Abstract
Dual language instructional models have great potential to create inclusive learning environments for traditional under-served students and boost student outcomes. However, principals face many barriers to implementation. One of the key challenges is aligning resources to ensure that the school has (a) an appropriate number of certificated teachers, (b) effective professional development for teachers, (c) staffing to work with the local community to garner buy-in from parents, and (d) adequate curricular materials in two languages. This case study demonstrates that successful implementation of dual language may require substantial reallocation of resources, without necessarily creating additional expenditures in the budget.
Background
Oñate Independent School District (OISD) is an urban district in a midsized city emerging from a tumultuous and widely publicized history of segregation and neglect of emergent bilingual students and students of color. 1 Recent media stories uncovered substantially low graduation rates and test scores for Latina/o and economically disadvantaged students, compared with their White middle class peers. The district enrollment of around 60,000 is 85% Latina/o, 5% African American, 7% White, and 3% Other race/ethnicities; 92% of the district’s students qualify for free or reduced price meals, and a quarter of students are emergent bilinguals (for whom Spanish is the majority heritage language). These data are displayed in Table 1. Like many across the country, the district’s state funding was substantially reduced just 3 years ago, following the ripple effects of the Great Recession.
Student Enrollment and Demographics for Oñate Independent School District.
Note. FRL = free or reduced price meals.
The district hired a new superintendent for the 2013-2014 school year and tasked her with dramatically improving educational opportunities for the district’s under-served students. Superintendent Ramirez was expected to accomplish this goal on a limited budget with little access to supplementary funds. Given the demographics of the district, a primary focus of reform would be the district’s 16,000 emergent bilinguals. Historically, the district relied on English immersion programs for emergent bilingual students. Many refer to these programs as a “sink-or-swim” model because all are placed in the general education classroom and those for whom English is not their first language are expected to learn English as they learn other material (Valenzuela, 2010). As part of the requirements of the Lau vs. Nichols decision of 1974, the district provided the required supplementary services through pull-out instruction. Over time, schools developed English as a Second Language (ESL) programs in which students were removed from their classes for 1 to 2 hr per day for special instruction from ESL teachers. Because students were pulled from various classrooms, the curriculum in the ESL classroom was disconnected from students’ regular education curricula. As a result, emergent bilinguals’ education was fragmented, and students were segregated from their native English-speaking peers.
One of Dr. Ramirez’s first actions was to assemble a task force to identify potential strategies for promoting inclusion of emergent bilingual students into the general curriculum. The task force provided a number of recommendations including increasing the proportion of new teacher hires who are fluent in English and Spanish, targeting intensive interventions to struggling students, supporting the creation of inquiry-based professional learning communities for teachers, and increasing the number of home visits. However, their primary recommendation was to expand the district’s dual language instructional model. The task force argued that the dual language program would provide emergent bilingual students with greater access to the general curriculum and allow these students to spend more time with their regular classroom teacher.
At that time, the district sponsored a dual language program in just eight schools, which were located in the city’s more affluent neighborhoods and served a greater proportion of White middle and upper class students compared to the district average. Dual language programs were funded primarily through state and federal Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) resources. Parent organizations and limited district funding paid for some of the minor expenses. For most parents and school leaders, dual language was viewed as a special “add-on program” designed for the highest achieving students who wanted to learn a second language. The existing dual language programs were either “one-way” models, in which the majority of students were native English speakers learning to speak Spanish, or “two-way” models, in which classrooms served students whose heritage language was either English or Spanish. Very few of the existing models were one-way models serving emergent bilingual students with Spanish as their heritage language. Because the dual language programs had been in place for a substantial amount of time, staffing a sufficient numbers of certified teachers in each school was rarely a problem. Principals in these eight schools had been careful to hire teachers with the proper credentials to teach in a dual language setting. Over time, the dual language schools had developed a teaching core in which almost all teachers held certifications in a primary area (e.g., elementary teaching or a secondary subject) as well as a state approved biliteracy credential.
