and students across grade levels from every local district; employees and labor partners; educational providers; civic partners; local, state, and federally elected officials; business, community, faith-based, and philanthropic partners; and areas of underserved student groups.
The plan is set around four specific goals—literacy, numeracy, college and career readiness, and wellness—but, according to the report, will not only focus on academic achievement and wellness but also on creating the right environment for success, with training in social–emotional learning for community, staff, and district-level employees.
Included is the objective to increase staff recruitment and focus on retention during this national teacher shortage, while ensuring that vacancies at high- and highest-need schools do not exceed 6%. It also prioritizes expanding professional development for current teachers as well as increased training and support for new hires.
Of course, funding, especially when post-pandemic recovery grants run out, will be crucial to the plan’s success, so the district is preparing for the near future when extra COVID-19 relief money is no longer available, according to Carvalho. To counteract a dip in student enrollment, and therefore funding, new dual language programs will be added to the existing 200 in English plus Arabic, Armenian, French, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, and Spanish.
It remains to be seen how successfully the plan will be implemented, but its creation and its optimism set an example that large urban school districts can and should capitalize on their diversity to provide education suitable for the 21st century.
As we move further into the millennium, many national and local educational systems are considering how best to meet the changing needs and demands they face, especially in developing countries. Arising from those reflections is an increased interest in teachers and teacher training because teachers are uniquely positioned to implement any changes with children and youth. In this context is the Dominican Republic (DR), a developing country situated in the Caribbean, sharing its island with Haiti. Rich in cultural diversity and natural resources, the DR has a population of just under 11 million. Santo Domingo is its capital and largest city, as well as the largest metropolitan area in the Caribbean by population, hosting more than 36% of the 3.5 million national public-school student population. The official language is Spanish and English is taught as a Foreign Language to more than 1.3 million public-school students. Dominican Republic TESOL (DR-TESOL) is officially advocating for the approval of the Law of English as a Second Language and the continuity of the Situated English Teacher Training Strategy in over 500 public schools all around the country.
Understanding who teachers are, and how they see themselves, becomes increasingly important as educators, policymakers, and communities consider what they want their educational system to accomplish. This seems especially important now, when many teacher-training programs, such as those in the DR, are facing major reforms and restructuring. Educational research and literature often recognize that teacher identity is a key factor that influences teachers’ sense of purpose, self-efficacy, motivation, commitment, job satisfaction and effectiveness (Cummins, 2021; Wernicke, Hansen, & Schroedler, 2021). Intertwined with teacher preparation are the students’ learning outcomes. In this case, history will begin to be made in the DR, because it will allow students to become bilingual citizens with skills to excel in the workplace, and with greater capability to interact with a larger portion of the world’s people.
Current State of Bilingual Education
The educational system in the DR is regulated and administered by the Ministry of Education. Education is a right for all children and youth. However, bilingual education is limited. Even though teaching English in school has been mandatory since 1961, English language learning in school has never been a priority for the local authorities. English teachers complain that the subject is regarded as a façade and considered by many as a merely a gesture in the school curriculum. Consequently, for the last 60 years, all Dominican public-school students have been destined to monolingualism, in contrast to the small number of students from middle and high-income families who are the only ones afforded an international, bilingual school. This is considered by Dominican Republic TESOL as the biggest factor of educational injustice and inequality in the country. This is why, in 2014, DR-TESOL started the movement for a Bilingual Republic. English teachers in Dominican public schools have demonstrated for years their commitment to their professional development and their willingness to give all their time and knowledge to improve student learning outcomes. If educators really want better learning results, the first thing educators need is an objective and scientifically valid vision of a strong bilingual educational program, which they have recently adopted with the implementation of a Situated Professional Development Strategy for Learning English as a Foreign Language, for over 300,000 public-school students nationwide. This strategy involves over 1,000 English teachers in both primary and secondary school, and is funded by the National Teacher Training Institute of the Dominican Ministry of Education (INAFOCAM). This strategy is defined as a situated, wholistic, and simultaneous approach which involves daily class observation and needs analysis, the implementation of a reflective teaching approach for public-school English class, the provision of learning and teaching materials, as well as continuing education programs on Language Teacher Supervision, Language Skills Development and Pedagogic Training. Since this strategy was originally piloted, designed, and proposed by local educators, DR-TESOL argues that this proves that teachers and students are not the problem of Dominican education but the solution, contrary to what some local groups claim.
