PRP Group’s Anonymous Edvisors (AE) platform automates feedback sessions between administrators and education vendors. Through AE, administrators leverage their experience and expertise to offer companies actionable insights that only their target buyers can provide—and to earn additional income by completing sessions.
AE gives administrators an opportunity to shape existing and emerging education products by helping vendors respond to the actual needs, interests, and insights of working educators. The platform provides a flexible pathway for busy administrators to earn supplemental income when they want, and on projects they care about. Because all AEs are current or recent administrators, companies can be sure they are paired with experts. Areas in which AEs provide feedback include:
• Key messaging; • Product feedback and reviews; • Competitor analysis; • Budget and pricing; and • Buyer personas.
The platform anonymizes administrators’ identities, expediting unfiltered and unbiased feedback without the risk of conflicts of interest. Anonymous Edvisors who are currently engaging with vendors include a CAO, a superintendent, and an edtech director.
An assistant superintendent who serves as an AE said the platform is “very straightforward,” adding, “it is a great way to share feedback, and provides a voice for those of us in the field of education.”
Vendors can request sessions based on the criteria that matter most to them, including administrators’ roles and responsibilities, areas of professional interest, areas of expertise, regional focus, and district demographics. The platform then recommends appropriate and available AEs.
The Anonymous Edvisor platform offers users:
• A platform designed from the ground up for education, featuring an automated onboarding process and Google login for ease of use; • A streamlined process for identifying the perfect AE, then booking and conducting sessions; • Anonymous and asynchronous consulting sessions that free AEs to be candid and creative in their feedback and provide companies access to administrators whom they would not normally be able to work with due to time or contractual limitations; • Access to past sessions and responses, helping all users to stay abreast of multi-session projects and allowing vendors to make comparisons between AEs or note changes in feedback over time; • Automated document sharing and project management with notifications for both parties as projects—most of which are completed in a few days— are finalized.
Emboldening the Youth is a nonprofit organization that serves children in English, in remote villages, orphanages, and schools across India. They are working on expanding to ten districts across India, including in the ten major cities of Chennai, Lucknow, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Patna, Trichy, and Kerala. They are partnering with established, nationally recognized nonprofits, such as eVidyaloka, Children of India Foundation, Asha Mumbai, Bhumi India, Visamo Kids Foundation, and Lokmanya Public Charitable Trust, to lead classes in English, to improve literacy rates in uneducated and underserved schools across rural areas in India.
The founder, Anish Shekar, recognized the dire importance of education through his visits to India as a child. He witnessed firsthand how rural areas in his parents’ village in Bangalore were stricken with poverty, poor sanitation, and practically nonexistent education. He vowed to make a difference in his community and give back to the village that cared for him as a child, starting his efforts in Bangalore and eventually working to expand to nine other cities across India.
A district reading specialist was responsible for implementing changes mandated by the Georgia Department of Education concerning structured literacy training and dyslexia screening procedures. According to the new Georgia law—S. B. 48—students who do not pass the literacy screener must be placed in a reading intervention program. Recognizing the dual risk of over-identifying multilingual learners (MLs) as dyslexic and the possibility of failing to identify MLs who genuinely have characteristics associated with dyslexia, the new reading specialist sought a balanced approach. To develop a support plan for appropriately screening multilingual students, she reached out to the ESOL specialist. Because dyslexia identification relies heavily on word recognition skills, which are neither taught nor assessed in the ESOL program under WIDA guidance, the ESOL specialist initially found it challenging to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. The two specialists found themselves unable to have a collaborative conversation with one another. They were coming from different perspectives and had completely different approaches to the same problem. The reading specialist simply asked, “Then how can ESOL teachers help a nonreader?” The ESOL specialist paused for a very long time… and that’s when the real conversation started.
