00;00;03;11 [Linda Smith]: Well, good afternoon, everyone. And welcome to the fourth and final webinar in a series that we've been doing on start with equity from the early years to the early grades. My name is Linda Smith and I'm the Director of the Early Childhood Initiative at the Bipartisan Policy Center here in Washington, DC um, if you don't know us, we are in Washington DC based think tank that tries to take the best ideas from both sides of the aisle to create policies that address the most pressing needs
00;00;33;18 of our country. So with that in mind, this there's nothing, I think more pressing than the one before us today. And that is the issue of equity in the earliest years with our small children. So in the past we have had, we have looked at we've had three different webinars already. The first one that looked at the issues around the overall report and the challenges and opportunities there. Um, the next one, we looked in depth at harsh discipline and its impact on
00;01;05;04 our youngest children. Then we looked at children with disabilities and what were those challenges and opportunities there? So each of those, just for those of you who missed may have missed one of them, those are all on line at both the BPC website and the ASU website. So if you haven't seen them, you still have an opportunity. I encourage you to do that, uh, when it comes to the report, um, I just want to acknowledge all of the people, the many people who contributed to this report, if you haven't looked at it
00;01;37;09 and read it, I would really invite you to do that. It's probably, I think one of the best sources, if you will, of information, data, and research on this issue in the earliest years, I want to thank the over 70 national state, local and tribal people who experts from across the country, who contributed to the report, uh, to the Heising Simons foundation for their
00;02;01;25 generous support of this work.
00;02;04;07 [Linda Smith]: Then to the ASU and the BPC staff who worked behind the scenes for the last year to put this together with, um, all of us and with the experts who provided information. So now I want to turn it over to Shantel, make, um, who is the Director of the Children's Equity Project at Arizona State University and the primary author and driver behind this. Um, we look forward to a robust discussion at the end of it, just so you know, these slides will be posted. We always get that question immediately.
00;02;34;18 We will post the slides along with the report. And, um, if we, we will be taking questions in the chat. So if you, um, are, have a question, please enter them in the chat. If we don't get to all of the questions by the end of this, we are keeping those questions and we'll be posting answers to your questions later on. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Shantel Meek. Thanks, Shantel.
00;03;02;26 [Shantel Meek]: Um, we're excited to be partnering with Bipartisan Policy Center and your team on what are critical set of issues around equity and learning settings. Today, we're here to talk about the almost 24 million kids in the U S to speak a language other than English at home are beautiful, brilliant bilingual babies. Two of whom live in my home. We here to talk about what we know are their strengths. Uh, I know firsthand that was one of the kids and my two kids today are two of those things and all of the kids in my family, and there are many are the kids who are going
00;03;33;14 to be talking about today. We're here to talk about how, despite all of these great strengths, our systems, our instruction, our schools, our early childhood programs, our policies, our society broadly starting at the top, continue to put barriers in their way, making them work twice as hard to reach their full potential.
00;03;52;01 [Shantel Meek]: We're here to tell you about all that we found in our data and our research dives and how it's not at all aligned with wide-scale policy and practice. We're going to focus on access to doing with done bilingual learning opportunities for our doing with centers, because we think that when done well, when fully resource, these models can be a game changer for our kids, for DLLs and for English learners, we know that growing their bilingualism, isn't a nice enrichment or an add on like it is for kids who speak English at home, these opportunities can actually
00;04;24;08 make or break their access to a quality education. Altogether. We know that the science is clear that these types of learning programs work and produce better outcomes. But we also know that this is about more than research and child outcomes. This is about their right to a free inappropriate quality of education for too long. Language has been used as a tool for exclusion as an excuse to provide a subpar education with proportionately affecting Latino children, but dual language learners more broadly. And we know there are many dual language
00;04;54;09 learners with many different languages. We know that continuing to play ping pong on the issue of language of instruction is really malpractice. At this point, we know what works, the science is clear, and we're really denying the large and growing subset of the population, the right to thrive. So with that in mind, we're here to propose actionable specific public policy steps to get us closer, to making sure that the science and the policy is more aligned.
00;05;21;21 [Shantel Meek]: So if we can put the slide show up now, great. If you have been following our four part webinar series, um, you know, that we're here to lift up our new report and actionable policy agenda outlined in our start with equity report, it was generously funded. As Linda mentioned by the Heising-Simons Foundation. And in the report, we engage deeply with three key issue areas that we know the proportionally exclude harm and disadvantaged kids from historically marginalized communities,
00;05;53;00 children of color, children with disabilities children in tribal communities. And many of these, all of these are issues that we know have solutions. Uh, the three issues that we focused on were discipline inclusion of kids with disabilities and dual language learning within each of these issue areas. We reviewed the data and the latest evidence. We provide a set of actionable recommendations that will help bridge opportunity and accessibility taps and get us closer to the education
00;06;21;09 system we all want to know possible. So with that, let's jump on to what we want. We want to start with just a bit of branding and definitions and terminology. Um, dual language learner have me use the term in the report and in this, um, presentation are usually children. They're learning their home language while also acquiring a second language. And they're from a home where a language other than
00;06;56;00 broken English learners are typically referred to they're school aged kids. They're also from a language where a language other than English is spoken, but these kids were screened and found to be below proficient in English. So it's really an official classification category for what services that may be eligible for services. We know there's a lot of controversy with terms and, you know, I think our preference is bilingual children, but
00;07;25;28 policy. And then, you know, right now uses the term DLL. And because this was a policy report and we wanted to be clear with what policy recommendations we have and where those schools are, where those live or has oversight over those. We use DLL and ELs respectively throughout report.
00;07;47;25 [Shantel Meek]: So here's what we know and what we found when we reviewed the data. And we wrote when we reviewed the research, we know that birth reach eight, who are dual language learners are about 11 million kids, or about a third of all kids under eight. We know that English learners, there's about four, almost 5 million of them. And they're just under 1% of the total population. And as they progressed in age, the numbers get smaller because kids get more likely to get proficient with
00;08;21;18 great growth in grades. We know that there are major data gaps with dual language learners in particular, our youngest kids. And part of this has to do with the major data graphs in general, early current education finals. Um, but, but where we see a lot of gaps with respect to the language background that kids have, and the exposure of different one with is that they have at home men and for bilingualism that they come with, we know
00;08;48;06 that DLL emails are diverse. Every member will go into a bit of that in just a second, but regionally they live everywhere. They have a variety of different languages, different languages at home, different income levels, different immigration statuses, and generational levels. Um, uh, really diverse. We know that they have cultural linguistic and cognitive strengths, including, uh, the many cognitive advantages associated with bilingualism. That we'll go over a bit
00;09;20;20 today. We know that DLLs and yields tend to do better in high quality dual language or bilingual models of instruction compared with English dominant models. We also know that there's limited data that show that ELs, uh, maybe underrepresented in these exact models. We know that segregated learning is harmful and it doesn't work, but it's still prevalent. And we know that there are major gaps in assessment, uh, individual child
00;09;50;20 assessment, and in global classroom quality assessments that really enable us, you know, are standing in the way of enabling us to understand what quality looks like, uh, for deals.
00;10;03;08 [Shantel Meek]: We know that there is a wide array of policy and standards that vary across systems. So childcare pre-K, head start K-12, um, and across state lines. And within state lines, we know that head start in particular is a system that has kind of the most comprehensive set of standards for DLLs. We know that no state pre-K system or program has a comprehensive set of high-quality standards for DLLs and 18 of them have no policies at all specific to DLLs. And we know that funding for English
00;10;38;03 learners is woefully inadequate, uh, Title III, uh, which is the part of the nation's education law ESSA, uh, that provides support for English learners has been stagnant for years and has not even kept up with inflation or the increase in the EL population. So who are DLLs and ELs? Let's jump into this diversity that I mentioned earlier. They live everywhere across the country. They're, they're diverse racially,
00;11;06;25 uh, by immigration generation, by country and language of origin by income, by parent education. We know that most, despite this diversity, uh, the majority of DLLs about two third of them come from Spanish speaking homes and identify as Latino or Latina. Um, we know that about 75% of them identify as Latino Latina. Um, we know that an overwhelming majority of these children are us citizens, even though they may live in mixed status
00;11;35;28 families, or they may be children of immigrants, but the vast majority are us citizens. We know they're more likely to live in two parent households and multi-generation households with grandparents and others. Uh, we also know that they're more likely to be low income and have a parent with a high school education.
