IES Blog

The Latinx population comprises the second largest ethnic group in the US and has grown more than 600% since 1970. In states like California, Texas and New Mexico, nearly half of people are Latinx and almost one third are bilingual. States in the Northeast, Midwest, and South have also experienced double-digit growth in their Latinx populations since 2010. Millions of children all across the country are growing up in communities where both English and Spanish are spoken. In response to these trends, there has been a push to support and celebrate student bilingualism and biliteracy. Forty states and Washington, D.C. offer a State Seal of Biliteracy for students who achieve proficiency in speaking, reading, and writing in English and an additional language, most often Spanish. In this guest blog, Drs. Ashley Adams Sanabria, Amy Pratt, and Elizabeth Peña discuss the importance of measuring literacy skills in Spanish and their new IES-funded measurement project that aims to develop assessments to measure Spanish language and literacy skills.

Why is it important to measure literacy skills in Spanish?

In the IES practice guide for effective language and literacy instruction for English language learners, the first recommendation is to monitor children’s reading progress and use the data to make informed instructional decisions. Traditionally, this type of assessment has been conducted exclusively in English; however, we risk missing an important part of the constellation of skills that bilingual children possess when we do not assess their Spanish (or other first language) skills. Bilingual children’s language and literacy skills are often divided across both of their languages. Factors like exposure to Spanish versus English, preference for using Spanish versus English, and the language of formal reading instruction will affect a bilingual’s early literacy development. Measuring skills in only one language may make it appear that bilinguals are behind when in actuality, the assessment strategy has not captured the entirety of their skill set.

Furthermore, research shows that bilingual language profiles are dynamic and interact with the type of instruction children receive. Progress monitoring assessments in both languages allow teachers to track how children are progressing in different skills in each of their languages and can provide important information that will inform how teachers plan instruction for bilingual learners. As part of a new IES-funded measurement project, researchers at the University of California, Irvine and San Diego State University are developing the A2i-ALE (Adquisición de Lectura en Español) assessments to measure Spanish language and literacy skills. These new assessments will be computer adaptive and designed to be used alongside the existing Assessment-to-Instruction (A2i) English assessments to monitor progress within and across school years for bilingual children in PreK through 3rd grade.

Which literacy skills should be measured in Spanish?

For our project, given we cannot measure everything, a key question we had to consider was which literacy skills to measure in Spanish. The Simple View of Reading holds that reading comprehension is the product of decoding skills and linguistic comprehension. Importantly, this framework can be applied to bilingual reading development, as well. Simply put, students must be able to decode written symbols into their spoken equivalent. But, we need to consider language differences. Languages with transparent orthographies and simple phonological structure, like Spanish, are easier to segment into their component sounds because there is a near 1-to-1 mapping between letters and sounds compared to English which has complex letter-sound mappings.

Once decoded, students must then apply their language skills (for example, vocabulary, knowledge of syntactic structures, background knowledge) to understand the meaning of the text they have just decoded. The Simple View of Reading has important implications for literacy instruction: (a) effective early reading instruction should develop skills in both decoding and language comprehension, and (b) given that these two domains develop relatively independently, reading comprehension outcomes will be enhanced by differentiating the amount of instructional time devoted to each of the two domains depending on individual learners’ skill level in each area.

Applying the Simple View of Reading to improve reading instruction for bilingual learners requires that teachers have valid, reliable information about decoding skills and language comprehension skills in all of their languages and use the information in planning and implementing reading instruction.

What’s next?

In our IES-funded study, we plan to develop A2i Spanish measures that will be designed to (a) describe each bilingual’s unique literacy skill profile in terms of their Spanish language, comprehension, and decoding skills, and (b) monitor children’s Spanish language and reading growth within and across school years. The goal is to inform Spanish language instructional decisions in dual language programs (that is, children demonstrating weaknesses in Spanish word reading or vocabulary could get more Spanish instructional time in those areas), as well as inform literacy instruction for bilingual children in English-only classrooms building on what is known about cross-language transfer.

This year, Inside IES Research is publishing a series of interviews (see here and here) showcasing a diverse group of IES-funded education researchers and fellows that are making significant contributions to education research, policy, and practice. As part of our Hispanic Heritage Month blog series, we are focusing on Hispanic researchers and fellows, as well as researchers that focus on the education of Hispanic students.

Ashley Adams Sanabria is an assistant professor at San Diego State University in the School of Speech, Language, and Hearing Sciences.

Amy S. Pratt is a project scientist at the University of California, Irvine in the School of Education

Elizabeth D. Peña is an associate dean of faculty development and diversity at the University of California, Irvine in the School of Education.

Produced by Katina Stapleton (Katina.Stapleton@ed.gov), co-Chair of the IES Diversity and Inclusion Council, and Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), Program Officer for the English Learners portfolio, National Center for Education Research.