WIDA-based ESOL programs face significant challenges in aligning with state literacy laws that emphasize structured literacy and the science of reading. WIDA-based ESOL programs show gaps in (1) standards-based instructional practices, (2) comprehensive assessment, and (3) setting language expectations. To bridge these gaps, it is imperative for WIDA to explicitly integrate phonological awareness and word recognition skills into their standards, proficiency level descriptors, and assessments. This integration would ensure that ESOL programs can better support multilingual learners by aligning their instructional approaches with the structured literacy training that educators are receiving under recent literacy legislation. Phonological awareness and decoding are foundational, as addressed in structured literacy. By addressing these critical areas, WIDA can provide a more comprehensive framework that not only aligns with state mandates but also empowers ESOL educators to effectively support the literacy development of all students.
Figure 1. Reading Rope for Multilingual Learners
Description of the Problem
Phonological instruction—such as decoding and phonemic awareness, which are crucial for early reading development (Boyer and Ehri, 2011; Castiglioni-Spalten and Ehri, 2003; Chen et al., 2018; Ehri, 2020; Hatcher et al., 2004; Martínez, 2011; Rehfeld et al., 2022)—is missing from WIDA’s ELD Standards Framework, proficiency level descriptors (PLDs), and assessments. This gap means that while the WIDA framework supports overall language proficiency, it does not address the foundational skills required for word recognition and phonics, and thus leads to confusion and misalignment with literacy laws.
In Georgia, early-grade ELA standards (Georgia Standards of Excellence, n.d.), new literacy legislation (Georgia H. B. 538, 2023), and curricula aligned with structured literacy ensure comprehensive coverage of all critical literacy areas defined in Figure 1, which is the “Reading Rope for Multilingual Learners” (Cavazos and Goldenberg, 2024).
Consequently, ELA teachers address all areas of the two major strands of the reading rope: language comprehension and word recognition skills. ESOL educators in Georgia, who develop lessons that align with the 2020 WIDA ELD Standards Framework, primarily address language comprehension, represented in the upper strands. According to the structured literacy training modules in Georgia, Ilk et al. (2022) emphasize that “Both components of reading—word recognition and language comprehension—should be addressed in instruction… [and] assessments should address each component of reading” (p. 75). However, WIDA standards do not directly encompass linguistic elements smaller than a word, leaving out key aspects of word recognition such as syllables, phonemes, the alphabetic principle, and spelling–sound correspondence. As a result, the WIDA 2020 Standards Framework does not fully align with Georgia’s ELA standards, or the structured literacy training required under H. B. 538. The adapted version of Scarborough’s reading rope for multilingual learners, as illustrated by Cavazos and Goldenberg (2024; Figure 1), asserts that oral language development should be integrated into every strand of reading competence.
In this adaptation, oral language—represented by the yellow rope—takes a leading role in the literacy development of multilingual learners. ESOL teachers should ideally lead in providing oral language instruction for ELs across all literacy elements. However, using the WIDA ELD (2020) standards, oral language instruction is limited to the upper strands of language comprehension, as there are no ELD standards that address the lower strands of word recognition. This limitation means that in WIDA states, the comprehensive integration depicted in the adapted reading rope cannot be fully realized in classrooms. Neither ESOL nor ELA teachers have standards for developing the oral language of word recognition, resulting in these skills often being neglected and critical L1-to-L2 connections remaining unmade.
The reading domain of the ACCESS for ELLs (WIDA, 2024) test measures reading proficiency through various assessments, evaluating comprehension and literacy skills across social and academic contexts. It includes multiple-choice items covering main ideas, details, inferences, and vocabulary in context. Administered in both paper-based and adaptive online formats, the test is available for grades K–12. However, challenges such as decoding difficulties and insufficient English proficiency can affect the accuracy of these assessments. According to the Center for Applied Linguistics (2023), the reading domain has relatively high conditional standard errors of measurement (CSEM), especially for students in lower proficiency levels. This indicates that the ability of this reading assessment to accurately measure reading proficiency for students with lower proficiency levels is less reliable. The variability in CSEM is largely driven by the adaptive nature of the test and the characteristics of the items students encounter. This is particularly noticeable at the extremes of the score distribution, where students who answer very few or very many items correctly are more likely to experience higher measurement errors. The higher CSEM values for students at a lower proficiency in the reading domain suggest that WIDA’s ACCESS for ELLs reading assessment potentially provides less accurate and reliable measures of proficiency for these students. This underscores the challenge of assessing students who are still developing basic academic language skills and points to areas for potential improvement in future iterations of the test to better capture early reading proficiency.