00;11;55;15 [Shantel Meek]: So now we want to talk a little bit, we dove into bilingualism in misreport, as you'll see, and, and really tried to understand kind of this, this bilingual advantage, uh, that we hear talked about a lot. So what we found in the research is really that infants are born with the capacity to learn as many unlimited number of languages. Um, there's a common notion that young kids will get confused if you introduce them to a second language and they're still learning their first. Um, but the research really finds that from, you know, infants are really born with
00;12;27;24 the ability to, to pick up, uh, and understand and learn as many languages as we, uh, expose them to, of course, uh, the, the quality of that exposure and of that language really matters, uh, in terms of how, how they develop their language and their bilingualism. We know that neuroscientists have observed advantages in bilingual children as early as seven months, uh, but really across kind of those early years in an array of different outcomes, uh, and cognitive outcomes, including
00;12;57;20 problem solving executive functioning skills, attention, shifting perspective, taking and self-regulation. And, um, if you know a lot about child development, we know that all of these are critical and really make up a big part of how kids learn, uh, which directly affects what kids learn. We know that, uh, bilingual exposure. So if you're a really young child and you're exposed to more than one language, uh, these children have
00;13;26;19 greater neuroplasticity and gray matter density in the brain gray matter contains most of the neurons in the brain and the brain regions involved in some really important, uh, cognitive functions, like memory, emotion, speech decision-making, um, and lots of others. We know that the science isn't, uh, sure, or certain like what answers or what kind of makes up or explains, uh, this kind of these findings that they found in bilingual babies. One hypothesis that that's out there. And that is, um, articulated
00;14;00;00 in the literature is that this kind of this cognitive exercise of having to at all times suppress one language and then execute one language and kind of switching back and forth between those is like brain exercise. Um, and that it kind of works parts of the brain, uh, that kind of build up the muscle in, in the memory for some of these other cognitive skills.
00;14;25;12 [Shantel Meek]: So based on all of these great things that that are associated with, with bilingualism, and, um, we know that a dual language, immersion models, or other types of kind of bilingual instructional models, where there are two languages of instruction that are kind of split across days or weeks to various percentages, um, have improved outcomes for dual language learners, but also who came from, for kids who speak English at home, one kind of distinction, there's, there's a whole variety of different types of bilingual learning models. Um, the ones that we're
00;14;58;27 talking about here really have the goal of bilingualism and biliteracy, as opposed to other programs that are more transitional, like bilingual transitional program, where the goal is to eventually phase kids out of dual language and have them reach whatever level of English proficiency, and then kind of phase them out and transition to English only instruction. So let's take a look at some of the outcomes that are associated with bilingual learning and dual language immersion. We know that kids who are
00;15;30;07 in dilemmas, emerging models actually become proficient in English more quickly. Um, we know that they outperform their peers in math and in reading in elementary school and beyond we know that they reach national academic performance norms, and we know that they're more likely to become by literate. There's also a whole number of other benefits that they've found in early childhood. So a lot of this research that's on this slide is
00;15;56;26 kind of from K-12. Um, but in the early years, uh, it's been associated with a number of social, emotional outcomes, as well as a number of kind of pre academic skills and learning outcomes, um, and in adulthood. So at the other end of the spectrum, um, there have been studies by from UCLA and other folks, uh, that have really found that kids who are DLLs or come from a home, uh, that speaks a language other than English and who remain kind
00;16;26;14 of bilingual over time.
00;16;28;02 [Shantel Meek]: So who, uh, whose bilingualism is kind of strengthened, kind of remain balanced bilinguals over time. So they keep their home language as well as acquiring English, um, compared to dual language learners kind of lose their home language over time, or become less proficient in it. And then kind of becoming English dominant over time. We know that that first group of kids is more likely, uh, to go to college or to a four year institution. They have higher earnings later in life. Um, and we also know that by literacy is associated with a number of
00;17;00;05 kind of professional advantages, uh, in this global economy, more global now than ever, uh, that we live in, despite all of this, uh, we know that this type of instruction, dual language immersion is not a reality for most deals in eels, uh, instruction across particularly the early care and education is primarily in English where the home language is used. Uh, some research has found it's for behavior supports, which is not confer the same types of benefits exposure. We also know that exposure to the home
00;17;32;03 language in early childhood education generally decreases over time as kids grow older. So, um, more common in infants and toddlers, and then, uh, decreases over time. And we know that, um, uh, more, there's more, they're more likely to have a provider who speaks the home language in non-center-based settings. Um, so in family childcare settings or other kind of community-based settings that are not in the center, um, although we will
00;17;59;05 point out that just having a bilingual teacher provider does not equate, it's not the same thing as having dual language instruction and some of these other models, it's, it's a necessary component, but not all of it.
00;18;12;27 [Shantel Meek]: So when we look at the different systems and what the standards are across systems, as I mentioned in earlier on head start really has kind of the most robust systems, uh, standards for DLLs. They're not, uh, fully comprehensive and there's still room to grow here, but they are far and away kind of, uh, ahead of the rest of the field in terms of standards. Um, we know that 28% of children in head start are DLLs and nearly 80% of those, uh, speak Spanish. And in terms of the standards that they have, uh, we know that there's explicit language there about valuing
00;18;44;10 the home language. Uh, we know that the home language and English, um, are re are required for DLLs within instruction, uh, for the youngest children, uh, the newest regulations say that you have to use primarily their home language and instruction with English exposure and for preschoolers, it kind of swaps it. So, you know, English exposure continued and increased English exposure with also continued exposure to the home language. Uh, bilingual staff who speak children's home language are required. If more
00;19;16;18 than half of the kids share the same home language, they conduct assessments in English and the home language. Um, and they have a whole number of culturally responsive family engagement, um, requirements and supports, uh, for programs to use. If we look at childcare, um, it's a lot more variability across the country. We know that data are scarce, um, as it is for many things in
00;19;43;04 childcare, in terms of child outcomes, um, so much more fragmented system, uh, and state led, um, as of 2017, only about, uh, 40% of quality rating and improvement systems in States included any indicators specific to DLLs. And even when DLL indicators were included in quality rating systems, the standard of quality was often quite low, like providing resources to families in their home languages, quite a low bar. When we look across, uh, childcare plans, uh, States, States develop these childcare plans every
00;20;15;11 year, uh, and, and report them to the federal government every few years. Um, we know that there were some policies listed, um, in, in those state childcare plans. Um, but again, uh, quite a low bar. And if you look at some of these categories, very few States are doing them. So, you know, for example, state referencing DLLs and their professional development plans, and in most cases, this wasn't that it required providers have training and dual language learning, but it, it, it, uh, it was an option for providers
00;20;46;08 to take, or it was available to, to take, which is also quite a low bar, particularly considering the large number of DLLs in some States and communities. Um,
00;20;58;14 [Shantel Meek]: One, So if we look at state pre-K systems, um, we know that less than half of state pre-K programs collect data on home language use, including some States that have some really huge, uh, DLL populations like Arizona, Florida, and New York, um, of those that do collect the data, uh, about, uh, they report that about 29% of the kids enrolled are DLLs in terms of policies. So I mentioned earlier, uh, that 18 States had no policy supporting, uh, specifically DLLs and in preschool in these public
00;21;31;11 preschool programs. Um, we know that Illinois, uh, really explicitly requires bilingual instruction if there's 20 or more DLLs in the same of the same home language in enrolled in the same program, although the mandated, I should notice for transitional bilingual, uh, as I mentioned earlier, which is distinct from dual language immersion models. Um, and just a few other examples of, of other policies have all of these are reviewed in a near report that was released a couple of years ago. Um,
00;22;01;13 seven States, uh, have programs that require staff to have training and qualifications for working with DLL. So S uh, seven States, uh, out of, out of all the ones in the country, um, 19 state programs have policies for assessing children in their home language. Um, the, the rest do not Go to the next slide, please. Can we go to the next slide? Great. Um, so now looking a little bit at, at
00;22;48;13 the K-12, um, landscape and providing a bit of a, of an overview on kind of the EL, the English learner part and the nation's education law, the,
00;22;59;04 every student succeeds act, which was passed, uh, five years ago now. Um, so here's a number in the report. We go into more depth about some of the changes, uh, within ESA for, for English learners, um, uh, you know, a big part of our big kind of takeaway message here is that a lot of the responsibility for English learners, uh, switch kind of from the federal level and accountability to really state flexibility, um, States are not required to develop standards, uh, in entry and exit procedures for
00;23;31;20 determining whether a student is an English learner. Um, States may include students, formally classified as English learner in the English learner subgroup for academic assessments. Um, they, it, within the law, it includes requirements for engagement, uh, for English learners, um, in terms of funding. Uh, we know that as I mentioned earlier, title three is woefully underfunded, and that the effects of that are exacerbated, or
00;24;00;21 perhaps that exacerbates the effects of base education funds being woefully, uh, both inadequate and inequitable.