As a result of statewide funding cuts, the districtwide implementation of the dual language programs was supported with very little additional funding. However, the superintendent and her staff were strongly committed to implementing this reform and willing to reallocate district resources to support implementation. Administrators faced many hurdles, both at the district and school level. Principals needed training in managing dual language programs, a substantial number of teachers would need to become certified in or biliteracy (and not just ESL), and new curricular materials would need to be purchased. To teach in the dual language program, teachers needed a special biliteracy credential that differed from the ESL credential. The district resolved to roll out the dual language programs, beginning at the preK-1 grade levels, and expand the program to the next grade level in each subsequent school year. The first year of roll out was scheduled for the 2014-2015 school year.
Golondrina Elementary School is one of the lower performing schools in OISD. The school serves students in Grades preK-5. About half of the 568 students are emergent bilinguals, whose heritage language is Spanish. Most of these students immigrated from Mexico and Central and South America or were born in the United States to first-generation immigrant parents. The other half of students are second- or third-generation students who are bilingual or speak only English. For most students, Spanish is the primary language spoken in the home and approximately 98% come from low-income families. Shifting demographics and a changing economy left the local neighborhood with few jobs and as a result, a growing number of the local residents received public support through federal programs. The recent recession exacerbated these trends, eliminating more of the available jobs and causing more businesses to leave the neighborhood. A nearby shelter houses 15 to 20 Golondrina students who joined the foster care system in their early childhood. Although the district does not officially sponsor a GATE program, the previous principal established a small pull-out program for high achieving students. Approximately a quarter of students have Individualized Education Plans (IEPs). Although a few veteran teachers have devoted the bulk of their careers to Golondrina, the school has had a relatively constant turnover of teachers and principals and often struggles to staff specialist positions such as teachers certified in ESL, special education, or GATE.
The principal of Golondrina Elementary School, Dr. Hernandez, is a recent strategic hire that that Dr. Ramirez recruited from her prior district. Although Dr. Hernandez has only 2 years of experience as a principal, she has substantial experience as a lead teacher, an assistant principal, and a principal in her previous district. During that time, she developed a reputation for pushing the limits of district and state laws to ensure that students in her school received the best possible services. She received her EdD from a nearby state university in 2011 and knew many of the faculty in the College of Education. She is one of many principals around the district expected to implement dual language in her school on a limited budget. The dual language program in her school will be a 50-50 model, meaning that students will receive half their instruction in English and the other half in Spanish. Her task is particularly challenging given the local context at Golondrina, where students have little access to experienced teachers and other school resources and parents have limited educational attainment and many work second jobs to make ends meet.
Case Narrative
When she started her position at Golondrina in mid-July 2014, Dr. Hernandez examined budget, enrollment, and achievement data available through the district’s online data system. These data are shown in Tables 2 to 4. Although the enrollment and staffing levels were not quite finalized, she had a pretty good idea of what to expect for the 2014-2015 school year. Panel A of Table 2 shows the expected breakdown of enrollment in each grade level and the staffing allocation based on the previous year. Dr. Hernandez would have three to four sections in each grade level and a total of 31 teachers and two instructional coaches. Only 18 of her teachers were regular classroom teachers; six were certified in ESL and provided targeted pull-out services for emergent bilingual students, four teachers had special education credentials and worked with small groups of students, and the remaining teachers worked in the GATE program. The school also had one art and one music teacher. The school had four paraprofessionals who worked primarily with ESL and special education teachers. In meetings with the superintendent, Dr. Hernandez co-created two goals that she hoped to accomplish with the first 2 years of her tenure. She would reduce by half the achievement gap on the statewide exams in her school between native English speakers and emergent bilinguals, which based on Table 4 would represent 15 vertically scaled scores points. She would transform her campus to an inclusive school for all students including emergent bilinguals, students in special education, and high and low achievers. Dr. Hernandez decided she would measure progress toward her second goal by tracking the number of students who spend more than 20% of the school day outside the regular classroom. At that time, most targeted interventions for students were designed as pull-out programs, and the school kept fairly detailed data on individual student scheduling.
