Education Equity: How Nashville Schools Support English Learners
By Karis Cooper, INtern
Providing equitable education to all students, including immigrants and children of immigrants, is a critical task of our public school system. Although all students in the United States have the right to public education regardless of immigration status, immigrant children can face unique challenges in our school systems. This month, summer intern Karis Cooper interviewed Molly Hegwood, Executive Director of English Learners in Nashville Metropolitan Schools to learn more about the local English Language Learners (ELL or EL) community in Nashville. Molly’s responses have been edited for clarity and length.
Access to education is a right for all students in the United States. The June 1982 Plyler v. Doe Supreme Court Case affirmed the right to education for every child regardless of immigration status. The U.S. Department of Justice and the U.S. Department of Education have declared that districts are required to have measures in place to both identify ELL students and implement a program to educate those students. The federal Every Student Succeeds Act mandates that schools recognize students who qualify as English Language Learners (ELL), accommodate them, and track their progress.
Karis: How do you and other ELL instructors work together with teachers in classrooms in order to best support students, and keep them on track with the work that other students in the classroom are learning?
Molly: EL teachers have two full jobs — provide direct language services to students every day, and support other teachers in the building so that they know how to provide accommodation to those students. The teachers have the job of caring for that student and supporting them as much as possible. There are internal structures in place — teachers co-plan with other teachers, and we have individual learning plans required in the state of Tennessee. Additionally, there are 17 EL coaches across the district, so that if a teacher needs to go deeper they gain support from EL coaches.
Karis: Students learning English as a second language often face unique needs in the classroom. How does your work address struggles outside of the classroom (such as navigating a potentially new school system, financial stress, or lack of resources)?
Molly: That's a challenging piece, because we try to really do our best to meet the needs of a student and family and connect them with resources. We build the capacity of our school counselors and social workers in knowing how to support those families, and also see what community organizations have resources. We have quarterly meetings with immigrant partners, to assess or map and see what everyone has to offer. That way when things come up, we can connect and refer out to organizations that have support for them. The school district will never be able to meet all needs (financial, housing), but we assess, do all we can, and refer out to community organizations.
Karis: What are some organizations you partner with?
Molly: We partner with lots of organizations, including NICE, Conexión Américas, faith-based organizations. We also have a handbook that shows everything that is available.
ELL students make up one of the fastest growing populations in American public schools. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, students who are learning English as a second language make up 10.3 percent of all students, which amounts to 5 million students nationwide. This percentage has been rapidly increasing in the past ten years.
Nationwide, many districts struggle to adequately support ELL students. Currently, there is a greater need for ELL teachers than resources available: teachers certified to teach English as a second language decreased 10.4% from 2018-2020, while the population of ELL students increased by 2.6%.
Karis: How would you describe the current state of English Language Learner education in Nashville? What are some struggles that you are seeing?
Molly: I think that we are in a really great place. We are fortunate because our district prioritizes English learners. We just finished a plan to make sure that everyone knows their role in supporting English learners and that everyone knows how to access translation — otherwise, every time that there is a question they are leaning on our office. We are in a great place with that because our district has prioritized our population of English learners. Our struggles are like other districts — we are a large urban area which grows really quickly. We have a strong way of making sure that we have enough teachers to support those students. Currently, we are trying to hire more teachers, which is challenging to find across the nation. We address this in creative ways: for example, we partner with a local university to endorse current staff members. We are focusing on making sure that we have equipped current teachers with all of the tools they need, and that we are continuing to recruit and retain and support our current ELs.
The issue of education is especially relevant post-Covid, where education was impacted across the country. Nationwide, test scores in math and reading decreased by 15% and 10% of a standard deviation from 2018 to 2022. The Covid-19 pandemic unequally impacted disadvantaged students, such as students of color, students of lower socioeconomic status, and immigrant students.
Inequitable education has lasting impacts, and must be addressed. According to the Migration Policy Institute, 9% of children ages 14-17 who newly immigrated to the United States were not enrolled in or have not graduated from high school. According to the Department of Education, the high school graduation rates for students learning English as a second language were far lower than non-English learners.
Karis: In your opinion, what should be done at the policy level to more effectively support English Language Learner students?
Molly: In general, college access overall is challenging. A student's inability to access college creates challenging environments at high school level, because then students are wondering why to finish out high school if they can't afford college. We need to continue pushing for immigrant students to access financial aid, and things like pay in-state tuition at state universities. For example, even if an immigrant student got a certification to study education, they might not be able to get a teaching license.
According to the Migration Policy Institute, 13.5% of Tennessee children lived with one or more immigrant parents as of 2022. Immigrants make up 12% of Tennessee parents to children aged 0 to 4 and 11% of parents to children ages 5 to 10. Although many immigrant students are ELLs, not all ELL students are immigrants. In Nashville Metropolitan Schools, almost ⅓ of students speak a language other than English at home, although not all are English learners.
Karis: I read a statistic that more than 120 languages are spoken in Nashville Metropolitan Schools. In your work, how do you prepare for and help students who speak languages less commonly spoken in Nashville?
Molly: I actually was just pulling this up, because I think it is 135 languages now. I think one thing is that basically, we make sure that our teachers know how to assess the student’s language background and that we're not making any assumptions. So during the initial interview process, we learn about where students are coming from and their language background. We have 67 parent outreach coordinators on our staff that speak about 20 languages (within our top languages), and then we contract out other languages. That way, anyone in the school (bus drivers, teachers, etc) can call the contracted service and be able to speak with someone who speaks one of those languages. So we have full access to every language through a contracting service. If we know in advance, we can even get in person help from that contracting service.
The second thing would be that in the classroom, we have 750 EL teachers in our district (every English learner has an English language teacher that they meet with an hour every day), and about 21,000 active English learners. Overall, English learners make up about 25% of our school district. One thing that is really important is that we have to make sure that no matter what classroom or school the student is going into (MNPS has over 160 schools), they have the tools and languages to meet that student’s needs. We don’t bus students around — every student goes to their own school and we make sure that they have resources to meet their needs there.
Nashville Metropolitan Schools have many strategies in place to support diverse language needs. Education is a universal human right, and is transformational in providing opportunity, community, and pathways to break cycles of poverty. It is critical to determine how to effectively support and educate immigrant students in our schools in order to provide equitable education for all students.
Karis: Do you have any words to the community on the importance of equitable education for all students and an English Language Learners program?
Molly: We are just really fortunate that we have the support that is available for our students and families in that we are continuing to grow and learn and make sure Nashville is the best place and will continue to support the students and the families.
We would welcome anyone in the community that would like to partner with us in any way that they would like to. We want people in our communities to visit, see, and know the support available to our communities and highlight the amazing things that students in MNPS have available to them.