00;24;12;08 [Shantel Meek]: So We don't have a ton of time to dig into this. I do encourage you to read the report and to get more information on this piece of it, but we did want to touch on what the reality is and kind of how that's tied to the history in terms of language and segregation and bias. I mentioned earlier kind of that that language has been used as a tool for exclusion since, uh, since the Mexican American war. And then there was integration efforts started. We know that, um, early on that, um, there were actually Mexican schools
00;24;42;13 that were established, uh, that placed all kids of, of kind of Hispanic or Latino origin, uh, within them. And they explicitly used the language as the tool of exclusion saying that these kids didn't know English, so they couldn't go to the regular school. So they created all Mexican schools and systems of Mexican schools, um, to put these kids into often time, these kids only spoke English, uh, and oftentimes, or most of the time, they weren't even assessed for their English assessment, but really there's a
00;25;11;07 long history with language being used as a tool of exclusion over time. If we look at kind of more contemporary research, uh, you know, there's been some studies, one study in particular used national achievement data and found that the degree of segregation between English learners and their peers was really the greatest predictor of disparities in achievement. We know that, um, today segregation looks a little bit different, right? So there, we don't have Mexican schools quote unquote anymore. Uh, but a lot of English learners, particularly in K-12 are segregated at the classroom
00;25;45;02 level. They're pulled out to get English services, um, or they're, you know, they're, they're immersed what they call, uh, there's a model called structured English immersion, um, which was the law of the land, um, in Arizona until just recently where children, uh, English learners were pulled out for at least four hours a day, uh, and kind of self, self-contained English learner classrooms just to learn English.
00;26;12;09 [Shantel Meek]: And so when you think about four hours a day, and then you add in lunch, and then you add in recess, and then you add in transitions that doesn't leave a whole lot of additional time, um, for math and for science and for everything else, uh, that a student needs and deserves, uh, in order to graduate. And so then it's perhaps not surprising that Arizona has one of the lowest graduation rates for English learners in the country. Uh, but it's not just happening in Arizona. There are many other places that have these kind of pullout models. Um, we also know from
00;26;45;15 research that teachers have lower academic expectations for English learners that grow over time as kids get older, but researchers found that it's not the case in bilingual schools when there's somewhat of an evening kind of, of the language playing field in terms of what is valued. Uh, there's research that finds that one, surprisingly bilingual teachers are more effective with dual language learners. We know that there are major issues in assessment bias. Um, everything we assess for the most
00;27;12;25 part, there, there are not very many States that assess kids in the home language and in English. And so really we get into this more in the report, but really a lot of our assessments are telling us, uh, what we already know, uh, what the kid knows in English, as opposed to really understanding kind of the full breadth of what they know across all of their languages. Um, what we also know is a really interesting piece that it's not just kind of the teacher part, the classroom part, the school part, the state part, but there's been research that's been done in kind of multilingual
00;27;45;05 societies where bilingualism and multiple languages are valued.
00;27;50;02 [Shantel Meek]: Um, and the achievement gap between native language speakers of the country and their peers is small or nonexistent. So we know that kind of broader societal bias, uh, for, you know, monolingual, uh, English, uh, and this kind of obsession with, with just, uh, focusing on English is, is really big, uh, in the field. The other thing that we will note, um, when it comes to dual language immersion programs, we mentioned this a little bit earlier on, um, but there's emerging evidence that, that
00;28;25;10 DLLs and ELL is, are underrepresented in these models. And this, uh, this report is an equity report, and that is one of the most profound inequities that we can think of this, this kind of double standard, right? So for kids who speak English at home, typically white children, higher resource children, bilingualism is, is kind of this there's really wonderful
00;28;49;06 enrichment like this there's really great add on to an education. It's, it's a really prestigious thing. There are language schools kind of cropping up all over the country. Um, but for English learners, when they kind of come to our doors, uh, bilingual, uh, instead of kind of building on that strength and that, that language that they're bringing to the door and seeing it as like this really prestigious thing that we want to build on, like we see for, for this other group of kids, instead, we kind of just focused on teaching them English and it's all about English and let's
00;29;21;14 exclude them because they don't speak English yet. And let's segregate them, uh, to, to just focus on the English and actually get rid of the bilingualism, because we don't care about kind of cropping up and developing that, that growing bilingualism, unless you're in this other group of kids over here. So kind of this double standard that's appearing across the country, um, is quite problematic and kind of without this explicit focus on equitable access to these dual language immersion programs, um, we have, there's the potential to exacerbate existing equity
00;29;54;07 inequities that we see already.
00;29;57;02 [Shantel Meek]: So with all of that in mind, I, um, here is just a subset of the many policy recommendations that you'll find in the report. Um, so I'll go through a few of those that we think will kind of get us closer to aligning the science, um, with, uh, policy. So first and foremost, in terms of Congress, uh, funding is always a tremendous issue. So at least doubling funding for kids, learning English through title three, uh, and any other relevant funding streams. As I mentioned before,
00;30;27;13 it's been stagnant for a really long time. It has not been updated. The number of kids has grown. So it's woefully inadequate at this point and fun and doubling it is, is the kind of very bottom line least we can do requesting a government accountability office study on federal funding for dual language learners and English learners. Where is that funding going? Uh, what types of models is it supporting, uh, is it supporting things that are evidence-based or things that are ideologically based? Um, uh, the third is really aligning policy with research and our main point here that
00;30;59;01 we're trying to drive home in this report based on the data and on the research is prioritizing dual language and strength based approaches in learning and tying that prioritization to federal funding alongside phasing out these ineffective English only approaches that often require, uh, or result in, uh, segregation. We recommend holding hearings on best practices and really lifting those up and funding models that optimally support yields and deals, um, and using that information to inform, you know,
00;31;30;02 investments above and beyond the doubling of title three, you mentioned earlier. Um, and finally, because we know that one of the key requirements to expanding access to dual language immersion models for deals and DLLs is a workforce and the number of teachers to be able to do that.
00;31;46;16 [Shantel Meek]: We recommend funding a national effort to really expand the number of qualified bilingual educators and early childhood providers in terms of federal agencies, really looking at piloting and investing and really growing our capacity and knowledge on strength based bilingual education and linguistically diverse workforce preparation programs. Um, investing as a, you know, we mentioned that there are some assessment bias and there's also a lack of assessments and all of the languages that we need them in. So investing in classroom assessment tools to assess the quality of dual language approaches, um, and child level
00;32;19;17 assessments to better understand kind of the breadth and be able to accurately capture what kids know and requiring States to report their plans, to equitably expand access to doing this pro again, in terms of the, at the state level, you'll see some of these are nest data repeated across, but really discontinuing segregated programs for English learners and English only programs for English and dual language learners, because it's clear that they're ineffective, I'm using federal funds to expand bilingual
00;32;46;24 programs and prioritizing deals and eels. And then, and so that's a really important point. We see a lot of cities and communities and States starting to expand access because of demand like families love a lot of these bilingual programs. Um, but if there's not a specific kind of equity considered in the policy, so if yells or deals are not explicitly prioritized in that policy of expansion, and there's a number of ways to do it, that we write out in the report, there's weighted lotteries, there's putting them first in line, there's expanding
00;33;19;10 dual language slots in certain communities. So there's, there's ways to do this, but if we're not cognizant and intentional about equitably expanding access, which means putting DLLs and yells first in line, then you kind of end up with, with the systems that right, we're expanding bilingual learning, but yells and DLLs get pushed out. We also recommend adopting head start DLL standards in state funded pre-K. Um, we know, as we mentioned earlier, that head start of the existing standards that exist with DLLs, uh,
00;33;49;21 have the most robust standards. And as we learned in the report, one of the common themes is standards are only as good as your monitoring and accountability systems are tied to them. And so really tying and incorporating accountability frameworks, uh, and the availability of funds to accurately fund these, uh, into those models. Uh, and finally kind of nested across, you'll see again, improving existing and creating new workforce preparation programs to expand linguistic diversity and knowledge
00;34;20;21 of DLLs.
00;34;24;26 [Shantel Meek]: So, um, with that, it is my distinct honor to introduce my mentor, my colleague, and my friend event scientist, when this, uh, event brings extensive experience, um, in providing services to young children from low income families at the local regional and national level, she was most recently the president for the national Alliance for Hispanic families. Before that she served as a director of the office of head start nationally as a presidential political appointee at the us department of health and human services. And prior to that, um, Yvette
00;34;58;12 served as executive director of the national migrant and seasonal head start association, where she worked with early education services, policies, and resources for migrant and seasonal farm worker, children and families. She is going to lead a really exciting panel of colleagues and experts in dual language learners and English learners. Uh, so with that, I'll hand it over to Yvette.