Benefits of Bilingual Education
Our world today presents global needs, changes, and interdependencies we have with one another. Information and communication technologies enable people from various cultures to communicate and connect with each other. Indirectly, digital technology may be used to translate text from one language to another, but errors in translation certainly occur. The most important skill in communicating with others is being able to do so in their native language. Promoting bilingualism in the 21st century is a responsibility of educational institutions.
Language continues to be the bridge that unites people from all walks of life. Music is often celebrated as an art for sharing, on a global platform, the sentiments of a culture, including the struggles of a community. Therefore, presenting our children with the love of language in their early developmental years is a gift to foster a society that is empathetic, intuitive, and full of critical thinkers.
Research states that bilingualism is positively linked to improved student performance. Bilingual students often pursue higher education and become much more comfortable integrating with multiple communities (Cummins, 2021; Rodriguez, Carrasquillo, Lee, 2014). The benefits of bilingual education extend much further. Neuroscientists have also studied the implications of proficiency in bilingual education and have presented evidence to state that active use of two or more languages helps protect the brain against cognitive decline and age-related dementia. The commitment of every educational institution is to prepare their students to become contributors to society. As advocates for children, we are to ensure that all schools provide the children with an equitable education. Bilingual education is equitable education, and highly beneficial to students.
Promoting Bilingual Education: Massive Communication Effort
For many people, the goal of becoming a bilingual country is not a new idea. Eight years ago, a group of educators in the Dominican Republic established the Dominican Republic TESOL (DR-TESOL), a national association of professionals and aspiring professionals whose main goal is to develop quality teaching and learning of English in the Dominican public schools through professional development, research, and advocacy. Since 2014, DR-TESOL has maintained a massive communication campaign through TV, radio, newspapers, and social media, in an effort to raise public awareness about the need to guarantee the learning of English in public schools and to advocate for educational justice and improvement. In a study conducted by Professional Training Systems, 90% of Dominican students are highly interested and motivated to learn English as a second language, 85% have positive attitudes towards learning English and 95% believe that learning English is very important and a highly transferable academic skill (Valdez, 2013). Accordingly, Dominican Republic TESOL maintains that in order to deliver effective and equitable instruction in public-school English programs, the educational system, at all levels, must address the curriculum, instructional methodology, teacher preparation and support systems, student proficiency levels, and school system policies and context.
For successful implementation, the government must also allocate financial resources to guarantee the continuity of efforts like this and the dissemination of research and information about bilingual education. Both advocacy and research are important to propel the learning of English as a foreign language to all school-age children and youth throughout the country. The study by Professional Training Systems, referenced above, also reveals that the discontinuity of well-established programs like this, and the absence of research to sustain the implementation of learning programs have traditionally been the main causes of stagnation in monolingualism, which Dominican public-school students have suffered for the last six decades.
Laws and Policies Concerning Bilingual Education
For the last two years, Dominican Republic TESOL has demanded that Congress approve the proposed Law of English as a Second Language which was submitted to the Congressional Commission of Education in 2020. The Law of English as a Second Language is an effort to guarantee the implementation and continuity of a comprehensive and well-developed English Language Learning policy framework. DR-TESOL maintains that a strong legal foundation to guarantee the right to learning English is essential in order to overcome the traditional political barriers faced by teachers and students in trying to improve English proficiency levels in public schools. According to DR-TESOL, empirical research shows that having English as an official subject of the school curriculum has not proven sufficient in 60 years; rather, implementing a legally sustained, national strategy for the improvement of English language learning is required. This law aspires to guarantee that more than 2.3 million children and youth have access to quality English language learning in all public schools, from 4th to 12th grade, and that thousands of local teachers be internationally certified in teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language.