English learners (ELs) are the fastest growing group of students in U.S. public schools. They are disproportionately at risk for poor academic outcomes and are more likely than non-ELs to be classified as having specific learning disabilities and speech/language impairment. Data collected by the U.S. Department of Education in school year 2018-2019 (Common Core of Data, Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) data) indicate that approximately 14.1% of students in classrooms across the country received services through IDEA Part B. Nationally, 11.3% of students with disabilities were ELs, a little higher than the percentage of total student enrollment who were ELs (10.2%). However, it is important to distinguish between language and literacy struggles that are due to learning English as a second language and those due to a language or reading disability. For those who have or are at risk for a disability and in need of intervention, it is also important that the interventions are linguistically and culturally appropriate for these children.

Since the first round of competitions in 2006, the National Center for Special Education Research (NCSER) has funded research on ELs with or at risk for disabilities. The projects are in broad topic areas, including early childhood; reading, writing, and language development; cognition and learning; and social and behavioral skill development. They vary with respect to the types of research conducted (such as exploration, development, efficacy, measurement) as well as the extent to which they focus on ELs, from ELs as the exclusive or primary population of interest to a secondary focus as a student group within the general population.

As an example, David Francis (University of Houston) explored factors related to the identification and classification of reading and language disabilities among Spanish-speaking ELs. The aim was to provide schools with clearer criteria and considerations for identifying learning disabilities among these students in kindergarten through grade 2. Analyzing data from previous studies, the team found that narrative measures (measures in which narrative responses were elicited, transcribed, and scored) were more sensitive to identifying EL students with disabilities than standardized measures that did not include a narrative component. They also found that the differences in student language growth depended on the language used in the instruction and the language used to measure outcomes. Specifically, language growth was greatest for Spanish-instructed students on Spanish reading and language outcomes, followed by English outcomes for English-instructed students, English outcomes for Spanish-instructed students, and with the lowest growth, Spanish outcomes for English-instructed students.

A number of these projects are currently in progress. For example, Ann Kaiser (Vanderbilt University) and her team are using a randomized controlled trial to test the efficacy of a cultural and linguistic adaptation of Enhanced Milieu Teaching (EMT). EMT en Español aims to improve the language and related school readiness skills of Spanish-speaking toddlers with receptive and expressive language delays who may be at risk for language impairment. In another study, Nicole Schatz (Florida International University) and her team will be using a randomized controlled trial to compare the efficacy of a language-only, behavior-only, or combination language and behavior intervention for students in early elementary school who are English language learners with or at risk for ADHD.

Overall, NCSER has funded 12 research grants that focus specifically on English learners, dual-language learners, and/or Spanish-speaking children with or at risk for disabilities, including the following:

• Interventions for English Language Learners At-Risk for ADHD 
  Principal Investigator: Nicole Schatz
  FY 2021
• Computer Adaptive Storybook Assessments (CASA) 
  Principal Investigator: Alisha Wackerle-Hollman
  FY 2021
• Video- and App-Based Naturalistic Language Instruction (VALI) for Spanish-Speaking Caregivers to Support Bilingual Language Development in Children with or At Risk for Language Delays 
  Principal Investigator: Anne Larson
  FY 2020
• EMT en Español: Comprehensive Early Intervention to Support School Readiness Skills for Spanish-Speaking Toddlers with Language Delays 
  Principal Investigator: Ann Kaiser
  FY 2019
• Cognitive and Linguistic Mediators of Response to Intensive Interventions in Reading for English Learners At-Risk for Learning Disabilities 
  Principal Investigator: Jeremy Miciak
  FY 2017
• Identification of Reading and Language Disabilities in Spanish-Speaking English Learners 
  Principal Investigator: David Francis
  FY 2016
• Testing an Integrated Preschool Curriculum for English Language Learners 
  Principal Investigator: Susan H. Landry
  FY 2011
• Developing a Narrative Intervention 
  Principal Investigator: Sandra Laing Gillam
  FY 2010
• Growth in Literacy, Language, and Cognition in Children with Reading Disabilities who are English Language Learners 
  Principal Investigator: H. Lee Swanson
  FY 2009
• Spanish Screener for Language Impairment in Children (SSLIC) 
  Principal Investigator: Maria Adelaida Restrepo 
  FY 2008
• Precision in Response to Intervention Models: Variations of Measurement, Instruction, Student Language, and Age 
  Principal Investigator: Rollanda O’Connor
  FY 2007
• Vocabulary, Oral Language, and Academic Readiness (VOLAR): A Language Intervention for Latino Preschool English Language Learners with Language Disorders 
  Principal Investigator: Vera Gutierrez-Clellen
  FY 2006