00;35;21;06 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Great. Well, first off I wanna thank Shantel so much for inviting me to facilitate this panel and it really is going to be a discussion, but I also want to thank everybody behind the scenes who Has made all of this work possible and really for all of the work, uh, to bring this all full word and to light. Um, often I think it feels like we're preaching to the choir. So my hope really is that with this work, we
00;35;55;13 can expand it and really start to talk about very specific recommendations about how we move forward. Um, so first off, I want to share a little bit about my journey, and then I'm going to start by asking each of our esteem panel is a really specific question so that you can get to know them and then we'll move into a panel discussion, and then we'll have some time for Q and a, and we've actually already been getting questions. So we'll have
00;36;22;16 to really balance out our time so that we can have a full discussion. Um, so this topic, this subject is really personal for me because I can remember my parents and my grandparents talking about these Mexican schools and talking about how, when you spoke Spanish in school, you'd actually get paddled so that, you know, would talk about the big paddle that they would use and you get sent to the principal's office.
00;36;47;22 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Uh, but in my own really sort of personal life with my son, I will share that he is a trilingual child. And when we actually enrolled him in public school, he's now going to be a senior, uh, on your form. You had to, uh, write whether or not you spoke another language in the home. So obviously we did, we said English Spanish, and he speaks in indigenous language. Uh, so not known to us when he gets to school a week after that, this is kindergarten. He comes home one day and he's super
00;37;21;16 excited. And he's talking about how he is taken out of the class and he's going with this other teacher and four other kids, and they're doing these amazing activities and it's so much fun and he's loving it. Um, and I'm sort of thinking to myself like, huh, what's going on here? So when I go to check in, I'm told that when I let her Sandra was enrolled in the school, he was given this grid where he had to identify what each of
00;37;49;29 the words meant. And on the grid, there's, it's a 12 by 12 grid. There was the word duck. Um, so this little boy who's five years old is thinking that it's a duck like quack, quack. when in fact what they wanted him to say was you have to duck to go under the tree. So because of that, he was put into what we call Esau a, I don't think we use that anymore, but back then we used, you saw, um, so really for us, I really, from that just became
00;38;22;24 something that was wow. Like we need to figure out what's going on in our public schools and start to become the advocates that we can.
00;38;29;13 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: What I really loved about this report is the intentionality that Shantel and all of the participants and everyone who got the intentionality around, really making sure that we talk about how diverse, uh, DLL and ELL children and families are everything from ethnically to culturally to economically, uh, and that these kids and these families and our communities that we really bring these strengths that should be celebrated. And as Shantel mentioned, um, in her opening, not
00;39;02;24 really used for the purposes of exclusion. And so just to give the panel a little bit of a heads up, I'm hoping that we can have a discussion today around this whole idea of language as a tool for exclusion, especially when we're really in the middle of this pandemic, we're in the middle of these uprisings around racial injustice. Um, and what does it mean when our kids and our families come into our public institutions and I'm not celebrated
00;39;31;21 for the bilingualism that they bring. So just a little bit about that. And then obviously I always appreciate hearing about head start, and I would just add that, uh, when we actually worked on the 2007 head start reauthorization, we were really intentional about making sure that there was language in there for supporting and promoting bilingualism as it relates to English language learners. And I think that that work really helped to kick it off. And as Shantel mentioned, really put forward those standards along with the
00;40;01;29 accountability, the professional development and the training that has, hopefully in some communities moved, moved us forward in ways that we're celebrating our kids and our families and our communities, and that we're also respecting our workforce and all of the adult caregivers that care for all of our young children, both from birth all the way into college. So with that, let me kick it off and start with a question for each of our esteemed panelists.
00;40;29;14 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Um, and I'm hoping that as you sort of respond to the question, if you can also just tell us a little bit about what you're currently doing, um, and then get into the question. So I'm gonna start with, uh, Dr. Gene Garcia, who is a professor at Arizona state university. So Gene you've been a school board member, a federal policy maker, the department of education, a Dean of colleges of education. You are married to a teacher, your daughter's a teacher clearly have a long history of
00;41;02;21 teaching, both for yourself and your family. Um, can you, with all of your years at all of your experiences, can you first tell us a little bit about what you're doing, but then also, could you please reflect on how you've seen this issue or this topic, or this work change over the years, and is it getting better?
00;41;25;06 [Eugene Garcia]: Well, thank you very much for the, for the question. And I'll try to answer that it's very complex, but you're right. I have some deep roots in, uh, in education with both my wife and my daughter, uh, engage with presently in one way or another in teaching your children, even in this, uh, very demanding and very different climate. Uh, they are working every day with, uh, children, teachers, and others to enhance the educational levels of, of our young children who come to school. Uh, not speaking English clearly over time, and I'm not a historian, but I've lived
00;41;57;22 through a historical period. Uh, we began to move to shift, uh, our understanding based on science. And I think if we want to, we want to do anything today is in this pandemic, is that we are many times not paying attention to the science. Uh, I think mostly when it comes to language and multilingual development, uh, is important to pay attention to the science and the development of that science over the last 15 to 20 to 25 years,
00;42;30;00 keep in mind that in 1993, 94 federal policy and us department of education supported something called developmental bilingual programs.
00;42;39;22 [Eugene Garcia]: This is really what we call dual language programs today. However, however, the majority of children and Shantel points out even today, uh, are not exposed or have the opportunity to participate in programs that essentially, uh, utilize their native languages and culture as a resource, as they move into English and other academic learning, uh, activities. So I hate to say this, but what bothers me most is that we are not following that science very well in the DLL world most significantly.
00;43;15;11 Uh, I want to be sure that the key policy, uh, uh, lever that I think is critical is issues related to human resources of those individuals who are serving this population and these families, uh, we do not have as Shantel's report. Uh, the equity project's efforts have very clearly identified is that we don't have the kind of, uh, teachers, the kinds of instructors, the
00;43;41;13 kinds of, even other kinds of administrative, uh, credentials that are necessary to make sure at, at the, at the center level or at the program level, uh, at the school level that we have the individuals who understand the children who understand the, uh, design and implementation of instruction for those children and how they communicate to the families and the communities in which those children live early childhood education has always been not just about children, but about families and about the
00;44;13;08 comprehensive care social workers, uh, instructors. We understand who the population is. So what, what really we need to do is pay attention to that science, uh, the, uh, the, the, the very best, uh, uh, portrayal of that science or summary of that science, not only in this report, but in, in a promising futures report by the national academies spends lots of time talking about the workforce and then society to have
00;44;39;27 the kind of workforce, therefore our federal, our state, even local programs and centers need to understand how are we ensuring that we have the right people who design implement, communicate, and otherwise enhance the learning opportunities and developmental opportunities of children who come to them, not speaking English.
00;45;02;21 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Yeah. Great. Thank you so much. And I want to get back to that conversation around the science, cause I think it's a really important point since an early childhood over the last decade, we've really been focused on the brain research. So it's interesting that we haven't come that far as it relates to DLL, but let me move now to dr. Dina Castro, happy that you're here with us, who is the Velma at each mint endowed chair of early childhood education and a professor at the university of North Texas Dina. You're a nationally renowned researcher in DLL, as it relates
00;45;36;16 to early childhood issues. Talk to us about what you've seen, what you think has held us back, uh, and how we can get to where we want to go. And I wonder if you could talk about how this policy agenda fits into that?
00;45;53;20 [Dina Castro]: Well, good afternoon, um, Dean colleagues, all colleagues is, is very good, uh, to feel, to be around friends and colleagues who have been working. And as we say, fighting the fight, uh, for quite a while. So thank you for the invitation also Chantel from the children's equity project, and to mean that from the Bipartisan Policy Center, um, your question is quite large and also very big and see, um,
00;46;29;14 we've been working on this issues, uh, particularly conducting research that is related to what it's strategies for classrooms. It's really, uh, something that we identify very early. My career in the United States has been the, I've been the fact that teachers were not really prepared in
00;46;54;18 every type of classrooms to work with dual language learners. And, um, so that, that was one of the pieces that I think was central. It has been central to my work over the years.
00;47;05;26 [Dina Castro]: And, uh, and also, uh, as we continue working in, in, in, you know, classrooms around the, around the country, what was kind of frustrating for us was that we couldn't see, um, the, the information that came from our rich research be translated into the policies and in the classroom finally in changes in the way, uh, breakfast is, were being conducted. So that's, that's something that has made me move or will be
00;47;41;03 more recently into the policy arena and try to see how, how I could also contribute with this piece of, you know, the research informing, uh, policymaking. And that's why I'm, so I'm so excited about this effort and, um, um, you know, and the possibility of continuing, you know, generating change to improve the quality of education for dual language learners. Um,
00;48;08;28 so more recently, as I said, I'm moving, I'm living in Texas now, uh, as soon as the lesson for the last six years and something that we are, um, working now in partnership with, uh, organizations are working on advocacy in early childhood, as well as, you know, generating and proposing policies is an effort to focus on improving the quality of education of dual language learners in Texas. So here in Texas, we have about 49% of the birth to eight years of age
00;48;43;23 population are dual language learners. So it's a large population and the majority of them are, um, coming from, um, you know, from communities where Spanish is spoken. So, uh, there are some issues that I have with the term to using the terminology of home language that maybe we can get into later.