The proficiency level descriptors (PLDs) for reading offer a framework for assessing and supporting student progress, detailing what students can understand and do with written language at each proficiency level. They emphasize functional language skills necessary for academic success. However, PLDs lack explicit references to phonological awareness and decoding, crucial for reading development. Incorporating these skills into the descriptors would align them more closely with Halliday’s stratified model of systemic functional linguistics (Martin and Matthiessen, 1991)—the theoretical underpinning of WIDA—and provide a comprehensive evaluation of a student’s reading proficiency.\
Figure 2. Comparison of Theoretical Approaches toward SFL
Note. WIDA’s Interpretation comes from WIDA (2020), p. 32.
Conclusion
While WIDA’s assessments and resources provide states with a structured approach to meeting federal guidelines, the glaring disconnect between WIDA’s foundational resources and Georgia’s efforts to incorporate structured literacy instruction is deeply concerning. In an era where leading educational institutions have embraced and integrated structured literacy research, WIDA’s silence on this matter is not just a missed opportunity—it is unacceptable. As John Parker, assistant superintendent of Floyd County Schools, aptly states, “We see this as an equity issue.”
WIDA’s lack of alignment with the body of research on structured literacy, particularly in addressing the critical word recognition needs of multilingual learners, calls for an immediate and decisive response. It is imperative that WIDA assures its member states that efforts are underway to align the WIDA ELD standards, proficiency level descriptors, and ACCESS assessments with the latest evidence-based practices. This is not merely a recommendation; it is a demand for WIDA to acknowledge and respond to the irrefutable research on what multilingual learners require to become proficient readers.
In essence, this is a clarion call for WIDA to refine their approach by incorporating English phonological elements into their dimensions of language, aligning more closely with Halliday’s model of systemic functional linguistics (see Figure 2 above)—the very foundation cited in WIDA’s theoretical framework (WIDA, 2020). The time for WIDA to act is now, for anything less would be an abdication of their responsibility to the learners they are meant to serve.
References
Boyer, N., & Ehri, L. C. (2011). Contribution of phonemic segmentation instruction with letters and articulation pictures to word reading and spelling in beginners. Scientific Studies of Reading, 15(5), 440-470, https://doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2010.520778
Castiglioni-Spalten, M. L., & Ehri, L. C. (2003). Phonemic awareness instruction: Contribution of articulatory segmentation to novice beginners’ reading and spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7(1), 25–52. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532799XSSR0701_03
Cavazos, L., & Goldenberg, C. (2024, June 10). The Science of Teaching Reading forMultilingual Learners. [Professional Learning Workshop]. Floyd County District Office, Rome, Georgia. Center for Applied Linguistics (2023). Annual Technical Report ACCESS for ELLs Online
Chen,Y. I., Irey, R. & Cunningham, A.E. (2018). Word-level evidence of the role of phonological decoding during orthographic learning: A direct test of the item-based assumption, Scientific Studies of Reading, 22(6), 517-526, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2018.1473403
Ehri, L. C. (2020). The science of learning to read words: A case for systematic phonics instruction. Reading Research Quarterly, 55(S1), 45-60. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.334
Hatcher, P. J., Hulme, C., & Snowling, M. J. (2004). Explicit phoneme training combined with phonic reading instruction helps young children at risk of reading failure. Journal ofChild Psychology & Psychiatry, 45(2), 338–358. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-7610.2004. 00225.x
Ilk, M., Whitney, A., & Motes, L. C. (2022). Universal Instruction at the Word Recognition Level. In LETRS for Administrators (pp. 75–75). Lexia.
Martin, J.R. & Matthiessen, C.M.I.M. (1991). Systemic typology and topology. In Frances Christie (ed.), Literacy in Social Processes: Papers from the Inaugural Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Conference, Deakin University, January 1990. (Centre for Studies of Language in Education, Northern Territory University, 1991), pp. 345–84.
Martínez, A. M. M. (2011). Explicit and differentiated phonics instruction as a tool to improve literacy skills for children learning English as a foreign language. GIST Education and Learning Research Journal, 5, 25–49.
