This story was originally published by The Daily Yonder.

Throughout rural America, non-native English speakers are less likely than their urban peers to get proper support in school, sometimes leading to a lifetime of lower educational attainment. But some rural schools are developing multilingual education strategies to rival those found in urban and suburban districts.

In general, it’s easier to fund more diverse course offerings in bigger schools. From Advanced Placement U.S. History to Spanish immersion, more students means more funding. But in rural DuBois County, Indiana, administrators are prioritizing English-learner education. There, students have access to “gold standard” multilingual programming, a hard-won achievement for any U.S. school, but especially for such a small district.

“We are the only school in the region who started a dual language program,” said Rossina Sandoval, Southwest DuBois County School District’s director of community engagement, in an interview with the Daily Yonder.

To meet the gold standard, students in the dual language immersion program receive 50 percent of their instruction in English and 50 percent of their instruction in Spanish. Fifty percent of the program is made up of students whose native language is Spanish and the other half is made up of native English speakers. The program is currently offered from kindergarten through third grade, with plans to expand to fourth and fifth grade.

By developing a program with 50/50 language instruction and 50/50 student enrollment, students are able to not only learn both their native and target language from their teachers, but they are also able to learn from each other, Sandoval said.

“That has proven to be the most effective way to develop language skills,” she said.

When the program was first introduced, the school received pushback from both Spanish-speaking and English-speaking families. Spanish-speaking families felt the school should prioritize English learning, given that their children already speak Spanish at home. And English-speaking families worried that they wouldn’t be able to help their children with Spanish homework.

To address family concerns on both sides, the school shared information about the benefits of formal bilingual education. In addition to maintaining their conversational skills, Spanish-speaking students receive instruction in grammar, spelling and reading in their native language. This approach helps students who already speak another language read and write in another language, too.

Learning two languages does not hurt a student’s ability to master either one. Bilingual children are shown to have better focus and logical reasoning, and — according to Sandoval — will be suited to a wider range of opportunities in the workforce.

“It’s natural, we want the best for our kids,” she said. “The best we can do is educate the community as a whole that this is the best method to develop multilingualism, this is the best method to enhance global skills and produce global citizens.”

Intersecting Problems

The Latino population in DuBois County has been expanding for decades. Today it sits at 9.5 percent, which is approximately half the national percentage. But in Southwest DuBois County schools, more than a third of students identify as Latino. (The disparity in those numbers reflects higher birth rates within the Latino population and the uneven distribution of those families within the county.)

The demographics of rural schools have been changing nationwide. According to a recent report from the National Rural Education Association, 80,000 more English-learner and multilingual students were enrolled in rural districts in the 2021 school year than in 2013.

Historically, rural school districts have struggled to provide high-quality education to non-native English speakers. When English-learner populations are small, it can be difficult to fund robust bilingual programming and easy to overlook their necessity.

Rural English learners sit at the intersection of overlapping structural problems in public education. The national teacher shortage is worse in nonmetropolitan places, and it’s most problematic in racially diverse and high-poverty rural schools. Nationally, there aren’t enough bilingual educators, or educators certified to teach English as a second language (ESL).

According to recent research, while English-learner populations are growing in rural places, rural multilingual learners are less likely to receive instruction in their native languages. And while federal guidelines require that all non-native English speakers receive specialized instruction, in rural places only a little more than 60 percent actually do.

DuBois County’s top-tier bilingual education program should be used as a model in other rural school districts, Sandoval said: “As an immigrant, as a U.S. citizen, I feel very proud … because this can be replicated in communities that look like ours.”

Support for these programs must be built inside and outside the schoolhouse, Sandoval said: “There has to be a degree of openness toward bilingualism or multilingualism. This is an effort that’s not just made by me, it’s made by the school and by the community.”

Programs that increase accessibility and trust with parents include “Cafe en el Parque,” a parent meeting held in Spanish that draws in more than100 families each month, and the “Emergent Bilingual” program, which meets after school and on weekends helps new immigrant students and families learn more about how the American education system works.

Programs that help establish community support and participation include “Fuertes Together,” a partnership with the public library where families can hear stories in Spanish and English and engage with cultural music, dance and art. And a new program, “Bilingual Village,” helps bilingual students identify speaking partners in the community who can converse in the student’s new language.

A Wide Range of Strategies

When Esmeralda Cruz was a child in the 1990s, she immigrated with her family from Mexico to rural Clinton County, Indiana, where she lives and works today. “Back then,” she said, “there were not a lot of Latino families in the area. In my first grade classroom I only had one classmate that was bilingual.” This posed major challenges to her education: Esmeralda said that, instead of receiving proper language instruction, she was placed in classes meant to address learning disabilities.