00;49;07;20 But just to finish with this piece of what I'm doing now is that this initiative is, it has a purpose of increased access to dual language, immersion education for all children who are classified as dual language learners or English learners in the state of Texas. So that there's a, um, we are, you know, pushing this piece of policy in the state and we hope we in generating this participation from, you know, uh, at all levels,
00;49;39;01 teachers, childcare providers, policy makers, um, administrators in schools, and get to start programs. So is an initiative focusing on the birth to eight population in Texas. And, um, we are hopeful to have some good results from this effort. I think I will.
00;50;01;01 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much, Dina. Um, next we'll go to dr. Conor Williams. Hey, uh, currently, uh, Conor is a fellow at the century foundation. And so Conor, you for an extensive rate, uh, on dual language learners and English language learner issues in a variety of outlets. You tell us a little bit about how you came to this work. And also if you had to pick one or two of the policies that are in this report to push to the top, which would they be?
00;50;30;23 [Conor Williams]: thank you. That's a, I'm really glad to be here, Julie, for that quick question, I came to this work out of a autobiography like, like many people I, I went to, um, to struggling sometimes even dysfunctional public schools for, for my own education. I came out of that. Our schools, our district I attended were surrounded by more segregated and
00;51;03;26 better funded and higher quality other schools near us. And I was just always mad about it. It was a class warfare issue for me. I was always angry that we couldn't afford to live in a place where the schools were always excellent, where the experiences every day would have been highly, uh, rigorous. And, and a lot of my kids who have education was just so hard to be over. So I came out of that night, I went to college and, and encountered more people who had had a private school education send this
00;51;33;10 extraordinary privilege.
00;51;35;12 [Conor Williams]: And I, I couldn't put that away. I couldn't stop looking at it. So I started from that position of just, just outright fury at educational inequity and, and sort of a grudge that I carried out in my own autobiography. And so then as I've grown into this career, I, uh, I began as a first grade teacher and my interest and exposure to the, um, the world of dual language learners and English learners for the began there. I was a Spanish language learner, but like many, um, people that my demographic, I started taking it in middle school and high school. And, uh,
00;52;08;08 I picked it up that way. So the, the other side of me, of those students who were learning English when they came to us schools, that was something new to me. As a teacher of night, I kept digging and kept digging. And the next thing I was doing, and it was all I was thinking about. So, so that's how I've come to it at century foundation. That's the bulk of my work is focused on, uh, children of immigrants, dual language learners, and older English learning students in us, public schools, a couple of things we could do better. I want to echo much of what's been said. I think
00;52;38;14 Gene was right on the nose when he said that one of the big things we need to focus on is, is the human capital in our public education and the education systems. We, we have so many multilingual and bilingual adults, many of whom have higher, higher education degrees who have some credentials, but for one reason or another, aren't able to become fully licensed teachers in the front of early education classrooms or, uh, elementary or secondary classrooms in the United States. We should be
00;53;10;22 reforming our teacher licensure system to provide alternative path alternative pathways for these teachers, so that we can have more bilingual adults in these, in these classes.
00;53;19;28 [Conor Williams]: And so that we can offer more dual language programming for dual language learners. Right now we have it as a scarce resource, which makes it an equity problem so that when there aren't enough dual language seats to go around, you can always count on those of privilege, being able to leverage inequitable access to that scarce resource. If we had more bilingual teachers that wouldn't be as big of an issue, I'll also echo what Shantel said earlier. And I think this is actually, uh, eminently doable right now is that we're well overdue for a significant increase in federal funding related to dual language learners
00;53;50;13 and English learners. That should be happening as soon as possible.
00;53;57;15 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: You so much. Thanks. That was great. And then I'm happy to meet dr. Kelly Edybyrn. Wanna make sure I said that correctly. I'm so happy to meet you. So Kelly currently is with the children's equity project at Arizona state university and Kelly, you're a measurement expert. So talk to us about some of the measurement issues that are holding back greater equity for our bilingual children. And if you could share with us one example of how these challenges manifest themselves in the
00;54;29;05 determination of services, and then finally, where should the federal government be focusing its energy as it relates to measurement.
00;54;38;29 [Kelly Edyburn]: Great. Thank you. Um, yeah, again, I'm so happy to be here with all of you and thank you for the opportunity. Um, I've had experience both as a researcher and as a clinician, uh, conducting a lot of different types of assessments, um, developmental assessments, language assessments, academics like educational, um, full psychological evaluations, um, working with very young children up through young adults in schools and juvenile justice facilities.
00;55;04;07 [Kelly Edyburn]: So I've seen like a range of how our assessments are used, how they determine what access to services children get. Um, and so I think I've seen that the, the measurement issues, the assessment issues fall into kind of two broad buckets. Um, the first being this issue that we've been talking about with the workforce and training. Um, and so the training is currently inadequate for the folks who are using these assessments, whether that's education, like education professionals, such
00;55;38;02 as school, psychologists, speech, language pathologists, or teachers themselves, um, or administrators. So, um, the, the training and education piece, and then the other bucket would be, um, validity issues. So the liquidity related to the assessments that we currently have available. And so I'll speak to the validity issues first. So, um, basically the tests that we have right now that we use the assessments that we use, aren't
00;56;03;07 designed by and large with dual language learners in mind. And so often we don't have norms for dual language learners. We don't have evidence that the test functions, psychometrically how we think they're supposed to. Um, so we don't actually know that the tests are measuring what we think they're supposed to measure. And so, um, an example about how this relates to services, uh, Lisa and Jeff mix Swan and Kelly roll stat, and others have done studies looking at like a language proficiency assessment in English, for example, or in Spanish, and giving those
00;56;36;10 assessments to young dual language learners and seeing that they systematically over identify those children as being, having low proficiency in both of the languages, to which they've ever been exposed. So, um, these are typically developing children, not children with speech or language impairments, but, um, typically developing children and being identified as having low or no proficiency in the only languages they speak.
00;57;00;25 [Kelly Edyburn]: So that doesn't mean that the children are flawed. That means that the assessments are not measuring what we think they're measuring or what they purport to measure. And so this has tremendous consequences for, um, particularly special education eligibility, because you can imagine that if I, if I get an assessment result back and says that this kid is entirely lacking in language skills, I might actually assume that they do have some kind of language disability. Um, rather than assuming that this measure wasn't intended to be used with dual language learners, or we don't have validity evidence that it's functioning the way
00;57;32;06 it's supposed to function. Um, so I think that has serious consequences, not only for special education eligibility, but our inferences that we make about children, the beliefs that we hold about, what they're capable of and what kind of instruction they need and what kind of intervention they might need. So, um, so there's this validity issue. And then there's also the issue of training because, um, if we have teachers and school psychologists and speech language pathologists, who haven't gotten enough training in this
00;58;01;02 area of bilingual language development, um, they are likely to systematically misuse the data they do have access to. So even if we do have these assessments that aren't, um, aren't ideal that aren't fully up to what we want them to be right now. Uh, we do have ways of making culturally linguistically responsive decisions for kids and, and strengths-based decisions for children. And if we don't have the right education and training for those folks, then they're not going to be able to make those decisions. And they're going to systematically misuse data in
00;58;33;27 a way that allows us to perpetuate inequities that already exist. Right.
00;58;38;06 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: So, excellent. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. No, go ahead. Oh,
00;58;42;21 [Kelly Edyburn]: In terms of, I mean, like the recommendations for, for the federal government, I think follow those two lines. So I mean, providing more of an investment in creating and examining assessment tools and also more workforce development and workforce training programs and funding those, um, and really making sure that folks know how to conduct culturally and linguistically responsive assessments.
00;59;04;12 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Awesome. Thank you. Thank you to all of you. Um, so we heard about the brain science. We've heard that, uh, dual immersion programs are really the gold standard. We've heard that, uh, families, white families in particular, uh, want their kids to be bilingual. So we've got the, we've got the science, we've got the Research, we've got the data, uh, why, why are we, why are we not listening or what, or who's not listening who could be listening. Um, and I guess I'm
00;59;35;08 wondering, is this a definitely a role for the federal government, but is there something that local school districts schools, uh, early childhood programs can do in order to ensure that kids are getting equity, equitable access, and also that the workforce is being supported? Um, all of you have mentioned the human capital that is critical in making sure that our kids and our families and our communities get the access that they absolutely
01;00;05;12 deserve. So that's to all of you, anybody can start, everybody was smiling, so, okay. Yeah. That's okay.