Number of Students and Teachers in Each Grade Level, Before and After Staffing Reallocation.
Note. During the summer between 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 school year, Dr. Hernandez reassigned one GATE and two ESL teachers to serve as regular classroom teachers in the dual language program. Because all three held general elementary and biliteracy credentials, she assigned one teacher each to kindergarten, Grade 1, and Grade 2, thereby lowering class sizes in these grades and increasing the number of biliteracy certified teachers. She placed the GATE teacher (a native English speaker) in first grade to facilitate the two-way, two-teacher bilingual education model. GATE = Gifted and Talented Education; ESL = English as a Second Language.
Abbreviated School Budget.
Note. Salary figures exclude fringe benefits. The total school budget of US$3.7 million implies per-pupil funding of US$6,481, although the San Miguel Independent School District received approximately US$9,000 in funding per student School psych./Soc. worker refers to school psychologists and scial workers.
Achievement Data by Grade Level and Student Subgroups.
Note. Scale scores are “vertically scaled” meaning that scores can be compared across grade levels. % Adv. and % Prof. refer to the proportion of students who scored advanced or proficient, respectively, on state tests.
Reallocating Instructional Resources for Dual Language Education
Dr. Hernandez faced another major challenge for the upcoming school year: She was expected to implement a dual language program in three of her seven grade levels (pre-kindergarten, kindergarten, and first), but was unsure exactly how such a program worked. She had attended the districtwide workshop for principals that provided information on dual language implementation. She understood the benefits of dual language that teachers in the program must be appropriately certified, and she was given a few websites from which to download curricular materials in English and Spanish. Dr. Hernandez learned as much as she could about implementing dual language programs. She spoke with principal colleagues who had prior experience with dual language, held a special meeting with her superintendent of instruction, and consulted the available research literature. She learned that students in two-way models of dual language experience greater benefits compared with those in one-way models. She had also read that while students of dual language education report feeling that their cultural and linguistic histories are validated, short-term gains in test scores are rare, and most gains for emergent bilinguals take place after several years of being in the program. Given the student demographics at her school, she knew a two-way model was feasible, and with some creative scheduling, the diversity in her teaching staff would allow her to set up a two-teacher model in which students receive Spanish instruction from a native Spanish speaker and English instruction from a native English speaker. What she lacked was information on the specifics: How do you get the teachers certified quickly? Where do you find funding for textbooks and other curricular resources? How do you pay for necessary professional development for teachers? Will she need additional family liaisons for dual language, or extra teachers to maintain small class sizes in the dual language grades?
One of the biggest challenges facing Dr. Hernandez was to ensure that all teachers in preK-1 were certified to teach dual language and that in each subsequent year going forward, she could add to the number of teachers appropriately certified. She accomplished this goal by incorporating certification into her larger professional development plan. First, she used her connections with faculty at the local university to convince faculty members to deliver bilingual education courses on her campus that would lead to certification. She provided modest stipends for faculty members by piecing together small pots of money from district professional development funding, her principals’ discretionary account, and federal money for school improvement. Second, she directed her instructional coaches to lead workshops for teachers for which outside consultants were hired in previous years. She rearranged her master schedule so that teacher-grade teams could have collaborative time together to form inquiry-based professional learning communities. Finally, she got special permission from the district to allow teachers who were working on biliteracy certification to teach in the bilingual program. The district responded that their directives come from the state, but that they could allow for 25% of teachers in the dual language program to be uncertified, provided they were working toward receiving their certification. This meant that Dr. Hernandez needed an additional strategy for increasing the number of certified teachers. And time was running out—she had made substantial progress in July and the first week of August, but she now had just 4 weeks before teachers returned for preservice preparation and about 5 weeks before the start of school.