Cruz’s experience is not unique, according to Maria Coady, professor of multilingual education at North Carolina State University. In places that aren’t accustomed to supporting immigrant populations, she’s seen English learners sent to speech therapy in place of proper ESL classes. “Schools might think that all these kids have special learning needs because it looks like they’re not learning,” she said, “when in fact, they’re just learning the language.”

As immigrant populations grow throughout the rural U.S., newcomers often find themselves in Cruz’s childhood position — navigating school districts unaccustomed to educating non-native English speakers.

Today, Cruz works as a Hispanic community engagement director for Purdue Extension. Prior to that, she was the health and human sciences educator at Purdue Extension office in Clinton County, Indiana.

According to scholars of rural multilingual education, schools that do have ESL or bilingual systems in place exist across a broad spectrum, from gold-standard bilingual education programs like the one in DuBois County to ESL sessions that require students to miss part of the school day and provide no native-language instruction.

In places with very small English-learner populations, Coady said, schools might pool resources and “bring in an itinerant teacher — that is, a teacher who might travel between several rural schools to provide ESL services.”

This is the least effective method of multilingual education for two reasons, Coady said: It’s disruptive to pull students out of class, and ESL teachers are only able to offer very limited amounts of time to individual students.

Where to Begin?

In rural places, small expansions in local industries that rely heavily on immigrant and migrant labor can create major shifts in student populations, said Holly Hansen-Thomas, professor of bilingual education at Texas Woman’s University: “And these teachers may not have the experience or the background to serve these emergent bilingual families that keep coming to work and to support the industry.”

For rural school districts inexperienced in providing multilingual education, said Hansen-Thomas, professional development is the place to begin.

Federal grants are available to support multilingual certifications for teachers and administrators. For instance, the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition offers a National Professional Development Program, which makes grants to colleges and universities to fund work on multilingual teaching skills for local educators. Hansen-Thomas also points to the U.S. Department of Education’s “Newcomer Tool Kit,” a resource for rural educators looking to support recent-immigrant students and families.

In Indiana, colleges and universities are attempting to build manageable pathways for multilingual educators who might not be formally trained as teachers. “Our pre-service teachers tend to be white and monolingual,” said Stephanie Oudghiri, clinical associate professor at Purdue’s College of Education. “Especially in the Midwest, as our demographics are changing, we need folks that are multilingual.”

Experts like Cruz stress the importance of listening to non-native English speakers themselves when building out these programs. “We’ve had a lot of focus groups and community conversations and I can’t tell you how many times people at the table have said, ‘Thank you for including me,’” Cruz said.

“I think oftentimes they do want to be at the table, they just don’t know how, and so we’re making sure that we’re listening to them and then going from there, rather than the other way around.”

© Rido / Shutterstock

“You go into your own world for a moment. Like, if someone's talking to me and I'm reading a book, I wouldn't hear them,” says Aylynn, an eighth grader in Pendergast Elementary District in Phoenix, Arizona. “You can understand someone else's culture, what they celebrate, what they honor and what they believe in, without personally asking. It makes me empathize with other people.”

I spoke to Aylynn as part of a visit to Pendergast with my colleagues from Imagine Learning to hear about educators’ and students’ experiences using the Imagine Learning EL Education curriculum. Her words describe the transformative power of reading — a skill that, unlike spoken language, humans are not naturally hardwired to master. Reading requires building connections in the brain that wouldn’t exist without explicit instruction. As a result, teaching students how to read is a complex and challenging endeavor — that’s why it takes years.

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Imagine Learning EL Education aligns with the concept of high-quality instructional materials (HQIMs).

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The Science of Reading

Over the past several decades, research in educational psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience has converged to form the science of reading, providing clear, evidence-based guidelines on effective reading instruction. The science of reading distills vast knowledge into practical strategies to help all students become proficient readers, emphasizing a comprehensive approach that includes word recognition, language comprehension and bridging skills.

Word recognition encompasses complex skills such as phonological awareness (recognizing and manipulating sounds in spoken words), phonics (understanding how letters and sounds correspond), and decoding (applying knowledge of letter-sound relationships to pronounce written words). With practice, sight word recognition allows instant recognition of common words.

Language comprehension involves developing background knowledge for context and mastering language structures, such as grammar and syntax, to make sense of sentences and larger texts.