The 8th Annual International Convention of Dominican Republic TESOL was an event of great impact and inspiration for teachers of English in the country. Over a thousand English as a Foreign Language teachers from all over the country attended the convention. In the opening plenary, Dr. Socorro Herrera, professor and director of the Center for Intercultural and Multilingual Advocacy (CIMA) of Kansas State University, discussed the theme of the development of bilingualism as an asset important for Dominican public education. She addressed the tensions and boundaries that limit us, colleagues, and students in seeing bilingualism as an asset. The DR-TESOL conference engaged the teachers in attendance with an abundance of topics: (a) Playing with language: Bilingualism and social life; (b) The qualities of an exceptional language teacher; (c) Translanguaging: Tips to leverage students’ linguistic resources; (d) Teaching English as a foreign language using universal design for learning principles; (d) Critical thinking for bilingual classrooms; (e ) Language teacher supervision; (f) Activating conversational competence; (g) Engaging reluctant learners; (h) The bilingual advantage; (i) Academic success of English learners; (j) The secret to encouraging beginning English learners; and (k) You have more influence than you think. Dr. Ayanna Cooper, consultant and advocate for culturally and linguistically diverse learners, provided the closing plenary. Dr. Cooper focused on the need to know for making informed decisions within your own educational settings.
Conclusion
Education is presented as a multifaceted phenomenon of global scope, which follows very different trajectories in each national context. In this sense, The Dominican Republic represents a case that distinguishes a movement of a very different nature, the proponent of a new law to guarantee the learning of English as the second language in all public schools. This work is a reflection upon a shared humanity, focusing on the role of critical innovation, which calls for stepping outside our habits of seeing and doing and moving toward transformation of perspectives and systems for all learners. We propose that the Dominican Republic Ministry of Education continue to support the implementation of the national Situated English Teacher Training Strategy in schools all around the country, which focuses on the development of educational programs to raise the level of language proficiency and pedagogical skills for all teachers; review the national English curriculum through a process of national consensus and consultation, maintain a system of support and follow-up to the development and performance of this English program, at a regional and district level; and establish new policies to language learning and teaching in the Dominican Republic. We offer those proposals because, as a nation, we cannot afford any more inconsistency and discontinuity.
Teaching English as a Foreign Language in the Dominican Republic is poised to contribute knowledge to cross-cultural dynamics of classroom settings in K-12 public schools; development and implementation of appropriate curricula; and provision of effective teaching strategies for fostering literacy development and the acquisition of competence in two languages. The proposed initiative offers new perspectives on challenges, strengths, and growth to educating and graduating bilingual public-school students, providing insights into the theme, United for Bilingual Education.
References
Cummins, J. (2021). Rethinking the Education of Multilingual Learners. Multilingual Matters.
Rodríguez, D., Carrasquillo, A., & Lee, S. (2014). The bilingual advantage: Promoting
academic development and biliteracy through native language in the classroom. New York,
NY: Teachers College Press.
Valdez, J. (2013). Why English is not learned in Dominican Public Schools, Professional Training Systems.
Wernicke, H. S., Hansen, A., & Schroedler, T. (Eds.). (2021). Preparing Teachers to work with Multilingual Learners. Multilingual Matters.
Juan Valdez is director of Professional Development Systems, executive director of The Education Observatory, and president of Dominican Republic TESOL.
Diane Rodríguezis professor and associate dean, Graduate School of Education, Fordham University.
Elisa Alvarez isNew York State associate commissioner of the Office of Bilingual Education and World Languages.