Rehfeld, D. M., Kirkpatrick, M., O’Guinn, N., & Renbarger, R. (2022). A meta-analysis of phonemic awareness instruction provided to children suspected of having a reading disability. Language, Speech & Hearing Services in Schools, 53(4), 1177–1201. https://doi.org/10.1044/2022_LSHSS-21-00160
Jennifer Pendergrass-Bennefield, EdD, is the ESOL/Title III coordinator for Floyd County Schools in Northwest Georgia. In this role, she oversees the alignment of ESOL services to structured literacy initiatives. She is a former president of GATESOL. She’s served that board in a variety of roles and continues to serve as a current board member.
Tabatha Tierce, EdD in instructional leadership, serves as reading specialist for grades K–4 with Floyd County Schools in Rome, GA. With a strong commitment to equitable education, her work centers on ensuring every student has the fundamental right to read and on developing teachers who can provide that instruction.
Dr. David L. Chiesa is a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Language and Literacy Education at the Mary Frances Early College of Education, University of Georgia. His research concentrates on second-language acquisition, language teacher cognition, and language assessment and testing within applied linguistics.
Last month, the Biden-Harris Administration announced new actions to advance educational opportunities for Latino communities, including an Executive Order establishing the White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity through Hispanic-Serving Institutions. This Executive Order creates a new Initiative and President’s Board of Advisors for HSIs that will work to: Increase awareness of opportunities for HSIs to equally participate in Federal programs and enhance the capacity of HSIs to meet the educational needs of their students.
Identify best practices for HSIs to scale effective strategies, programs, and initiatives to support the educational success and economic mobility of their students.
Improve the ability of HSIs to align program offerings with the economic needs of the Nation and their local economies, especially in Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and teaching.
Coordinate efforts to help HSIs become or remain fiscally secure institutions.
Foster cross-sector collaboration among HSIs and philanthropic, public, and private sector organizations.
Strengthen Federal recruitment activities at HSIs to build accessible and equal pathways into Federal career opportunities for HSI students, faculty, staff, and alumni.
Provide tools, data, and analytics to support HSIs in improving educational equity, excellence, and economic opportunity for students. The Administration also announced that the Department of Education is issuing a proposed rule to expand the federal TRIO program to ensure Dreamers and others can enroll. By providing high school students with services and supports such as college campus visits, tutoring, and help completing college and financial aid applications, the TRIO program helps students from low-income backgrounds and students who would be the first in their family go to college successfully transition from high school to college. The proposed expansion would mean that an estimated 50,000 more students each year would be able to access TRIO programs and services, and thousands more would go to college.
In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit ruled in Consumers’ Research v. FCC that the annual $8 billion Universal Service Fund (USF) broadband subsidy program was unconstitutional. This decision contradicts rulings from the Sixth and Eleventh Circuits, which upheld the legality of the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) USF.
Funded by fees on telecommunications providers, the USF supports programs for broadband infrastructure, including the E-rate program, which helps schools and libraries obtain affordable internet and Wi-Fi.
Existing E-rate rules and USF-supported programs remain in effect. The court remanded the case to the FCC but did not vacate the USF funding mechanism, meaning the status quo continues indefinitely. The government is expected to request a stay on the decision, which is likely to be granted due to the split between the Fifth, Sixth, and Eleventh Circuits. In response to the ruling, Funds For Learning issued the following statement from CEO John Harrington:
“The E-rate and other USF-supported programs are mission-critical and play an essential role in the telecommunications ecosystem of the United States. In our annual survey of E-rate applicants, 95% of respondents indicated that E-rate funding is vital to their organization’s internet access.
It’s clear there is broad support for USF programs, such as the E-rate, and the flow of support to USF beneficiaries is likely to remain in place for the foreseeable future. We will continue to advocate on behalf of the schools and libraries for reliable financial support to keep their students and patrons connected.”
Last month, the Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCL), the national coalition providing representation on Capitol Hill for language education, hosted a timely and powerful congressional briefing on federal efforts to address the language education crisis in K-12 schools. The briefing was supported by the America’s Languages Caucus House Co-Chairs, Representative Jimmy Panetta (D-CA) and Representative Jen Kiggans (R-VA).