Bridging skills connect these processes. Print awareness helps with the organization of texts, vocabulary knowledge enables the use of a wide range of words and self-regulation helps students manage their reading, maintain focus and apply strategies effectively.

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Imagine Learning EL Education is science-backed and heart-driven.

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Content-Based Literacy

Recommended Resources

• Imagine Learning EL Education: Discover ELA with heart — Imagine Learning EL Education is the content-based English language arts program rooted in the science of reading for grades K–8.
• Content-Based Literacy with Imagine Learning EL Education: Find out more about an instructional approach that focuses on teaching content rather than comprehension skills in isolation.
• Addressing the Science of Reading: An Imagine Learning EL Education white paper on how 35 years of peer-reviewed research from the fields of educational psychology, cognitive science and neuroscience have contributed to our understanding of the science of reading.
• The Science of Reading: Imagine Learning's core, supplemental and intervention products that bridge the gap between pedagogy and classroom instruction.

To address potential breakdowns in reading abilities, schools increasingly turn to digital and blended learning programs that align their curricula with the science of reading. The Imagine Learning EL Education curriculum is deeply rooted in the science of reading, focusing on explicit instruction in the areas outlined above. It offers a content-based approach that combines structured phonics instruction with the use of compelling, real-world texts to engage and excite K-8 learners. In doing so, it aligns with the concept of high-quality instructional materials (HQIMs), a term that an increasing number of school districts use when identifying materials that fulfill criteria such as being aligned to learning standards, offering best-practice pedagogy and delivering a user-friendly experience for both teachers and students.

At Pendergast, the educators I chatted with spoke at length about how helpful they find the program in applying the science of reading principles to practical contexts. “It's nice with Imagine Learning EL Education that the children have explicit phonics instruction,” says Corina, an instructional coach. “But also, there are opportunities in labs for verbal reasoning and vocabulary development and background building, and the children have those hands-on opportunities to apply what they are learning in the module to their lab's time.”

One effective content-based approach to literacy involves students exploring long-form, cross-curricular content. “I love the fact that students are actually reading and spending time in books,” says seventh grade ELA teacher Kathryn. “Not just basals, not just snippets of a story, but actual novels and books.” Every teacher I spoke to at Pendergast echoed that same sentiment — the books bring the curriculum to life for the students.

School principal Abraham agrees: “Having the students have the ability to really dive deep within that text and read the text multiple times is so important for comprehension, especially with our students that are English language learners or that might have a learning disability. [It has] really helped us in closing that achievement gap.”

“When we're looking for those high-quality instructional materials, we're looking for standard alignment,” says Kelsie, assistant director of interdisciplinary literacy, as we talked about the selection process for a new curriculum. “We're also looking for materials that the students can see themselves in. Are they culturally relevant for our kids? We also want them to be able to take that deep knowledge of learning into other aspects of their life and be ready for the future.”

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A teacher uses Imagine Learning EL Education digital products at Pendergast, AZ.

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A Passport to Achievement

What I love is seeing my students get to be their authentic selves while they're growing in their learning spaces with teachers who are excited to show them how far they can stretch themselves.

— Kelsie, Assistant Director of Interdisciplinary Literacy at Pendergast, AZ

As I spent time with Kelsie, we talked about the impact for teachers and students, of going on a journey with a curriculum with a holistic pedagogical approach through the grades. “Imagine Learning EL Education is definitely a full gamut of resources that meets all of the different literacy needs,” she says. “Within the program, you will build the foundational skills necessary in K-2. When we go into third through fifth grade, we get to work toward mastery, and then our sixth, seventh and eighth graders take that, and they get to fly. What I love is seeing my students get to be their authentic selves while they're growing in their learning spaces with teachers who are excited to show them how far they can stretch themselves.”

“Reading is like your access to the rest of the world. You have to be able to read," reflects Akin, a school counselor. Imagine Learning EL Education exemplifies how, when the science of reading is brought to life in the classroom, it not only addresses the complexities of learning to read but also prepares students for a future where they can confidently navigate the world through the power of literacy. As Aylynn's experience shows, reading opens doors to understanding, empathy and knowledge, making it a passport to anything students aspire to achieve.

© Image Credit: Imagine Learning

A couple of years ago, as schools that had been forced to go virtual due to the coronavirus pandemic began to bring students back on campus, Pedro Olvera noticed that his phone started ringing more.

Olvera spent much of his career as a school psychologist in Santa Ana Unified School District, just a stone’s throw from Disneyland, where about 40 percent of students are English learners who speak Spanish.