According to the U.S. Department of Education’s report Education in a Pandemic: The Disparate Impacts of COVID-19 on America’s Students: “For many elementary and secondary school students with disabilities, COVID-19 significantly disrupted the education and related aids and services needed to support their academic progress and prevent regression—and may have exacerbated longstanding disparities in their academic achievement.”
Many students with communication disorders were particularly affected by changes like virtual and hybrid learning that were implemented during the 2020–2021 school year due to the pandemic. As some of these children return to in-person instruction for the first time in more than a year, the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) recommends the following ways for families to help them prepare for a successful in-person school year and support recovery of communication, social, and learning skills:
Attend school open house/meet-and greet events. Try to attend if your schedule allows. If you cannot attend, ask if there is an opportunity to meet the teacher virtually or visit the building at another time. You may be able to visit the speech–language pathologist (SLP) as well. This can help children with communication disorders reduce uncertainty about the classroom and school environment—and give families specifics that they can talk about in advance with their child (e.g., where they will be sitting and with whom, where to go if they are overstimulated or want alone time, who is in the class, etc.).
Practice social skills. Everyday interactions such as talking with friends, playing at recess, and eating lunch in the cafeteria may be difficult for children with language and/or social communication disorders, particularly those who had little interaction with same-aged peers during the past year. All of this can play a role in academics as well as social success. Families can help children by playing school at home and practicing these specific scenarios. They may also want to arrange playdates with classmates and visit parks, pools, and other places where kids are, as family comfort level allows.
Prepare for social/behavioral expectations in the classroom. Children may need to be reminded of basic classroom behaviors like staying in their seat, raising their hand when they want to say something, or asking for permission to go to the bathroom. Pandemic-related expectations such as social distancing, wearing masks, and staying with a particular group of children at lunch or recess may also be required. Talk about these changes in advance and practice behaviors that may be difficult. Families of children with communication disorders may want to create social stories—structured, personalized stories that explain social situations to children. These stories can help children with language and social disorders troubleshoot challenging situations.
Prime children for learning. At least one week prior to the first day, formalize habits to put your child in a good place to start the year. These include nightly reading before bed, gradually reducing their screen time, and practicing going to bed early and waking up on time. Children with speech and language disorders generally thrive on such routines. A visual chart of these routines and maintaining a consistent schedule may help as well.
Role-play potentially stressful scenarios. There may be specific situations that concern your child about going back to school. For example, a child who stutters may be worried about introducing themselves on the first day of class or reading out loud. By talking about these situations and practicing, you can help reduce stress, decrease negative reactions and emotions, and build confidence about new social interactions.
Keep communication open with your child’s teacher, their SLP, and other school staff. If you have specific concerns about the return to school and/or any particular skills and learning regression, let the school know in advance so that staff can do everything they can to help your child succeed. You can do this informally (e.g., email the teacher) as well as formally (e.g., at meetings to discuss individualized education programs [IEPs] or 504 plans).
Prepare for possible changes in IEP services or 504 plans. For students who have existing IEPs or 504 plans, there may still be changes in how speech–language and other services are delivered due to the pandemic. This may vary by school district and even by school. Talk to your child’s IEP coordinator and/or case manager about what services will look like so you all can know what to expect.
Educate yourself about your child’s services. Know that families still have the rights they always had when it comes to special education services. When you meet with your child’s educational team, discuss how they are evaluating them for any regression of skills and how the school will address this. Your child’s SLP and other providers want what’s best for them. Through a collaborative relationship, your child can meet their highest potential.
Stay positive about where your child is right now. Despite the challenging circumstances of the past school year, not all was lost. Children are resilient and can recover. Stay upbeat and help get your child excited when shopping for school supplies or a new backpack, picking out the first-day-of-school outfit, and talking about teacher assignments and other details. Their excitement about the new year can impact both their learning and their social success.
For more information on speech and language services in schools, visit www.asha.org/public/speech/development/speech-and-language-services-in-schools.