The event featured a panel discussion between educators who have seen the positive impact of the World Language Advancement and Readiness Grants Program (WLARP), and experts from the Department of Defense Education Activity and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who emphasized how vital language education is to national security and intelligence.
This briefing comes at an important time with the upcoming election and ongoing decisions regarding federal education funding for FY25. It is crucial to address the need for federal efforts to improve K-12 education in the United States language education in order to support our nation’s growing business and diplomacy needs.
Amanda Seewald, JNCL-NCLIS executive director, opened the briefing by underscoring the transformative power of language programs. She noted, “Well-articulated language programs and language learning for young children can have a transformational effect in the way that students see themselves and see the world.” She stressed the necessity of multilingualism for national security, diplomacy, and business, pointing out the alarming language skills gap in the workforce.
Seewald highlighted three crucial federal legislative efforts to addressing the crisis in language education in the U.S.:
The World Language Advancement and Readiness Grants Program (WLARP), which provides grants to expand K-12 world language programs in schools with significant populations of military families
World Language Education Assistance Program (World LEAP), which would establish a grant program at the Department of Education to support world language and dual language immersion programs
The Biliteracy Education Seal and Teaching (BEST) Act, which would support implementing and scaling Seal of Biliteracy programs and encourage more equitable access to Seal programs and their assessments.
Panelists discussed both challenges and opportunities for addressing this crisis, including ways that Members of Congress can support federal education funding and language education legislation.
Donald Gentile, chief, Foreign Language Group, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), highlighted the critical need for foreign language expertise in the intelligence community, stating, “Foreign language expertise in the community is a mission-critical skill. It always has been and always will be.” He expressed concern over the difficulty in filling language positions and the declining number of students studying foreign languages at all levels of education.
Kathleen Facon, chief, Partnership and Resources, Department of Defense Education Activity (DoDEA), discussed the strategic importance of language skills for national defense, explaining that early language education builds a pipeline of individuals with necessary skills, “Proficiency in strategic languages can lead to specialized roles and opportunities within the armed forces and in our intelligence enhancing the career advancement and effectiveness in various missions in connected to the national defense, the military’s need for linguistic and culturally proficient individuals is growing, especially in today’s interconnected world.”
Susanna Bailey, Instructional Supervisor, World Languages & Dual Language Immersion, Department of Teaching and Learning, Newport News Public Schools (VA), highlighted the impact of dual language immersion programs in her district. Before Newport News received its two WLARP grants, only one pre-K and one elementary school offered dual language programs, accessible only to students within a specific zone. The grants expanded the program to more schools, including middle and high schools, allowing more students across the district to participate.
As Seewald concluded, “Multilingualism is our asset already, and we want to amplify that and give every student the opportunity to experience that value.”
JNCL-NCLIS urges policymakers, organizations, and educators to support legislative initiatives that recognize the essential role of language education in building a more secure and connected world.
Speech pathologists coming from The University of New Mexico are going to be able to help even more patients now, thanks to a new offering from UNM Speech & Hearing Sciences. The Department’s Master of Science in Speech-Language Pathology now offers a bilingual concentration. This huge step towards equitable treatment has been in the works since 2019, the same year assistant professor Carlos Irizarry Pérez joined UNM.
“This will help support the needs of our community by training clinical practitioners with specific training in working in a multicultural /multilingual community. Dr. Irizarry Pérez was the main force behind this concentration,” Speech & Hearing Sciences professor and department chair Phyllis Palmer said.
Irizarry Pérez knows firsthand how important it is to recruit speech-language pathologists (SLPs) into the field and how much more important it is to get SLPs competent to work with bilingual populations.
“We’ve been talking about it ever since I came here about how it is a much-needed demand in our field,” he said. “It will be great for those students that are wanting to take specialized coursework and working towards being a bilingual speech-language pathologist in particular. These are students that see themselves working with a client population that consists of bilingual individuals. They can take these extra courses now to prepare themselves for that work, so that’s pretty important to us and our community.”
While many students enrolled are either learning the Spanish language or are already bilingual, this concentration offers specialized coursework for anyone.