He’s now a school psychology clinical manager at the staffing agency BlazerWorks, where he works with school districts to advise school psychologists in the district. That’s a task that’s getting harder for districts everywhere, he says, as the demand for student mental health support increases while the pipeline of qualified clinicians remains bottlenecked.

But the school districts that are reaching out to Olvera for help need an even rarer creature — bilingual school psychologists who can evaluate Spanish-speaking children for special education needs.

That’s because, leaders tell Olvera, schools that never needed this type of professional before are seeing an influx of English learners, in districts in states like Louisiana, Iowa and Colorado.

Beyond that, it’s inherently high stakes to determine whether a child needs special education services or more language support. Schools don’t want to misclassify a student with special needs as one who needs more help learning English, or for a child who simply needs support with English to be placed in special education.

Adding a language barrier between a child and school psychologist makes the evaluation more complex, Olvera says.

“It’s always been a challenge. Are learning difficulties due to differences, meaning due to language, or disorder?” Olvera says. “That’s always been a challenge, given that when you look at these nationwide scores, kids who are English learners tend to have these gaps in achievement.”

What Makes The Job Different?

While school psychologists have standard tests they can use to determine if a child needs special education services, Olvera says there’s a lot more to the process than one assessment. They need to know how language affects learning — or how trauma does, if the child is a refugee. The psychologist will also talk to a student’s parent about the child’s behavior at home.

“If we were to add another layer, it’s that cultural variable,” Olvera says. “Dealing with children that may be from Central America, South America, Asia, and understanding how that culture also comes into play with your assessments. What if there’s items on the assessment that are not familiar with the kid’s culture? How do you take account of that?”

Monica Oganes is a licensed school psychologist with 20 years in the field and has worked with the National Association of School Psychologists on trainings about evaluating multilingual learners for special needs.

She says the dearth of bilingual school psychologists has long been a problem, and it resurfaces each time the U.S. experiences an increase in immigration.

That’s why she’s a proponent of school psychologists, regardless of their own language abilities, getting trained to evaluate multilingual children. Even professionals who are bilingual in English and Spanish will face a language barrier if they are called to evaluate a child who speaks one of the hundreds of other languages spoken by families in the U.S.

Like Olvera, Oganes says there are simply more intricacies when it comes to evaluating an English learner for possible special needs. It starts with how the child arrived in the country.

“Basically all immigrant children have stress, but some have significant trauma because, in their home country, maybe they were exposed to traumatic events that caused them to leave their country,” Oganes explains, such as gang violence or the death of a parent. “Sometimes trauma creates behaviors. We’ve had children referred for autism evaluations, and when I got to evaluation, they’re severely traumatized by their situation. [That’s why] they’re not socializing.”

Immigrant children may have had fewer opportunities to attend school or come from countries where public education is lower quality than in the U.S., she adds.

“Not only are they learning in a second language, but their literacy may not be up to par, their math may not be up to par,” Oganes says. “If the quality of education is not up to par, it doesn’t necessarily mean they have a learning disability or a disability period.”

School psychologists working with multilingual learners have to be well-versed in how trauma affects brain development, she adds, namely in the hippocampus that regulates emotions and memory. But simply being bilingual and learning in multiple languages affects the brain, too.

“There are some languages that do not have plurals, so now they’re making errors in reading and writing,” Oganes offers as an example. “Does that have to do with orthography differences? Because your brain processes with your native language manifesting first, and the brain has to suppress the native language to produce the second language. That could take five to seven years from the time they enter the school.”

© Paul Craft/ Shutterstock

Thinking back to her days as a bilingual teacher to fourth graders, Crystal Gonzales recalls that some of the suggestions offered by curriculum materials to adapt lessons for English learners were downright insulting.

Parsing education data into snack-sized servings.

“They were very simplified,” she says. “They were like, ‘Show them a picture.’ Not very rigorous at all.”

Instead, Gonzales stayed for hours after school translating and developing her own materials for her students. Now as executive director for the English Learners Success Forum, she’s part of the growing push for the creation and adoption of learning materials that are inclusive of multilingual students.

But federal data on the academic outcomes of English learners reveals how Gonzales says they have long been considered: an afterthought.

While the education field continues to grapple with how to reverse test score slides that followed the COVID-19 pandemic, results from the National Assessment of Education Progress — also called the Nation’s Report Card — show that an alarming rate of English learners have been performing below the basic mastery level in reading and math. In some cases, the numbers have hardly budged in the last 20 years.

© Visual Generation / Shutterstock