01;00;20;00 [Eugene Garcia]: Let me, uh, let me get at your broader question. And that is why are we not doing something that we know we should be doing? Keep in mind that we didn't do anything for, uh, non-English-speaking children in the cupcake 12 sector and ports interceded, unless we would have had Lau, uh, in the seventies, unless we would have had Serrano in Texas, uh, in the seventies as well, keep in mind in resource restricted environments in which we are in now. I mean, we, we, we just don't have a
01;00;50;09 lot of money. Uh, then why, how can we make people respond to what we know needs to be done in this case? Uh, is something we're trying to follow up. Do these kids have the same civil rights at age three and four that the K-12 sector has, the courts have determined that in K-12 you must do something to address the language diversity and difference. That's not the case that, uh, ages three and four, as those kids go into either federally
01;01;20;07 or state funded preschool environments, they do not have the same protection civilly and court wise as their brothers and sisters in the K-12 sector. Not that they are doing wonderful in that K-12 sector, but at least it essentially allows us to have programs and States pay attention to the rights of these children, to what we know is best for them.
01;01;45;03 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Excellent. Dina. Yeah. Jump in.
01;01;48;19 [Dina Castro]: Yeah, I think, um, I think that, um, you know, use these keywords, uh, right, right. Um, I agree completely, you know, some time ago, I wasn't, I would share a little anecdote here about that. Um, I was invited to a presentation and when I finished, uh, towards the end of my presentation, I was just asking during my final remarks and ask if this was, uh, an audience of early educators. And I told them that they in their
01;02;21;25 hands really was the future of the children. And I was asking them to be advocates for them and for the children, dual language learners and the right to be bilingual. So when we went, when I was leaving and the person who had invited me asked me this question, he said, Dina, may I asked you a personal question? And I said, yes. And she said, when do you become so
01;02;51;07 radical?
01;02;53;15 [Dina Castro]: So talking about bilingualism and rights for young children was considered radical. I was just really blown my mind, but that was the, sometimes the ma does that mentality. So we're not thinking about buying anymore as a right for young children. And I think that it's important in definitely I will. I'm behind any oldest efforts that we'll put, take young children and especially young children, all bilingual
01;03;23;23 children, but in particular young children out of this invisibility, and there's brings this other point. So my concern, and then when I'm, we're thinking about why is that changes are not happening? I think there are reasons that are beyond research. We do, we see in the report and we can find the research. The research is there to support that, uh, the benefits of bilingualism and, and, and development and learning. So why, if we do
01;03;55;10 have the research changes, do not happening at the policy level, why does, uh, even sometimes when you have the policies, they are not translated into practices. So we need this patient. So there are structures, there are societal structures that they really are more related to discrimination to racial injustice that are behind the, this result in this are not, that's why it is so slow. We're so slow in making change happen. That's my
01;04;27;28 perception.
01;04;28;22 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Yeah. Thank you. I appreciate just you and Gene calling it out. Kelly?
01;04;33;04 [Kelly Edyburn]: Yeah, I would jump in and just add to that. I think this report is incredibly timely for that reason because, um, these, I think more and more folks are waking up to the idea that these are interconnected systems of oppression. We're not just the problem of a man with bigoted beliefs and access to an assault rifle, walking into a Walmart last year and terrorizing a lot next community in El Paso is not distinct from the systematic segregation of dual language learners into English only
01;05;03;17 classrooms. It's. These are undergirded by the same origin of, of white supremacy of racism and xenophobia. And I think there's no, unless there is kind of a social will and a political will. I don't think a top down policy change is going to happen. I mean, this is, we've had this research for decades that we know what works for supporting these children, and we know how to affirm them and support them and celebrate their strengths. And we're not doing it because there's a, a, an ideological foundation of white
01;05;33;17 supremacy that undergirds education, early childhood, pretty much every social structure in this country. And so we need to dismantle that simultaneously. I think,
01;05;44;10 [Conor Williams]: Yeah. Let me also, in this one, I talked about why I do this work. I have three multilingual learner children in my house because their mother has well shovel things. And so they're growing up Welsh, English, bilingual, and then they also, the two older ones attend a title, one bilingual school here in Washington, D C, but I want to focus on, I think, what is the softer and more insidious version of white supremacy? That's in it, it's not the sort of big flagrant violations of
01;06;18;11 people's dignity in mass shootings. I want to talk about the systemic stuff, which is hard to see because so many of us are complicit in it, things like this, that the overwhelming majority of us teachers are white and our monolingual diverse teacher candidates are kept out of the U S teaching force through a variety of systems or pieces of our licensure systems. And so then what that means then is that it's just hard to offer more dual
01;06;44;12 language immersion. I have yet to run into, um, school district leaders who when faced with parental demand from this don't want to expand access to bilingual education or dual language immersion. They always find parental demand, and they're always interested in it, but they almost never can find enough teachers to do it rapidly. And so then again, it's what I said before, when you have this resource and it's scarce because of these systemic biases, the people who are always going to get more access so that people with power in my demographic and my cohort of urban coastal city
01;07;20;04 dwelling, highly educated, uh, white middle and upper middle class people, it is taken as an obvious thing that access to dual language immersion is something that they are fighting for their kids.
01;07;30;20 [Conor Williams]: I can tell you endless stories of people who have, have moved heaven and earth who've mortgage their house, uh, uh, and leverage themselves to the gills to by just over the line in the neighborhood. There's the dual immersion program. The, the trend line in DC just as it is in most places were dual language immersion exists is that these programs are steadily being, uh, moved from two way dual immersion, where they are roughly integrated by language enrolling, roughly equal proportions of, uh, native speakers of each language to one way immersion programs, where they serve more white, more wealthy, more English dominant
01;08;04;09 children, and very few natives because the target language I can tell you stories of, of a major us city have visited some years ago for research. One of the board members told me he was the only school board member, uh, who was a person of color. He had just lost his reelection bid because the union went after him. Uh, he was the only person of color is Latinex, uh, uh, fella. And he had been pushing so hard for the expansion of dual language immersion programs that a number of white monolingual English teachers had lost their jobs.
01;08;31;21 Every time a new DLL program opened, then they had to overhaul the staff. So the teacher's union went after him and installed a new candidate instead, a white monolingual English speaking teacher to put an end to that. There's just so many ways in which our entire education system is set up to deliver this kind of instruction to those who want it and can afford it and can actually put their muscle and their privilege and their wealth behind it. That's why it's not happening. It's, it's ranked human selfishness.
01;09;01;16 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Okay. Thank you, Conor. So, you know, I think I thank you, all of you for just your very honest and genuine response to that question. I know sometimes it can be difficult, but, um, let me just throw a question out because, um, Connor, I think, and also, uh, Gene, everyone has mentioned human capital at some point, and we have a question from Karen, which is a human capital question, but related to policy around, do you all think that it's a good idea or a possibility of
01;09;32;07 implementing a policy at the federal level that would hold higher education accountable for creating teacher preparation programs that both, uh, train them in early childhood education, along with bilingualism?
01;09;52;21 [Eugene Garcia]: Can I, can I speak to that as a previous Dean who might be held accountable in that way? I, I really think it's worth pursuing. We don't government does have requirements for, uh, receiving federal dollars and ensuring that those dollars are invested appropriately to meet certain goals. I don't see a problem saying, uh, indicating to colleges of education, to those individuals who are preparing, uh,
01;10;23;06 instructors and administrators and other early childhood personnel to essentially say, we will provide resources if you will essentially move forward in that, keep in mind, the federal government usually ties us to resources. So I can imagine that, uh, uh, and again, historically, there were grants from, uh, the department of education to colleges of education to produce more bilingual teachers. Uh, and essentially they were held
01;10;52;21 accountable. We've shaving those dollars. I don't see why we shouldn't do that, that kind of policy nationally. And that would require use of dollars that go to these, uh, institutions to produce, to achieve certain goals. One of those goals is essentially being produced more human capital, appropriately defined for this population.