With governments across the world adopting new policies to support Indigenous and regional minority languages (for instance, see UN’s International Decade of Indigenous Languages), it may seem like people in power are finally beginning to embrace linguistic diversity. But make no mistake—there’s still a long way to go.
In Mexico, for example, speakers of Indigenous languages still face challenges that their Spanish-speaking counterparts may not—according to Mexico News Daily, speakers of Indigenous languages in the state of Chiapas are still subjected to Castilianization practices, which serve to convert these communities to primarily Spanish-speaking ones. Although Mexico is home to several dozen Indigenous languages, like Nahuatl and Mixtec, the vast majority of these languages have become endangered due to Spanish’s predominance.
A recent survey published in Mexico News Daily and conducted by researchers at Western Kentucky University seeks to explore the public’s attitudes toward Indigenous language education in the country. Although the Mexican government’s efforts to preserve Indigenous languages have been somewhat lackluster, it appears that the Mexican public is generally quite supportive of efforts to preserve and revitalize Indigenous languages.
“For those fighting to preserve Mexico’s Indigenous heritage, it is clear that they are still supported—at least in theory—by the majority of Mexicans,” the report reads.
The vast majority—87%—of respondents to the survey said they agreed with the statement that “the presence of Indigenous people is important to Mexican culture.” The researchers also asked respondents about their thoughts on teaching Indigenous languages and English in schools—the majority of respondents agreed that it was important to teach these as subjects in school, though Indigenous languages received a bit less overwhelming support than English (88.4% of respondents supported teaching English in school compared to 70.8% for Indigenous languages).
The researchers noted that the Mexican government has made some efforts in recent years to support Indigenous languages, such as the country’s Inali, or the National Institute of Indigenous Languages, which made strides during the pandemic, providing people with a variety of online resources to learn Indigenous languages. Currently, Nahuatl is one of the few languages indigenous to Mexico that is not endangered—most of the country’s Indigenous languages have less than 100,000 native speakers. Andrew Warner
In late July, Congressmen Andy Barr (R-Kentucky) and Ami Bera (D-California) introduced the Expand eXpertise in China Education and Language (EXCEL) Act, bipartisan legislation to strengthen relevant linguistic, cultural, and regional expertise. Congressman Bera is the chairman and Congressman Barr a member of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific, Central Asia, and Nonproliferation.
The EXCEL Act would:
Direct the secretary of state to appoint no fewer than 31 candidates with linguistic, cultural, or regional expertise relevant for strengthening US understanding of and ability to compete with the People’s Republic of China (PRC) directly to positions in the competitive service;
Direct the secretary of state to train foreign service and civil service employees who hold positions relevant to advancing US policies toward competition on:
the domestic and foreign policy objectives of the PRC and Chinese Communist Party (CCP);
the tools the PRC and the CCP use to achieve those objectives; and
the role of ideology in shaping CCP policies and outlook;
Establish a China Strategic Advisory Board comprising experts appointed by the president, secretary of state, and leaders from the Democratic and Republican parties. The China Strategy Advisory Board would:
Provide advice, expertise, and continuity in US foreign policy matters pertaining to strategic competition with the PRC;
Review recruitment, training, and retention of civil service and foreign service members with the expertise and experience necessary to support US policy toward the PRC; and
Review programs across regional and functional bureaus intended to respond to strategic competition with the PRC, including the Counter PRC Malign Influence Fund.
Identify long-term solutions through the Government Accountability Office, including directing the comptroller general of the US to conduct a study on the personnel capacity and capability at the Department of State and USAID to support US strategic competition with the People’s Republic of China and on available mechanisms to address any identified gaps; identify the percentage of vacant foreign service positions and civil service positions in the Indo-Pacific vis-`a-vis other regions globally; and identify actions Congress, the White House, and the Department of State can take to address current gaps.
