The Urgency of Teacher Preparation Programs to Prepare Classroom Educators for Teaching in Multilingual Classrooms

Introduction

As the nation continues to experience increases in language learners, attending to the learning needs of ELLs has risen as a top priority for rural, suburban, and urban school communities (The School Superintendent Association, 2019). According to the National Education Association (2020), English Language Learners (ELLs) are the fastest growing student population in grades K-12. In 2017, approximately 50.7 million students that were enrolled in public schools in grades prekindergarten through grade 12, ELLs accounted for 10.1% (National Center for Education Statistics, 2020). It is estimated that by the year 2025 that one out of four public school students will be ELLs (National Education Association, 2020). Because of these demographic changes, the National Clearing House for English Language Acquisition (2020) urges that all educational systems prioritize mission goals to guarantee that these students have equal access to a high quality, inclusive education that enables them to grow academically and socially while learning English.

The increasing numbers of ELLs necessitates an examination of the impact that current teacher preparation programs have on teachers’ readiness to address and meet the varying needs of their diverse student populations. It is critical that teacher preparation programs thoroughly equip and empower their teacher candidates with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions required to effectively teach language learners. Quintero and Hansen (2017) assert that teacher education preparation and professional development have yet to catch up with the changing demographics. Without adequate preparation to address the needs of increasing numbers of language learners, the teaching and learning challenge will only intensify in classrooms and schools.

Although the nation’s school age population has become more diverse, the demographics of educators continue to reflect a majority of white females who are monolingual native English speakers. “The racial and ethnic diversity of the nation’s 6.6 million teachers has increased since 1990 but has not caught up with the diversity of their students, according to a U.S. Census Bureau analysis of employment and population data” (Gumber and Beckhusen, 2022). Recent census data reports that over 74% of all educators are white females. Li et al. (2018) emphasize an underpreparedness of both pre- and in-service teachers, who are predominantly White and monolingual, for teaching ELLs throughout the United States. While many educators and teacher educators have long recognized this discrepancy between those who teach and those whom they are teaching, the lack of progress in recruiting and retaining educators of color and multilingual in teacher preparation programs is disappointing at best.

When teachers lack the appropriate professional learning or share students’ racial, linguistic, or demographic identities, their students’ academic performance can be negatively affected. It is alarming to report that language learners’ academic performance is below that of their counterparts. Nationwide, ELLs persistently have lower reading and math achievements (National Assessment of Educational Progress, 2019). According to the National Center for Educational Statistics (2018), in 2017, the average reading score for fourth-grade English language learners was 37 points lower than the average score for their native speaking peers. Au and Raphael (2010) assert that “a major reason for the poor progress shown by ELLs as a group is that they seldom receive the high-quality instruction necessary to build their knowledge of literate discourse” (p.209). Calderón et al. (2011) suggest that improved teacher preparation and professional development programs are a crucial part of bridging the achievement gap between native and non-native English speakers.