In addition to the research focused specifically on English learners, many other projects include ELs as a large portion of their sample and/or focus some of their analyses specifically on the student group of ELs with or at risk for disabilities. A few recently completed studies show encouraging results with little differences between ELs and non-ELs. For example, Nathan Clemens (University of Texas, Austin) investigated the adequacy of six early literacy measures and validated their use for monitoring the reading progress for kindergarten students at risk for reading disabilities. As part of this project, the research team conducted subgroup analyses that indicated ELs do not necessarily demonstrate lower initial scores and rates of growth over time than non-ELs and that there are few differences between ELs and non-ELs in the extent to which the initial performance or rate of growth differentially predict later reading skills. As another example, Jeanne Wanzek (Vanderbilt University) examined the efficacy of an intensive multicomponent reading intervention for fourth graders with severe reading difficulties. The team found that those in the intervention group outperformed their peers in word reading and word fluency, but not reading fluency or comprehension; importantly, there was no variation in outcomes based on English learner status.

NCSER continues to value and support research projects that focus on English learners with or at risk for disabilities throughout its various programs of research funding.

This blog was written by Amy Sussman, NCSER Program Officer

The IES-funded R&D Center, the Center for the Success of English Learners (C-SEL), is undertaking a focused program of research aimed at improving access and outcomes for English Learners. One of C-SEL’s recent activities has been to develop resources to aid policymakers and practitioners working with middle school and secondary English learners. The research team at the Center, including Drs Diane August and Coleen Carlson, along with Maria Yolanda Cieslak and Kenneth Michael Nieser, recently released a brief on Educating English Learner Students During the Pandemic: Remote & In-person Instruction & Assessment-Recommendations and Resources for State and Districts. In this guest blog, the researchers provide an overview of the brief.

English Learners (ELs) benefit from specialized support to help them acquire second language proficiency and core content knowledge that builds on their cultural and linguistic assets. This specialized support is required by law, and the U.S. Department of Education reminded States that this is the case, even when learning is remote. Based on a review of the existing relevant literature, this brief provides detailed information related to the impact of remote learning on English Learners (ELs) and their teachers during the pandemic and the potential and limitations of using digital learning resources (DLRs) to educate these students. For instance, while DLRs have the potential to support learning and engagement for ELs, districts report barriers to their use, such as lack of home access to DLRs; teachers’ level of expertise and technology skills; and the lack of knowledge around what are the appropriate DLRs for ELs.

The brief also describes current legislation that authorizes funds for a variety of activities that could be used to support ELs and their families when instruction is delivered remotely. Some of these federal resources include:

• Formula Grant Programs Under the Every Student Succeeds Act
• CARES Act
• Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act

In addition, the brief includes information about policies and resources for each of the 50 states in place in December 2020 that support districts and schools in instructing and assessing EL students remotely. It also includes a reading list of recent resources focused on remote learning for ELs, with brief descriptions of each resource and links to the resource.

In March 2021, the Center hosted a webinar to discuss recent recommendations for states and districts. One set of recommendations focuses on methods to enhance the learning and emotional well-being of EL students who have lost ground during the pandemic. Recommendations are also made for assessing ELs when schooling is or has been remote or hybrid. These recommendations can be found in the brief.  

In the upcoming months, C-SEL investigators look forward to preparing future blog posts and research briefs on the research of the Center and the students and teachers we are serving. Next up on the agenda is an overview of the students, highlighting their diversity, and some too often ignored, forgotten, or simply unknown characteristics of this important subgroup. Stay tuned!

Dr. Diane August is Principal at D. August and Associates and a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Dr. Coleen Carlson is an Associate Research Professor, and Associate Director at the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics (TIMES) at the University of Houston.

Ms. Maria Yolanda Cieslak is a Professional Development Specialist at the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Mr. Kenneth Michael Nieser is a Researcher at the Texas Institute for Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics at the University of Houston.

Policies and practices affect English learners’ (ELs) education access and quality. Supporting these students requires alignment across all levels of the education system—from federal and state governments to districts and schools to individual classroom teachers and students. 

About the Center

To address these issues of policy and practice, IES funded the Center for the Success of English Learners (CSEL) with the goal of improving access and outcomes for English Learners across the United States. Specifically, CSEL’s focused program of research includes identifying and removing barriers related to ELs’ access to the classroom and developing and testing interventions that leverage transdisciplinary approaches (for example, foregrounding content knowledge and building knowledge and academic language simultaneously) to improve instruction for ELs in Grades 6 and 9 science and social studies. Some research questions that will be explored include:

• How are potential barriers, such as educator attitudes and mindsets and stated policies, associated with school tracking practices?
• How do educators encounter and/or overcome barriers to providing ELs with access to the general curriculum?
• What is the impact of the CSEL developed lessons on student vocabulary, language, and content knowledge in science and social studies?
• Can student outcomes be improved in science and social studies through integrated formative assessments that allow teachers to make meaningful interpretations of student learning and informed decisions to guide their instruction?