“Part of deterring the Chinese Communist Party is knowing the Chinese Communist Party. America did this well during the Cold War, and that effort was critical in freedom prevailing over Communism. It’s time to double down on this strategy, and our bill does so by enabling USAID to recruit, hire, and train Americans steeped in the culture, history, and inter-workings of the People’s Republic of China. Through this effort, we will better position the US to preserve freedom in the face of a new Communist threat to the world,” said Congressman Barr. “The government of the People’s Republic of China and the Chinese Community Party are the most significant geostrategic challenges facing the United States and our allies and partners in the 21st century,” said Congressman Bera. “If we are to outcompete China and win the geostrategic competition of the 21st century, we need a much better understanding of the country’s language, history, and institutions, as well as the objectives they seek to advance in the Indo-Pacific region.
The bipartisan EXCEL Act will strengthen our knowledge of the People’s Republic of China and empower the United States government to recruit, hire, and retain the next generation of American experts on China. It is a national security and economic imperative that we prioritize Chinese linguistic and cultural competencies on a long-term basis.”
As teachers and students prepare for the new school year, many school administrators are scrambling to fill vacancies, and some are already putting into place contingency plans for unfilled teaching positions. Some states have passed legislation to allow school districts to recruit unqualified personnel, despite the wealth of research showing that the single most significant factor in student achievement is teacher quality. Bear in mind that teacher quality is even more important for the students who need the most attention, like multilingual learners. Instead of politicians coming up with desperate solutions to the teacher shortage, we should all be listening to teachers and finding out what they need to thrive in their chosen profession.
Florida is the latest state to resort to extreme measures to “lower the barriers” for teachers to enter the profession. The Sunshine State’s new Military Veteran Certification Pathway allows veterans with at least 48 months of active-duty service and a minimum of 60 college credits with a 2.5 GPA to apply for a five-year temporary certificate allowing them to teach in schools. Also last month, Arizona passed a bill that allows schools to hire educators still seeking bachelor’s degrees, although it appears not to allow schools to hire those individuals as teachers of record. Over the last few years, at least twelve states have lowered requirements to become a fully certified teacher. Surveys indicate that the current teacher shortage is driven by resignations and attrition. A national survey by EdWeek found that 54% of teachers said they were likely to leave the profession within the next two years. In the same survey, less than half of the respondents felt that the general public respected them and saw them as professionals.
Of course, inadequate pay rates are the reason many teachers leave, but those can be remedied relatively quickly given the right political climate. Indeed, some states are responding to the shortage by increasing teacher pay quite significantly. However, the public’s misperception of teachers, largely created by anti-union politicians and right-leaning media, will take longer to fix and may have a more structural effect in its suppression of graduates entering the profession.
Advocates for easier entry into teaching claim that reducing requirements will increase teacher diversity and that it’s the only way to get positions filled. However, without the right pay, conditions, and respect for their expertise, recruiting good teachers will be an uphill struggle, and keeping them will be even harder.
In the long term, to encourage the best graduates into teaching, we need to elevate the profession and provide more training and support, not less. Diluting the profession by admitting unqualified teachers to solve the immediate crisis will only make that harder, so other solutions should be considered, such as fast-track, intensive training programs, re-recruiting ex-teachers, or even recruiting overseas. Well-qualified teachers should be treated as the professionals they are, be rewarded accordingly, and be heard.
Last month, the US and Spain both renewed an agreement to promote student and teacher exchange programs between the two countries.
The US Department of Education and the Spanish Ministry of Education and Vocational Training agreed on a new memorandum of understanding between the two agencies, which will promote multilingual and multicultural education in both countries.
“This week, alongside Ambassador [Santiago] Cabanas, I signed a memorandum supporting the study of Spanish language & culture in the US, and the study of English in Spain,” said US secretary of education Miguel Cardona in a tweet shortly after signing the memorandum. “It will also help to strengthen our educator workforce, and support effective instruction in our schools.”
This is the third such memorandum that has been signed between the two countries. Spain and the US have each sent several language educators abroad to the other country—currently, there are about 500 Spanish teachers working in the US, while the US has sent more than 7,000 “conversation assistants” to enrich English language classes in Spain’s public school system.