Obtaining and Using Fiscal Flexibility
Some of Principal Hernandez’s best learning experiences in graduate school took place through conversations with her colleagues. She drew on her collegial relationships with fellow principals in her district, whom she had met through graduate work and district meetings, to arrange for three group meetings over the next 3 weeks. Some of her colleagues had prior experience implementing dual language and were able to provide her with creative strategies for identifying adequate resources to implement dual language. This prompted Dr. Hernandez to take a second look at her budget (shown in Table 3). While she initially assumed much of her budget was fixed—allocated to specific purposes without much room for local flexibility—she realized that several resources could be reallocated with special permission. She negotiated more flexibility in her budget by gaining permission from the district to reallocate some of her GATE funding and special permission from the state ESL coordinator to reallocate special ESL funding. Finally, she applied for a Title I waiver from the federal department of Education so that she could reallocate Title I funding for more efficient uses.
With the extra flexibility in the budget, she redesigned GATE to be primarily an afterschool program. Although some parents had grown fond of the school’s GATE program (in part because it was a distinct program in Golondrina, approved and regulated by the district, but not part of an established districtwide policy), they liked the idea of having academic activities available for their children after school. With the money she saved by assigning instructional coaches to fill the role of external consultant, she was able to provide stipends for GATE and ESL teachers to provide afterschool services. Dr. Hernandez then reassigned the one GATE and two ESL teachers to serve as regular classroom teachers in the dual language program. Because both were appropriately certified to teach in the dual language program in any elementary grade level, she assigned one teacher each to kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 2, thereby lowering class sizes in these grades from about 24 down to 19 to 18 and increasing the number of biliteracy certified teachers. She placed the GATE teacher (a native English speaker) in first grade to facilitate the two-way, two-teacher model. Dr. Hernandez was able to increase the number of teachers certified to teach dual language and lowered class sizes, while maintaining the GATE program and the targeted interventions for struggling students that the ESL teacher provided the previous year. She avoided any stigma attached to the afterschool programs by asking the ESL and GATE teachers to collaborate on afterschool projects and allow for some bleeding over between the GATE and intervention services. Parents of students in both programs were pleased with this solution because their students would spend more of their school day with their regular classroom teacher and were provided additional learning opportunities after school.
Generating Support From Parents by Targeting Resources
Dr. Hernandez’s principal collaboration meetings also highlighted some challenges she had not considered: How would emergent bilingual students with IEPs fare in a dual language setting? What would she do if parents of emergent bilinguals preferred their children receive English-only instruction? In mid- to late-August, 3 weeks before the start of school, she began speaking with a few of the parents enrolling their child in kindergarten. She quickly learned that many parents were not convinced that dual language was right for their children. Parents worried that their children would not do well on state exams, which are all given in English. Given the amount of Spanish their children were exposed to at home, at church, and in other nonschool activities, parents felt it was important that their children have as much exposure to English as possible. Having met with other parents during IEP meetings, she suspected that these incoming parents were not alone and that she may receive push back from parents of students in Grades 1 and 2. The district policy was that students whose parents choose to opt out of the dual language program must be provided instruction in English, in keeping with their parents wishes.
Prior to the start of the school year, Dr. Hernandez held several more formal meetings with parents to explain the benefits of dual language—that students should master academic literacy in their heritage language before they can do so in a second language. Students also have the opportunity to develop and maintain their heritage language as they progress through school. The flexibility she had gained in her school budget allowed her to reassign several paraprofessionals to work as family liaisons. With the added support of family liaisons, who also attended the parent meetings, Dr. Hernandez was able to gain the trust of the vast majority of parents that dual language was right for their children. Unfortunately, two to three parents in each grade level still wanted their child to receive English-only instruction.
Dr. Hernandez was faced with a serious dilemma: She was expected to create a separate multiage English-only program for these students by pulling a teacher out of the general curriculum, but removing this teacher would raise class sizes in all other grades by as much as five students per class. Moreover, she was unsure how a separate English-only curriculum would fit into her recently redesigned master schedule. Although she had already reassigned her paraprofessionals either to the general curriculum or to work as family liaisons, she decided to have one of her Spanish-speaking paraprofessionals work specifically with these students during the days or times when their instruction would be in Spanish. The paraprofessionals were responsible for the exact same material as was being taught in each of these classes. Dr. Hernandez saw this solution as the lesser of two evils—she knew this approach was in keeping with district policy and, for the most part, in line with parent requests. She hoped that over the course of the school year, or in the coming years, these students’ parents would be convinced to have their children join the dual language program.