01;11;17;23 [Dina Castro]: Um, just follow up on that comment in terms of, I think for, uh, for awhile of being, uh, talking about this and the idea that every teacher in the United States should be prepared to work with effectively with children, every teacher, not just those that are pursuing, you know, going and do piano certification on bilingual education, bilingual children, and you want to call them two of them was learners,
01;11;51;22 English learners, and following the science, it gets our bilingual, if they are able to understand confident and produce them with the dual languages, no matter what level of skill the hat, and just keep that piece of science here. Okay. So if we're building with children and, uh, really, you know, these kids are in every classroom is how likely is it, is that a teacher in the United States is going to go to a school or a classroom in which there
01;12;20;14 are no bilingual children. I mean, that's really what my sense is that generally do patient or teacher preparation, general education should incorporate, you know, coursework that prepare teachers to work with bilingual children. Uh, as an example, you have quickly give that, uh, we conducted a study in Texas with my students. And, um, I actually, if I'm waiting that, or, you know, the, um,
01;12;50;16 analyzing the content of degree plans for teacher preparation programs in 29 of the highest ranked universities in Texas in that location. And what we found was that the general education certification programs only me had my percent of their coursework dedicated to linguistic and cultural diversity versus about 28%. If I remember correctly and the ESL certification in 34% in the bilingual certificate page. So that is the
01;13;21;23 percentage. So, um, even most, you know, 34% for teachers of the content for preparing to be bilingual, I think we need to, we have these an example in fixes would use a state that had not been having my location program for, for a long time. So imagine what's happened in the race with the country.
01;13;45;15 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Yeah, exactly. Kelly or Conor. Do you want to jump in on this policy question?
01;13;52;04 [Conor Williams]: Yeah. I just add one small thing. I think I'd mostly agree with Gene. Um, there's no reason the feds couldn't put together competitive grants to, to expand bilingual training programs. The other thing is that it would be well within the federal government's purview to require States in exchange for all of the federal education funding they get. And you could run this through title two, or even through title one or title three, I think, to provide explanations for discrepancies in their teacher candidates and, um, teaching force, uh, demographics to say, look,
01;14;24;11 we noticed that your state has these percentages racially ethnically, et cetera, except your teaching force looks this other way. You're going to need to provide us at least some analysis of why you're seeing this very white teaching force in a state that isn't very white and that it wouldn't require the States to change necessarily, but it would instantly put them in on the back foot.
01;14;55;15 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Let me just go ahead, Kelly.
01;14;58;00 [Kelly Edyburn]: Oh, I would just add also just one quick thing that, um, uh, as someone who is trained as a school psychologist, I think there's also a need for, um, accrediting bodies. Cause I don't think the, I don't know that the federal government can hold these higher education programs to account, but, um, accrediting agencies for school psychologists for speech language pathologists who accredit these programs that are training future school, psychologists as speech, language pathologists, and these other folks who really make important decisions about kids, special education, eligibility, and other types of instruction intervention that
01;15;29;07 they get. I think these folks also need to be held accountable for creating training programs that better address the needs of DLLs, um, because they like Gene has pointed out. They are also going to encounter DLLs at every school at every level. So, yeah, exactly. Well, thank you.
01;15;44;21 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Thank you all for that.
01;15;47;22 [Eugene Garcia]: We don't need to wait for the federal government or the state government, uh, higher education institutions can do this. Uh, both Berkeley and Arizona State University, all early childhood educators, uh, we're required to essentially be prepared to serve dual language learners, early childhood educators. And it was either in Spanish or in Navajo given the two largest languages, uh, in, in there in the state. That was a decision at the college level at the faculty level, wait for the
01;16;16;22 state or the federal government to ask us to do that.
01;16;24;04 [Dina Castro]: Yes, that's fine. I just wanted to mention also that, uh, that, uh, in my department at the college of education at UNT, we, uh, we are now in the process of changing the certification, um, the teacher certification, so that we will only prepare early to sixth grade teachers with an ESL content. So, so we're not going to prepare, uh, general education teachers anymore. So every teacher in our program does
01;16;58;23 your preparation for one half on ESL component.
01;17;03;03 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: That's really good to hear. And for me, that brings up this idea of the going back to human capital and people make it happen. Uh, Allen sent sort of a similar question I also Had, but, um, is it the people, the reason, you know, Gene, you're in Arizona, Dina you're in, in Texas, you know, I don't know if in stayed some of the States that Shantel has pointed out in the report where they have more regulations around how to ensure equitable access to bilingual kids
01;17;36;01 and families. Um, is it the people, is it because the governor or the superintendent or the local principal all happened to be bilingual and understand this story? I'm going into a little bit of also like that change in the mindset, um, why is it happening in some places and not others?
01;17;58;11 [Dina Castro]: Well, that doesn't mean that it's easy. So even if you have that commitment at the local level, uh, or in the higher education, you know, uh, world is sending, you know, universities and community colleges. That doesn't mean that, you know, changing policies and creating more equitable education is easy. So you have to be creating this critical mass in the community and just as partnerships. Right? So I think
01;18;29;13 that's important giving voices to the families, it's going to have an effort that everybody who is directly in bold be advocating. So I think that that's, that's a lot of work that is sometimes beyond just the school.
01;18;52;19 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Yeah.
01;18;53;07 [Conor Williams]: So now just say some things that I hate to say, which is that where I've seen it, equity, uh, reforms related to DLLs and ELs go best are the places that have gone slowly. And I hate to say that because I'm an impatient man. I have no interest in waiting to deal with questions of equity. But for instance, it's very fashionable right now in, especially at the local level to announce large expansions of dual language immersion, even at the state level, in a few places that's easy-ish to do,
01;19;25;13 but it's hard to do that with a good equity foundation to make sure that there are seats reserved for English learning students for DLLs, the States that have gone slowly to make sure that when they push these kinds of things, they've really gotten all the buy in and they have everybody on board and they've built a firm foundation. Those are the places that have had the real success. If you just launch a bunch of new dual immersion programs, it doesn't take long before people with means take them over.
01;19;51;04 [Dina Castro]: Yeah, that's true. That is true.
01;19;55;26 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: So we've been talking a lot about data and research and policy, um, and Shantel shared a little bit about her story. I shared a little bit about mine and I would just ask you all as we're sort of coming a little bit to the end, but not quite, um, to share a Or an experience that you've had, um, in your work that keeps you up at night, good or bad, uh, that is related to all of this work that we all have done collectively together and we'll continue to do. Um, and anyone
01;20;25;29 can start,
01;20;31;06 [Conor Williams]: Uh, I'll just very briefly say that, uh, I'm haunted by there's a local public education advocate that I had a conversation with. Once personally, he didn't know who I was. I just happened to run into him socially, once he's a huge public education advocate. And he explained to me though that he had chosen a nonpublic school for his, his young children, because it was important for him to make sure that they grew up to be bilingual. And it was so critical. He knew because they had gone to a bilingual daycare, one that he had paid a lot for it. And he was just super important for him. And that's why it was okay that he was acting
01;21;04;28 that way that he had, he was spending, he literally, his career was one, uh, you know, advocacy for public ed and a lot of scorning people in private education and the like, but his actions were another.
01;21;17;04 [Conor Williams]: I don't know how to deal with that kind of hypocrisy as a insofar as that it's his personal behavior and his political actions are so different. I think that's what a lot of people in us cities and in U S States thinking about equity and language right now, do I think that's where we are now is that we haven't, we haven't really unearthed a lot of the selfishness and a lot of the biases that are driving, how people actually act. And so we, we, a lot of us say the right things. We don't actually do them.
01;21;44;29 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Yeah. Yeah. Good point.
01;21;50;07 [Eugene Garcia]: I'd like to, I'd like to put a plug in for communication with families of our dual language community. I grew up in a, uh, a migrant, uh, immigrant, not immigrant, but migrant farm worker family. And my parents didn't understood that education was important, but didn't understand how to implement that, uh, that belief into their 10 children. Uh, and so early childhood education is a bridge to our families, uh, in ways that, uh, enhance their understanding of development and
01;22;23;13 learning and broadly their participation in it as a partner. Uh, and so what, what really bothers me is that our early childhood educators are not taking advantage of the resources that exist and families and communities of dual language learners.
01;22;40;01 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Yeah. Thank you, Gene. Yeah,.
01;22;42;04 [Kelly Edyburn]: I think Dina,.
01;22;44;13 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Oh, go ahead, Kelly.
01;22;46;20 [Kelly Edyburn]: I was just going to share something that built on that. Um, I think something that sticks with me is the countless families that I've worked with, um, who in schools and in juvenile justice facilities and early childhood that have shared with me that they've been told by teachers or other school professionals, or even principals to not speak to their child in their primary language in the language that the family speaks at home. And, um, I think that every single time, that's it,
01;23;18;08 it's haunting to think about what that means and what that parent walks away from that exchange with, um, on a human level. And it also just keeps reinforcing this, um, this idea of this dominant English monolingual ideology that we have. That's so stubborn here in the U S um, but also how the lack of training for educators and school, psychologists and principals about language development actually, um, proliferates this harmful message,
01;23;46;21 um, and myths to parents.