After English, Spanish is the second-most widely spoken language in the US, which also boasts the second-largest population of Spanish speakers in the world, just after Mexico. Cardona hopes to devise similar agreements between the US and countries in Latin America, in order to facilitate high-quality Spanish language education in the country.
In recent years, Spain has been a strong supporter of Spanish-language education abroad, with the recent opening of the University of California, Los Angeles’ Instituto Cervantes center highlighting the country’s commitment to Spanish education around the world.
The Instituto Cervantes is a global organization that promotes Spanish education throughout the world—at the August opening of UCLA’s branch, the country’s prime minister Pedro Sánchez stated that “Spanish is a language of progress and modernity, of the future and entrepreneurship.”
The United States isn’t the only country battling a teacher shortage. A recent report shows that Canada is struggling to keep up with demand for teachers as well. The report, 2021 Annual Report on Language Education in Canada was conducted by Languages Canada, and released in July. The report shows that nearly one out of five schools has difficulty hiring suitable teachers for job openings. Much like in the U.S., there is a vast disparity between teachers’ salary expectations and what schools are offering.
“The current day context of increased costs is the most severe financial pressure our members have experienced,” Languages Canada executive director Gonzalo Peralta told thePie News, “Teacher salaries have increased, as have all other costs – classroom space, travel, activities and housing.”
The 2021 Annual Report on Language Education in Canada provides a clear picture of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Canada’s English and French language education sector. 2020 numbers, while drastically lower than 2019, included a healthy first quarter. 2021 data, however, tell the full story of the impact of border restrictions, visa delays, costly testing and quarantine requirements, provincial lockdowns, and classroom capacity limits.
In 2021, Languages Canada members enrolled 57,423 students – the lowest number since the association began collecting student data via the annual members’ survey in 2008 and approximately one third of the number of students in 2019. This included 52,754 students studying English and 4,669 studying French. Fifty-one percent of student weeks were delivered entirely online (both in and outside Canada). Another twenty percent were delivered in a blended online/in-person format.
Proportionally, public sector members experienced a much more drastic drop in student number – a 28.4% decrease from 2020 versus a 5% decrease in student numbers for private Languages Canada members. Many English and French language programs within public colleges and universities were deemed non-essential for face-to-face learning up until the fall 2021 semester and were limited to virtual course delivery. Coupled with lack of access to federal wage and rent subsidies, the significant drop in student numbers and revenues was particularly impactful for public language programs.
Zachary Haché, a former classroom teacher who still works in the language sector in Montréal told The PIE News that many schools expect teachers to prepare lessons and mark assignments in their own time, reducing the actual hourly rate paid. He added that a number of programs in Montréal can no longer attract native speakers to teach ESL.
“The majority of the workforce of first-year teachers are non-native speakers who are recent immigrants to Canada,” he said. “These teachers are more vulnerable and more easily exploited. They also need more time to prepare their lessons,” which results in a huge turnover of teachers at private schools every year.
Still, the report is not entirely pessimistic. The language education sector emerged from 2021 with optimism for recovery and growth into 2022. With most border restrictions and quarantine requirements eased by fall 2021, Canada is positioned as a top choice destination for English and French language students. In fact, Canada gained global market share in the English Language Travel sector over the pandemic, from 12% in 2019 to 17% in 2020 (the most recent year available) and experienced less decline in student numbers in 2021 than competitor destinations UK, Australia and Ireland.
The US Indian Affairs Office of Indian Economic Development has awarded $7 million in grants under the Living Languages Grant Program to 45 American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes and Tribal organizations.
The Living Languages Grant Program provides an opportunity for Tribes to receive funding to document and revitalize languages that are at risk of disappearing because of a declining native-speaker population. For more than 150 years, Native languages in the US have been subjected to suppression and elimination from a variety of factors such as federal boarding and other types of schools that forced American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children to forgo speaking the language of their peoples.
