Leigh Mingle and Conor P. Williams show how anti-DEI legislation supports the provision of specific education designed for multilingual learners
“When a number of flute players are equal in their art, there is no reason why those of them who are better born should have better flutes given to them…the superior instrument should be reserved for him who is the superior artist.”-Aristotle, The Politics, Book III
It’s an old insight in the Western intellectual tradition, that justice—or fairness—is about giving people what they deserve. To update Aristotle a bit: if you give a fancy cello to Yo-Yo Ma, you’ll get some unique and amazing music. But if you give that same instrument to Conor, you’ll just get a guy with a slightly more cluttered basement.
This is a bedrock educational principle as well. Great teachers and effective administrators know that they need to target their instruction to meet the needs of individual students. An elementary schooler who gets sick and misses a few lessons on counting by two or fives or tens won’t be ready to move on and start learning multiplication. A student who uses Spanish at home and is already proficient won’t benefit much from basic vocabulary memorization in a Spanish class—she’ll get more from more advanced assignments structured to boost her Spanish writing skills.
Of course, none of this is necessarily about targeting students for different instruction—or modified academic expectations—based on their identities. In our cello example, it is irrelevant that Conor is a cisgendered, heterosexual, white father of three. What matters is that he hasn’t studied cello for decades while Yo-Yo Ma has. Their different experiences make them more (or, for Conor, less) ready to take advantage of owning one of the highest-quality cellos ever made. Similarly, we try to do that in schools, students of different races or genders should all get fair access to the same chances to learn and excel and school. They should also be held to the same rigorous academic standards.
To underline that point, some states—like Texas, for example—have recently passed laws banning schools from any practices that might discriminate between students on the basis of their race, ethnicity, gender, or other elements of their identities.
In our work, we’ve had multiple school and district leaders reach out to us to ask how this impacts their instruction for Emergent Bilinguals (that’s Texan for English Learner). Based on our reading of the law (note: we are not lawyers, so this should not be considered legal advice), bilingual education and support for students learning English both remain strongly supported in and by the state.
…educators can—indeed, under federal civil rights law, they must—include and consider language diversity in their instruction.
Critically, these laws should not stop schools from training teachers to meet the unique needs of their students as individuals—particularly those linguistically and culturally diverse students classified as English Learners. That is, these laws do not prevent schools from recognizing and engaging with students’ evolving language abilities and providing the individual support needed for each student. Indeed, supporting these students’ acquisition of English proficiency and access to academic content is a core K–12 civil rights obligation, supported by the continued funding of Title III and its bipartisan support in Congress.
And that’s a good thing, since these EL students bring a wide range of language skills, resources, and abilities to their schools. When they are effectively supported, they are among the country’s most successful students. Even in a political moment where policymakers are pushing to limit schools from focusing on students’ identities, educators can—indeed, under federal civil rights law, they must—include and consider language diversity in their instruction.
School leaders should feel empowered to continue their implementation of bilingual and dual language education. They should also continue to provide language support in the classroom such as resources for translation, direct vocabulary instruction, tools to practice all four domains of literacy (reading, writing, speaking, and listening), and opportunities to integrate students’ linguistic repertoire. Following from this, they should also continue to support the development of teachers’ skills to implement these instructional practices.
Indeed, Texas has historically been a national leader in meeting their needs. The state’s decades-old bilingual education system is by far the country’s largest—Texas’ ELs routinely score higher on academic assessments than their peers in other states, like California. Recent changes in state laws around race and gender compels Texas schools to continue their commitment to ELs’ emerging bilingual development and support these students as they have been for decades, cementing the positive impact on these students and the state itself.
Dr. Leigh Mingle is the VP of Research and Operations at Ensemble Learning.
Dr. Conor P. Williams is a writer and education researcher based in Washington, DC—and the founder of the English Learners Forum.