The use for a bilingual concentration extends far beyond the Land of Enchantment. In a 2021 survey conducted by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), only 8.2% of speech-language pathologists identified as multilingual. UNM is setting the path for other universities in this field. While concentrations like this are increasing, Speech and Hearing Sciences also intends to stay ahead by eventually adding a certificate.
There’s also the potential for students to engage in a future certificate in a language other than Spanish, as long as the proper clinical hours are available. What’s most important is that hands-on, bilingual learning is happening early on in a speech-language pathologist’s career.
Teachers need ongoing training and easy access to effective instructional content and strategies in order to implement the science of reading (SoR) best practices with fidelity.
This type of robust support is now available for teachers nationwide thanks to a partnership between Digital Promise and Edthena.
As teachers complete coaching cycles within the AI Coach platform, they will be able to select the SoR pathway to have access to hundreds of teacher-facing strategy recommendations from Digital Promise’s Learner Variability Project.
AI Coach is an adaptive, first-of-its-kind solution that uses conversational artificial intelligence (AI) to support teachers as they work through coaching cycles. Teachers independently reflect on their practice and set near-term goals as part of a self-paced module that mirrors the instructional coaching process. Teachers have an interactive conversation with Edie, the AI-driven coach, who asks probing, open-ended questions and offers personalized tips and resources for improvement.
Within the SoR pathway, teachers can access a full complement of content-specific supports—covering topics such as phonological awareness, sentence structure, and verbal reasoning—to help them analyze their teaching practices and build their students’ skills to become proficient readers.
All of the resources are from Digital Promise’s Learner Variability Project and backed by published academic studies documenting the predictiveness of student outcomes. The project builds on emerging research into learner variability to support a whole-child framework for student achievement.
In addition to the newly added SoR pathway, which is available in both an early-elementary and a late-elementary version, teachers can complete coaching cycles focused on common teaching techniques such as checking for student understanding, balancing student–teacher talk time, facilitating group discussions, and more.
Hearing anyone discuss nonnative English speakers as if they lack something switches on Jacelyn Smallwood Ramos’s advocacy instinct.
“They’re not a problem to be solved,” says Smallwood Ramos, an assistant English professor at the University of Puerto Rico in Bayamón.
“Students must know that their native language fluency has been valuable from the start and will be valuable to their future. With any other material, we start and build on what is already there. It reminds me of the work of Richard Ruiz.1 He said we approach language historically as a problem, when it can also be seen as a resource and a right.”
English learners (ELs) are the fastest-growing demographic in US public schools. Migration to industrialized nations like the US will continue to drive that growth.
By 2031, 72% of jobs in the US will require postsecondary education or training.2 English is the common language for both business and academia worldwide, so the gainfully employed must communicate well in English.
But it is wrong to think about the 10% of American students—five million of them—who are learning English as if they are filling a void. Since when is learning more a bad thing? What they’re doing is gaining sought-after skills for a global economy.
“Language is a tool and a right because we are responsible for educating our children and helping them succeed,” Smallwood Ramos adds.
Unfortunately, ELs also graduate from college at lower rates than the general population. It’s clear that mastering English is key to college preparation, but Smallwood Ramos encourages complete literacy in both native and target languages.
“Students are often allowed to abandon their native language as if, once they have English down, they can approach subject-matter courses in English,” Smallwood Ramos said. “Literacy skills are paramount no matter which languages you’re learning. Those skills will transfer to the target language.”
Literacy skills—reading, writing, speaking, listening—carry the day because ELLs naturally use native and target languages interchangeably.
Smallwood Ramos herself grew up having older family members speak Spanish to her while she answered in English. When she was teaching English to native Spanish speakers at a Title I school in Maryland as an adult, her students were free to use both—translanguaging.
Seeking cognates—words that share the same origin and meaning and similar spellings and pronunciations—also helps students in the process. English, a Germanic language, borrows roughly 60% of its vocabulary from Latin languages like Spanish and French.
