Workforce Language Services

Even though ELL (English Language Learners) students make up the fastest growing student population in the U.S., teacher-prep courses are not readying teachers for this reality.

The population has grown astoundingly: between 1996 and 2006, the overall U.S. student population has only increased by 3%, whereas the ELL student population has grown 60%. The students come from diverse language and cultural backgrounds, and are foreign and native born.

A Government Accountability Office study on teacher preparation reports that “English language learners…speak more than 400 languages, with almost 80 percent of these students speaking Spanish… These students also include refugees with little formal schooling and students who are literate in their native languages, resulting in a range of educational needs.”

Mary Ann Zehr of Education Week points out that most teacher prep courses focus on students with disabilities and provide field experiences with disabled students, while ELL instruction is not regularly provided. She writes:

Interestingly, administrators of teacher-prep programs told the GAO that one of the main reasons they don’t have stiffer requirements for teachers to be trained to work with ELLs is that their state standards don’t require it of them.

The GAO notes that state standards sometimes include limitations on the maximum number of program or credit hours, so I can see how it could be a challenge for teacher-prep programs to add a requirement that everyone take a course devoted to teaching ELLs.

But I wonder if blaming the lack of standards is really just an excuse on the part of the teacher-prep programs for not keeping up with how school demographics are changing in the United States.

Click here to read Zehr’s full opinion.