New Website Launched

CSEL has launched a brand-new website to engage with the larger education community to exchange ideas, disseminate information and resources based on their findings, and create learning and collaboration opportunities for state and local education agencies. Visit www.cselcenter.org for information to learn more about their research, resources, and events, including an upcoming event based on their recently published brief, Education English Learner Students During the Pandemic: Remote & In-person Instruction & Assessment.

For more information about IES’s investment in improving opportunities and achievement for English learners in secondary school settings, please see here.

Written by Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), Program Officer for the English Learners Portfolio, National Center for Education Research.

Under an IES grant, Drs. Leslie Babinski, Steve Amendum, Steve Knotek, and Marta Sánchez are evaluating the impact of the Developing Consultation and Collaboration Skills (DCCS) program. The DCCS program is a year-long professional development intervention designed to support English-as-a-Second Language (ESL) and classroom teachers to develop their skills in collaboration, literacy instruction, and parent outreach and engagement for their Latino students. Unfortunately, COVID-19 disrupted their study, but rather than calling it quits, the research team used it as an opportunity to explore how teachers are responding to a new normal and learned some important lessons along the way.

Last spring, we were in the middle of conducting a randomized control trial in elementary schools working with teaching teams of kindergarten, first grade, and ESL teachers when COVID-19 hit, and schools pivoted to online instruction.

As we paused our efficacy trial and adapted our plans, we continued to stay engaged with teachers despite the rapidly shifting circumstances. We realized that the foundational skills central to our intervention—using high-impact instructional strategies for English learners (ELs), building on families’ cultural wealth, promoting collaboration between ESL and classroom teachers, and ongoing, supportive implementation coaching—could be modified and adapted for different contexts and modes of delivery. These ongoing interactions with teachers provided us with an up-close look at their experiences as they connected with families remotely and adapted to this new and unfamiliar way of teaching. We learned about the challenges, successes, and possibilities for providing online instruction for young ELs.

While online teaching during the current school year looks and feels very different from the emergency shift to remote teaching from last spring, we learned important lessons from the experiences of teachers and students.

First, we learned that our implementation coaching model could be productive in a virtual format. In fact, teachers were eager to engage in reflective conversations despite the demands on their time and the stress of the pandemic. Each of the school teams continued to meet with our implementation coach. Together, they found new ways to scaffold instruction for ELs during online learning. Teachers supported one another in finding creative ways to use technology to communicate with families and provide support that reached beyond academics. They also created lessons that intentionally adapted instruction to reach ELs in their classrooms. For example, embedded in the videos the teachers created, they continued to use our core instructional strategies, such as previewing academic vocabulary before reading a new text, supplementing student background knowledge related to the content, providing sentence frames for both oral and written participation, and selecting texts related to student cultures and families.

Second, it is clear that there are serious inequities in access to online schooling. In our study, even as teachers made the commendable efforts described above, they also reported that more than half of their EL students required a device from the school district, while one-third of the families also needed a Wi-Fi hotspot to access online learning. This rate is considerably higher than a Pew Research Center poll that found that one in five parents reported difficulties with online learning due to lack of a computer or Wi-Fi access, highlighting the fact that many English Learners may have limited access to the technology necessary for online learning.

Third, online learning requires a partnership between teachers, families, and other caregivers. Even with a device and internet access, many young children and their families had difficulty logging onto their school accounts and navigating the technical aspects of the learning platforms for online schooling. Teachers reported that about half of the EL students in their classrooms had a parent or guardian who was able to help them with schoolwork at home. About 20% had help from another adult or a sibling. In one case, a teacher described a family in which a kindergarten student received support for online schooling from her brother in second grade. In our study, support at home was critical for student participation in online lessons. Our work with teachers during remote teaching and learning highlighted how parents and other caregivers are important advocates for their children’s education and are eager to partner with teachers and schools to help their children succeed.

Looking to the future, it is clear that instruction for ELs will need to focus on equitable access to high-quality instruction, whether online or in-person. Access to devices and Wi-Fi is essential, not only for online teaching and learning, but also for extending learning into the home. Finally, we note that teacher collaboration and coaching can be effectively adapted for an online environment and is an essential component in providing support to teachers for high-quality instruction for ELs.

Although we could not have anticipated the value of continuing to work with teachers during the pivot to remote instruction, we are grateful for the experience and all that we have learned during the process.

For more information, see this EdWeek article and this interview on The TakeAway.

Dr. Leslie Babinski is an associate research professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy and the Director of the Center for Child and Family Policy.

Dr. Steve Amendum is a professor at the School of Education at the University of Delaware.

Dr. Steve Knotek is a professor in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Marta Sánchez is an associate professor in the Watson College of Education at the University of North Carolina Wilmington.

This is part of a series of blog posts focusing on conducting education research during COVID-19.