“It’s this Puritan mentality that you shouldn’t taint a language by mixing them,” Smallwood Ramos said. “They’re already overlapping and becoming interrelated in our brains… [Using cognates] allows students to feel more comfortable expressing their thoughts. I had an epiphany when I realized students have to feel safe in order to make mistakes. We don’t grow without making mistakes, but we have to feel safe to take those risks.”
Bridge to Confidence Attending college, with varying levels of English fluency, is another academic risk ELs want to take. Many ease themselves into postsecondary education via community colleges—some 30% of all American undergraduates attend community colleges.3
Still, a 2019 statistical analysis showed that just 9% of ELs graduated with an associate’s degree within three years of enrolling in a community college (19% within six years of enrollment), and only 1% transferred to a four-year university within three years (10% within six years).4
Jose Serena Jr., dean of student services at Merced (CA) College, said seeing ELs struggle to advance in their education had become an equity issue within California Community Colleges (CCCs). Schools would test and then send ELs into corresponding remedial English and math classes. The tests didn’t tell the full story, remedial courses weren’t transferable to four-year schools, and students were spending money without progressing to degrees.
In 2018, California Assembly Bill 705 then required all 116 CCCs, which have open admissions policies, to consider a student’s high school coursework and GPA, rather than just placement tests, to determine if they were ready for credit-bearing work. The CCCs, the largest educational system in the US with over two million students, were told to place high school graduates in transfer-level English classes right away.
It was determined that ELs who graduated high school did better going directly into transfer-level courses than if they started with remedial courses.5
Serena explained that CCCs are now teaming with four-year institutions to build pathways that include transfer-level, English as second language (ESL)–equivalent courses. And ELs are getting real-time support through tutors embedded in classrooms, as well as traditional tutors beyond that. The schools are also placing certain students in cohorts for introductory courses so they feel welcomed and supported.
Peer Support Jessica Sanchez, College Board’s BigFutures Teacher of the Year for 2023–24, has students work together in the BigFutures program at Union City (NJ) High School.
“In our building, we already had peer mentors,” Sanchez said. “Through BigFutures, sophomores hear seniors talk about preparing for college, and then they naturally envision themselves getting there as well.” It is a powerful academic and social exchange when ELs experience support from their peers. “When my seniors speak, my sophomores get really comfortable asking questions,” said Sanchez of Union City High, which is 94% Hispanic. “They’re not concerned about being judged. Then, their speaking skills improve. Someone asks a question in Spanish and gets an answer in English. Their listening skills get a workout. Then they are more invested in researching everything else, so their reading skills improve.”
Better Testing The literacy skills that Sanchez and Smallwood Ramos mention are key to the acquisition of language and preparing for college work. Still, if ELs’ literacy skills are not evaluated correctly, they can be undervalued.
The CCCs saw that in reverse when the law mandated putting ELs straight into credit-bearing classes. They were directed to take that risk, but then those students did fine. In decades past, ELs would not have had a chance to try the classes for credit without passing a standardized test.
“Standardized tests can evaluate many elements [of language learning], but they don’t always hit all of the markers,” said Karin Rossbach, director of the English Language Teaching Department at the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala.
The markers Rossbach mentions—she works with the College Board validating items for the PAA Suite, exams analogous to the AP exams and SAT for Latin American countries—are the five areas of “communicative competence.”
Communicative competence is a philosophy of language acquisition that looks at one’s ability to communicate appropriately in various contexts and social settings. The areas are accuracy, which refers to how well we use grammar and pronounce words; fluency, which is how well we keep the flow of conversation going without it breaking down; complexity, which shows how deep and appropriate our vocabulary is while talking about real things; appropriacy, our ability to vary language depending on the context and audience, like saying “hi” vs. “good morning”; and capacity, which refers to the range of ideas and the depth of ideas we can discuss.
“Teachers tend to reduce learning to fluency and accuracy,” Rossbach claims. “Standardized tests do work well for efficiency, rather than for testing academic abilities. Yet they’re not the be-all and end-all. We need a variety of modalities, including a face-to-face or screen-to-screen evaluation of oral skills. There are also AI-aided tests that measure speaking [abilities] such as pronunciation, fluency, and rate of delivery.”
Multiculturalism and Multilingualism Matter When properly evaluated and supported, ELs can then open other doors. They embrace the beauty of their native languages and cultures.