“Native language preservation has for many years been cited by Indigenous leaders as important to their self-preservation, self-determination, and sovereignty. Native preservation and language revitalization is a critical priority because languages go to the heart of a Tribe’s unique cultural identities, traditions, spiritual beliefs, and self-governance,” said assistant secretary for Indian affairs Bryan Newland. “Through the Living Languages Grant Program and other interagency efforts, the Biden-Harris administration is working to invest in and strengthen the nation-to-nation relationship and ensure that progress in Indian country endures for years to come.”
The Biden-Harris administration claims that native language preservation is a priority and that it will use its all-of-government approach to strengthen and support Indigenous communities. During the 2021 White House Tribal Nations Summit in November 2021, the US Departments of the Interior, Education, and Health and Human Services launched a new interagency initiative (www.doi.gov/pressreleases/departments-interior-education-and-health-human-services-launch-multi-agency) to preserve, protect, and promote the rights and freedom of Native Americans to use, practice, and develop Native languages.
The program evaluated 59 applications, totaling $9.37 million in requests, to support Tribal programs that document Native American languages or build Tribal capacity to create or expand language preservation programs.
Grant proposals were rated on the extent to which funding would document, preserve, or revitalize a Native language; the degree to which the language addressed by a proposal risks extinction; the likelihood that the instruction to be funded would revitalize the language by preventing intergenerational disruption; and the number of students or percentage of Tribal members the proposal would benefit. While only federally recognized Tribes and Tribal organizations are eligible for the Living Languages Grant Program, grantees can retain for-profit and nonprofit community groups to perform a grant’s scope of work.
A new study from the nonprofit educational research organization NWEA suggests that children in K-12 programs are beginning to bounce back from the COVID-19 pandemic’s negative impact on academic achievement.
While the researchers stress that full recovery is projected to take years, they also believe the findings in their latest study are promising early results. In examining the academic achievement of more than 8 million children as they progressed from second to fifth grade, the researchers found that gains during the 2021-2022 school year paralleled those that might be expected of students prior to the pandemic.
“These signs of rebounding are especially heartening during another challenging school year of more variants, staff shortages, and a host of uncertainties,” said Karyn Lewis, co-author of the study and the director of NWEA’s Center for School and Student Progress. “We think that speaks volumes to the tremendous effort put forth by our schools to support students.”
The researchers used data from the MAP Growth assessment tests taken by 8.3 million children from the 2018-2019 school year through the 2021-2022 school year. The students from this cohort were compared to students who took the same tests from the 2015-2016 school year to 2018-2019, serving as a benchmark for expected pre-pandemic achievement gains.
While achievement gains were lower during the first full school year of the COVID-19 pandemic, 2020-2021, the following school year showed gains parallel to or even greater than those found in pre-pandemic data. According to the study, these gains are more pronounced in math than reading and younger students appear to be rebounding more easily than older ones.
While the achievement gain — i.e., the difference in achievement from one year to the next — may be back to pre-pandemic levels, it’s important to note that the achievement itself is still below what would be expected had the COVID-19 pandemic not occurred. Achievement has declined for students across all grade levels from third grade through eighth grade, with particularly high declines in math — for example, eighth graders in 2022 performed about 10 percentile points lower on the MAP Growth math section than eighth graders in 2019. These declines also appear to be strongest for children from marginalized racial backgrounds, with Asian and white children seeing the smallest decline all around.
At the current rate, NWEA researchers believe it will take several years for student achievement to fully recover and reach pre-pandemic levels. Thus, Lindsey Dworkin, NWEA’s SVP of policy and communications urges policymakers to invest in research-based interventions to support children’s recovery and speed up this process.
“Any signs of hope are reasons to celebrate, and we must take that moment to do so, and then push forward with renewed energy and a sense of urgency because we’re just at the initial steps of addressing the tremendous impact of this pandemic on our students,” Lewis said.
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