01;23;48;24 [Kelly Edyburn]: Um, one that actually harms the process of language development itself that we know that speaking to your child in any language is so helpful and supportive and nurturing of development and needed for a kid to develop language skills. And then on top of that, how much it impacts a child's identity development and social, emotional development and their family relationships, um, and how I've seen the use of a parent and a family's language with the child and in therapy be so healing and so
01;24;18;27 affirming. And so I'm supportive of a child's development in a way that, um, it, it just shows me that it, um, like language itself can just unlock wellbeing. And I think that we need to be really critically conscious of that when we're in schools and what messages we're sending to parents about the languages they use and what languages we uplift and which ones we ignore or segregate, or, um, tell people not to speak because, uh, we understand the world through language. And so I think it's so critically important to be affirming in that way, um, especially because of how
01;24;51;24 prevalent that myth is.
01;24;54;27 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Absolutely. So making sure that we're talking with families. Dina?
01;25;00;19 [Dina Castro]: Yes. I think that's, uh, yes, it's, I will follow up. Um, Kelly had mentioned the social emotional development of children and how the support or lack of support to the two languages can create, uh, you know, I mean back a negative impact in their social, emotional development and their identity. I am, I just want to share, um, uh, something that happened recently here in Texas, I was at, at the grocery
01;25;31;05 store and then the cashier and I saw the, the, you know, the cashier had a label. It has, um, Mario was his name. And when I find someone that may be a Spanish speaker, I like to speak Spanish to that person. Of course, before I ask, do you speak Spanish in English? And he, he was being very smiley. And then turn, when I said, asked if he spoke Spanish, he turns to me in a very, I would say, decompose. He was not well. And he said, no, I
01;26;05;07 don't speak Spanish. And don't continue and say, well, maybe we are not doing well enough in Texas and not everyone has access to funding what they do. And he turns to me and say, I know Japanese, I don't want anything to do with Spanish. I don't need it.
01;26;25;27 [Dina Castro]: And, uh, to me, that coming was so painful that, you know, I can get a little emotional when I talk about it because I, I felt pain in that comment. And I would thinking immediately how much he, this child as a child, they seem to be more, this man has suffered in that, you know, because he is Latino because, and because he speaks Spanish. So this brings me the issue of racial discrimination that usually we do not talk
01;26;58;24 about racial discrimination called Latinos. And we, Latinos do not tied this fact that we are not being supported as bilingual individuals. And by cultural individuals, human beings are a hole for, we have to hide part of who we are when we are outside of your home. And I want to leave you with this thought. Are we going to continue using the Trump home language? Um, I
01;27;26;02 think that's a message that, um, that we're giving a message, definitely that language belongs to your home, not, not to the school, belongs to your home closed doors inside your home and not to your community. So we are part of this community. We all are contributing and why do we have to hide? Um, and I think that children are getting every time they go to school in time and when they make intentional decision not to speak
01;27;59;11 Spanish anymore. And I not only about bilingualism is a phenomenon in general, but certainly in languages. And so we need to be also being very open when we talk about it.
01;28;13;09 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you for sharing that. So we've only got about two minutes left, so I'm going to end with one final thing. It's a very specific question to all of you. It's been a really particularly challenging time for Latinos across this country over the last couple of years. On top of that, we've got all of the protests that are happening with racial injustices. We talked about systems right at the very heart of it. It's the systems that have been created in this country over the years. I myself have. Um, as I mentioned earlier, uh, Latinex child, teenager advocate in my house. And I just wonder for you
01;28;49;19 all, um, does all of this, all this next generation who are getting really loud and getting out there and being very, um, powerful and insistent on what needs to change. Um, does that give you hope And what kind of change would you like to see? And I would ask, well, to keep it to like 30 seconds, if you can, and even less, Gene, we'll start
01;29;17;26 with you,
01;29;19;10 [Eugene Garcia]: Dare I say, uh, it's very affirmative. Th there is more hope. Uh, my grandson was, uh, out there, uh, in the streets, uh, you know, a 16 year old, uh, even I didn't do that when I was 16 years old. So, uh, yes, there's definitely a different time and there's more hope,
01;29;38;13 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Absolutely Connor?
01;29;41;12 [Conor Williams]: Absolutely. I find the energy inspiring, uh, and, uh, it's been fun and sobering to try to describe it to my kids who weren't quite old enough for the streets yet. You know, I have a nine year old, who's very aware of these protests and very curious, and I'm so glad that it's also so painful. Yeah.
01;30;02;24 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Kelly?.
01;30;04;19 [Kelly Edyburn]: Yes. And so hopeful. And I'm so excited that people are waking up to the intersectionality of these issues and, and trying to actually address them with like a multipronged approach, which I'm glad that this report actually addresses as well. So, yeah.
01;30;17;21 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Awesome. Dina?
01;30;19;28 [Dina Castro]: Well, I'm very hopeful in what I would like to see happening in the foundation start hearing now is that this movement is, again, can eliminating the invisibility of Latinos. I want to see more Latinos also protesting. So that then that's, that's my, my thought, my hope.
01;30;42;24 [Yvette Sanchez Fuentes]: Awesome. So with that, I'm just going to say thank you to all of you for the conversation today. I'm going to turn it over back to Shantel, but with that as always in the words of Cesar Chavez. So thank you all. And thanks, Shantel.
01;31;00;25 [Shantel Meek]: Um, so just to wrap up, you know, last week we had a discussion on the inclusion of kids with disabilities. That's what the webinar was. Uh, we dug into that part of the report and we kind of ended in a bit of frustration on the fact that there, we also have the science there. We also have the law, but we haven't yet had the public will to make some real fundamental changes to promote inclusion. And we ended with this like profound frustration of how your freedom, your rights, all depend on public will. And here again, I think it boils down to public will. And with
01;31;33;11 historically marginalized groups, our rights always boiled down to political. But I think like we ended today, we're in an unprecedented moment in history where real systemic reform to dismantle systemic racism of which all of this is a part is on the table and let's not get it twisted, right? Like language is a tool of exclusion that is motivated by racism, racist people and racist policies alike use language to target even mentioned that kids were corporately punished for speaking Spanish at
01;32;02;27 school. My mom and her seven brothers
01;32;05;01 [Shantel Meek]: And sisters were some of those kids. So they had to police their language and they spoke only Spanish at home with my immigrant grandparents and only English at school. And if they slipped up, they knew what came. That's why it's prestigious for white children. And it's to really, you know, be bilingual and have all these kinds of enrichments on top. And it's really a top priority to remove it from our kids who bring bilingualism to build, you know, from their home. It's the reason why our laws, our education laws, our standards, our assessments, our instruction are all centered on English, right? It's a perpetuation of this white
01;32;37;28 supremacy. We pick language as the tool for exclusion, for these particular kids. And then we built entire systems of around it. And like Dina mentioned, right? Like this is not a new fight people on our panel. And countless others have been fighting this fight for a long time. In fact, before Brown V Board of Education, Mexican families spot segregation via Mexican schools. In fact, the first case in U S history to rule on desegregation was against the segregation of Mexican Americans in the Mendez V Westminster case. So this is not a new fight. The science is not
01;33;08;26 new either as we've heard. So let's really take this opportunity after the pandemic, after kind of everything that this country has been through to do better and to pivot toward equity and science, let's look at our budgets from Congress all the way down to the childcare program on the corner, and look at how we allocate our resources and invest in dual language immersion and use it as a strength to build on. Let's get higher ed together. As Gene talked about to actually prepare the workforce for the kids they're going
01;33;35;19 to work for.
01;33;36;23 [Shantel Meek]: Um, I'll repeat it one more time. One in three kids are DLLs and they live everywhere, not just in South Texas or New York city, let's get state licensing and private licensing systems like the CDA on board with this let's look at all of our systems. And if we're measuring, for example, classroom quality with the, with the class tool, let's make sure that it gives us information on how it's doing for dual language learners. Let's make sure our quality rating systems include DLLs at every level, right? It's not the pinnacle of quality to suddenly include one thing about a DLL, right? It should be at level one, it's a basic
01;34;10;14 fundamental right piece. Let's get our act together on standards, on monitoring and accountability. We list all of these things out in the report. DLI should no longer be one of many options. It should be the option. And we, if we want to succeed, as everyone's mentioned here, let's fund it, right? So thank you again to Yvette and to Linda and BPC and to our panel. I want to give an especially big shout out to Kelly for all of her work on the report and Conor and Gene as well, and to Dina for being a great thought partner. Um, this wraps up our four part series. Please go
01;34;39;26 read the report. You can find it on the link there, um, and have a great rest of your day. That's it.