Yanire Marquez Etxabe, director of the Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish Language and Culture course, and Stephen Johnson, senior director for the AP Spanish Literature course and department head for AP World Languages at the College Board, have seen the value of AP students using both languages in class while also participating in the AP’s WE Service program. The WE Service program takes native-Spanish-speaking students back to their communities to translate for other native speakers.
“So many Spanish speakers have grown up translating for families, then go into careers naturally fulfilling the same role,” Johnson said. “Yet they never realized they should be compensated for it. That skill is so valuable beyond home. They have to be reminded that translating is a gift they’re giving someone, that their intercultural competency is so important because it allows them to interact with the world.”
However, bilingualism is not the same as biliteracy. “It’s important for Spanish speakers to also get a formal education in Spanish,” Etxabe said. “They’re bilingual but not fully biliterate, which is critical when they prepare for careers.”
Etxabe says that universities can better prepare their own professors by teaching intercultural competency. Something simple, like knowing how to pronounce Hispanic names, enables students to feel seen, comfortable, and ready to learn.
Learning in Context In college, you learn to think critically, communicate, and persuade. Keeping that process connected to the process of acquiring another language, instead of separating them as distinct pursuits, expands students’ potential to excel.
“We have to foster in students a willingness to continue that sort of learning while they’re managing their university work,” Rossbach said.
Do students need to be fully fluent to succeed in college? “However you define ‘college ready,’ it should be the same for everyone,” Sanchez says. “I don’t ever want my [EL] students to feel pigeon-holed or limited… And that’s why, at our high school, we push them out of their comfort zones. Then they know they have to do the same for themselves to succeed in college.”
Luciana Chavez is a freelance writer and high school board member based in California. Reporting in English and occasionally Spanish, she has written for publications ranging from the Raleigh (NC) News & Observer, the Sporting News, the Everett Herald, and the long-gone Montreal Expos game-day magazine.
At the end of July, before leaving for recess, Representatives Deborah Ross (D-North Carolina), Valerie Foushee (D-North Carolina), and Jimmy Panetta (D-California) introduced a full reauthorization of Title VI of the Higher Education Act. A companion to the Senate version (S. 239) of this bill, the House’s Advancing International and Foreign Language Education Act would reauthorize US Department of Education foreign language and higher education programs at colleges and universities through 2030. This introduction opens the possibility of Title VI reauthorization occurring before the end of the 118th Congress.
Jon Bernstein, of the Joint National Committee for Languages–National Council for Languages and International Studies (JNCL–NCLIS), summarized the consequences of the act as:
Reauthorization and extension of programs for international and foreign language studies, including National Resource Centers, Language Resource Centers, Undergraduate International Studies, and American Overseas Research Centers. Reauthorization of Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships, allowing graduate students to receive stipends for studying foreign languages.
Extension and updating of the International Research and Innovation program, including establishing a national database on international and foreign language education.
Reauthorization and updating of programs for international business skills and education, including renaming and expanding activities in professional and technical training curricula.
Rep. Jimmy Panetta, a lead sponsor of this bill, stated: “Language education can broaden horizons and expand opportunities for Americans. As the co-chair of the America’s Languages Caucus, I’m proud to support the Advancing International and Foreign Language Education Act, which would extend language programs so critical to building a workforce ready to compete around the world.”
In August, the Senate Appropriations Committee approved its fiscal year 2025 Labor HHS Education bill, requesting significantly more funding than the House version. The Senate bill would increase the department’s funding by more than $900 million and retain all programs, while the House bill would cut $11.1 billion from the Department of Education’s budget and eliminate 17 programs. The Senate bill focused on making significant additions to Title I and IDEA, while Title III, English language acquisition, received a modest $5 million increase despite the House proposing to eliminate all funds for it. Title IV-A, the flexible block grant that some districts use for language education programs, was allocated a $10 million increase over last year, matching the House bill. Title II-A, the professional development grant program, which the House also proposed to eliminate, remained the same as last year, as did Title VI of the Higher Education Act, Indian education, Native Hawaiian education, Alaska Native education, and Native American Language Resource Centers.
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