Abandoning our English Learners
The White House proposes, starting in Fiscal Year 2026, the elimination of all federal funding for English Language Acquisition (ELA) through ESEA Title III. ELA funding has supported grants to states to serve English learners (ELs) as well as grants for the Native American and Alaska Native children in Schools program, the National Professional Development Program (NPD), and funding for the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (whose website has been suspended). The White House justifies eliminating funding for English Language Acquisition on the basis of two arguments:
“Reading scores [on the National Assessment for Education Progress] for ELs have generally been stagnant for decades, despite a nearly 300 percent increase in appropriations for this program since 1994,” and
“Parents, States and localities, not the Federal government, are best suited to determine what evidence-based literacy instructional materials will improve outcomes for all students, without the unnecessary administrative burden imposed by the Federal government.”
How valid are these justifications? What gets lost in the White House’s push to abandon English learners?
Let’s look at the evidence. It is true that NAEP reading scores for English Learners have not changed much over time. The National Assessment of Education Progress is a set of achievement tests given to a representative sample of students across the U.S. Reading and math tests are given every two years; other subject matter tests are given at longer intervals. English Learners are included in order to make the sample representative of U.S. students.
The term “English Learners” is used to identify students who come to school speaking a language other than English who may be bilingual already or are in the process of acquiring English language skills and knowledge. As they become fluent in English, students exit classification as ELs. It has been NAEP policy to include all EL students who have received academic instruction in English for 3 years or more in the schools selected to participate in NAEP in a given year. EL students who have received fewer than 3 years of instruction in English are also supposed to be included unless school personnel judge them as incapable of participating in the assessment in English. States may provide accommodations such as offering more time to complete the test, but the reading test is given in English.
You might recognize a problem here. Of course EL students do not perform well on a reading test given in a language they are in the process of learning. As their proficiency in English improves, the students exit the EL program. It is impossible to evaluate the success of EL programs through the performance of students classified as EL on reading tests given in English, without comparing their performance with that of those same students after they exit from EL programming. But that is not what the NAEP does, nor what it is for.
What about turning over to parents, states, and school districts the responsibility for figuring out how to teach EL students? The problem here the complete abandonment of federal leadership in supporting a comprehensive articulation of effective teacher learning to advance success for English learners. Abandoning this leadership and its funding would harm English learner students and communities in states with more limited education budgets and less access to education leaders with deep knowledge of effective, research-based practices for English learners.
Teachers can be prepared to help English learners develop English proficiency alongside literacy skills and content area knowledge. In the past, Title III has funded teacher professional development across the country. The Department of Education’s National Professional Development Program (NPD), which has been run by the Office for English Language Acquisition has played a significant role in funding innovative programs to advance teacher preparation for English learner success. As of June2025, there were 107 active grants for this training. However, the White House has withheld most of the Department of Education’s funding, including funding for these grants. When we consider the withholding of already-appropriated grants to help teachers learn to teach EL students, along with the upcoming White House budget request, we see a complete abandonment of English learners based on the rationale that this work can be taken up better by the states, parents, and local school districts.
Is there evidence that teachers can learn to teach EL students effectively, and that the kind of help the federal government had provided matters? Let’s look at the research evidence.
I identified nine published studies, summarized in the table below. All nine used an experimental or quasi-experimental research design to assess the impact of teacher professional development on teachers’ ability to teach EL students; four also examined the impact of teacher’s newly acquired practices on English learner students.
All the professional development programs used varied processes that includes formal presentation, coaching teachers in their classrooms, demonstrating teaching processes, and so forth. All of them took place over a period of time; none consisted of one-shot sessions in which an “expert” talks to teachers. Seven of the studies evaluated the extent to which the professional development changed teachers’ practices.
For example, in 2023, Mayra D. Vargas, Beverly Irby, Rafael Lara-Alecio, Fugui Tong, David Jimenez, Yessenia Gamez, Valerie Choron, and Shifang Tang reported a randomized controlled study comparing the impact on teacher practice of virtual professional development for teaching EL students, with virtual professional development plus virtual coaching and mentoring. Pre- and post-classroom observations were used to compare teachers’ use of English as a Second Language strategies, activity structure, communication mode, and academic language. The researchers found that teachers in both conditions (with and without the virtual mentoring and coaching) changed their pedagogical practices from pre-to post-classroom observations across all four areas. The researchers concluded that 60 hours of asynchronous virtual professional development sustained over a six-week period is key for teachers of emergent bilinguals to make positive changes in their teaching.
In 2022, Birgit Heppt, Sofie Henschel, Ilonca Hardy, Rosa Hettmannsperger-Lippolt, Katrin Gabler, Christine Sontag, Susanne Mannel, and Petra Stanat published an investigation into the effectiveness of professional development for promoting teachers' language-support skills in elementary school science instruction. In a 2-year quasi-experimental study with 32 teachers, the study found that the professional development made a strong impact on teachers’ language-support skills and, to a lesser extent, on their language support activities when teaching. All teachers gained pedagogical content knowledge and self-efficacy for teaching second-language learners in elementary school science. The findings support the claim that teacher professional development that is delivered over an extended time period and engages participants in active learning, combined with feedback and reflection, contributes substantially to teachers' knowledge for subject integrated language support and may help them to incorporate language-support strategies into their regular science teaching.
Four of the studies examined the impact of professional development on not only the teachers’ practice, but also their EL students’ learning. For example, Olson, Matuchniak, Chung, Stumpf, and Farkas published a study in 2017 that reported two years of findings from a randomized controlled trial of the Pathway Project, which uses a cognitive strategies approach to text-based analytical writing. The project aimed to help secondary school students, specifically Latinos and mainstreamed English learners, in a large, urban school district to develop the academic writing skills called for in the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts. Ninety-five teachers in 16 secondary schools were randomly assigned to the Pathway or control group. Pathway teachers participated in 46 hours of training to help students write analytical essays. The researchers found significant positive effects on student writing in both years. Additionally, Pathway students had higher odds than control students of passing the California High School Exit Exam in both years.
One study (by Jesse Bruhn, Nathan Jones, Yasuko Kanno, and Marcus A. Winters) found a required semester-long Sheltered English Immersion endorsement course made very little impact on the English learner students of teachers who took the course; it had a positive impact mainly on the novice teachers who took the course but not on the more experienced teachers. The researchers offered several reasons there was so little impact. One reason is that the Structured English Immersion model of classroom instruction for English learners is limited because it makes no use of the language and culture students bring with them into the classroom from home. Another possible problem was that the course was designed to serve thousands of teachers, and as a result may not have been responsive to local contexts. The researchers also speculated that the more experienced teachers may have resented being forced to take the course.
In any case, overall, this research demonstrates that well-planned professional development can enable teacher to teach English learners better: to help them acquire English, develop literacy skills, and learn academic content taught in English.
It makes no sense for the federal government to stop supporting the kind of professional development that works well with teachers and helps students learn. Nor does it make sense to step away from a leadership role, leaving it to local school districts and states to plow through the research in order to identify the most effective strategies to use, and to come up with more funding for English language programming than they do now
It appears to me that the White House decided, without consulting the evidence, to defund all assistance for English Language Acquisition. Perhaps this was done because many English learners are immigrants, or perhaps it was because programming for students who speak languages other than English feels too closely associated with DEI. In order to make a budget proposal, the administration had to provide a reason for reducing funding to zero. So, it charged a staff person with writing reasons that filled boxes but ignored evidence about valid program evaluation, effective teacher learning, and effective classroom practices for students.
In other words, this is not the kind of federal leadership that helps the country.