Moving Forward With Dual Language Education
At the close of her first year implementing dual language, Dr. Hernandez still faced many questions as the initial results from state tests did not show significant growth over the prior year for her third, fourth, and fifth graders. Was her school’s professional development program providing teachers with the types of coherent learning opportunities that facilitate instructional improvement? How could she measure the impact of teacher professional development at her school systematically? Will parent support for dual language sustain into the upcoming years, even if student outcomes do not improve in the short term? How will she obtain the appropriate textbooks for dual language as the program expands in the coming years? Given her background research on dual language education, she worried that next years’ test results may not improve, given the recent curricular reform to dual language. Therefore, during the 2015 summer, Dr. Hernandez petitioned the state to allow her to administer all additional norms-referenced reading and literacy exams in Spanish for students who were still learning the language. Although she was confident her emergent bilinguals would ultimately perform highly on English-versions of standardized exams, she felt that moving content testing to Spanish for select students would provide a short-term solution and was more educational appropriate for these students as well.
Teaching Notes
This case study highlights the challenges school leaders face in implementing underfunded school reforms. In contrast to some research on implementation of other top-down reforms, the principal in this case study largely supported the district-level reform and was committed to ensuring that her school implemented a dual language program. The principal was confronted with a number of challenges in which there was no clear answer. Dr. Hernandez engaged in three creative resource allocation strategies: (a) She lowered the cost of getting teachers certified in bilingual education by bringing certification courses to her campus; (b) she gained greater fiscal flexibility by seeking special permission for district, state, and federal officials; and (c) she used the budgetary flexibility to reassign specialty teachers to the classroom and teaching assistants/paraprofessionals to serve as family liaisons, the positions that her school did not previously have. This case could be used in a school finance class for principals, an educational policy course, or a general course for principal preparation.
The substantial body of research on the impact of resources on student outcomes has led to surprisingly little concrete conclusions for the preparation of school leaders. The general arguments among scholars center on whether schools are adequately funded, and what might be the impact of providing additional resources (for reviews of this research, see Baker, 2012; Grubb, 2009; Hanushek, 1997). Although there is much disagreement in the field, most researchers agree that when resources are targeted effectively, they not only improve educational opportunities for students, but they also increase outcomes in measureable ways (Jackson, Johnson, & Persico, 2014). Although many of the important decisions happen at the state and district level, this case study demonstrates the importance of school leadership—that resource allocation decisions at the school level can have direct impact on students’ educational experiences.
So what did Dr. Hernandez do to increase efficiency of the educational dollar in her school? First, she was able to strategically lower class sizes in Grades K-3. Although some past studies of class size reduction find very small to no effects in the upper grades (Hoxby, 2000; although there are exceptions, see Angrist & Lavy, 1999 or Dee & West, 2011), the best available research on class size reduction shows that reductions in Grades K-3, have both short- and long-term effects on students, especially low-income students of color (Krueger, 1999; Nye, Hedges, & Konstantopoulos, 2004). She also limited a difficult situation of having only a handful of students receive English-only education through a special pull-out program. Instead, she assigned paraprofessionals to support these students in the regular classroom during the portion of the day in which they would otherwise receive their instruction in Spanish. This approach prevented increases in all other class sizes. In addition, researchers argue that too many separate pull-out programs can lead to a disjointed curriculum and disrupt the coherence of a students’ learning (Theoharis & O’Toole, 2011). However, her solution was not without controversy as it is only partially in keeping with the parents’ wishes. Although the principal had developed a long-term strategy for engaging parents—through parent liaisons and ongoing meetings—it remains unclear how parent support for the dual language program may change in the years ahead.
The second major change Principal Hernandez made was to improve professional development for her teachers without adding any additional expenditure to the budget. Research on professional development suggests that the most effective learning experiences for teachers are job-embedded, coherent with what is happening in the classroom, based on teacher-led inquiry requiring active and collaborative participation, and create opportunities for extended learning over time (Darling-Hammond, Wei, Andree, Richardson, & Orphanos, 2009; Desimone, Porter, Garet, Yoon, & Birman, 2002; Yoon, Duncan, Lee, Scarloss, & Shapley, 2007). Cost analyses show that substantial resources are allocated to professional development; however, these funds are not always targeted to their most cost-effective uses (Hill, 2015; Knight, 2010; Miles, Odden, Fermanich, & Archibald, 2004; The New Teacher Project, 2015). Reallocating resources to provide better professional development is an essential aspect of dual language implementation (DeMatthews & Izquierdo, 2016).
A final strategy Dr. Hernandez used was to reassign several of her teachers to different grade levels to ensure a two-teacher model of dual language could be implemented. Research on grade reassignments is mixed, with some showing that stable grade assignment can lower disruptive teacher turnover and increase teacher effectiveness (Blazar, 2015; Ost & Schiman, 2015) and other work identifying substantial benefits associated with reallocating teachers to better align schoolwide instructional goals and draw out the strengths of individual teachers through better matching (Darling-Hammond, Amrein-Beardsley, Haertel, & Rothstein, 2012; Miles & Darling-Hammond, 1998). Dr. Hernandez’s need to implement a dual language program largely required reallocating teachers across grades; however, by making reassignment decisions purposefully, she was able to maximize the benefits while limiting potential costs.
Suggestions for Teaching With Case Study
This case study provides a useful example of a principal who is asked to “do more with less,” while trying to implement a culturally and linguistically inclusive school reform. The instructor may use the case to facilitate discussion that brings together dual language education and cost-effective resource allocation. By working through this case, readers struggle with two related challenges facing many school leaders today: implementing new instructional models for emergent bilinguals, especial dual language programs, and finding creative ways to allocate instructional resources. Succeeding at these tasks requires understanding of theoretical underpinnings, empirical research findings, and knowledge of the inner workings of schools.
First, the instructor can use the case to explore the theory and practice of dual language implementation. Inclusive instructional models for emergent bilinguals view language as an asset, rather than a deficiency (Theoharis & O’Toole, 2011). When possible, school leaders implementing dual language can draw on the benefits of multiple languages by designing two-way dual language programs that promote peer teaching and learning between students. If the student population is more homogeneous and the majority of students share a heritage language other than English, principals can use creative teacher assignment strategies to design two-teacher models so that students receive instruction from teachers who share a native language, while receiving instruction in English from native English speakers. Instructors can thus use this case as a tool to help learners see how language acquisition theory and asset-based approaches to language can be applied in real-life settings.
Instructors can also use this case to focus specifically on resource allocation strategies. The case highlights how economic theories of efficiency—that resources should be allocated to their most productive uses—can play out for school leaders. The principal wrestles with the real-life challenges of reassigning teachers and redesigning professional development. These issues are faced within a political atmosphere subject to district and state policies and the desires of local parents. This case could be presented as companion reading to Miles and Darling-Hammond (1998), in which the authors present a framework for instructional resource allocation in high schools. In the following section, we provide some potential discussion questions for this case study.
Dual Language Questions
In what ways does dual language education value students’ cultural and linguistic background? What are the potential disadvantages of implementing a dual language curriculum?
What strategies can principals implementing a dual language curriculum use to gain buy-in from parents?
Dr. Hernandez’s implementation of dual language removed some pull-out ESL interventions for struggling students. As a principal, how might you justify these actions to teachers and parents? What are the pros and cons of pull-out intervention models (e.g., Theoharis & O’Toole, 2011)? What strategies can you use to replace pull-out ESL interventions with other targeted interventions?
What are the unique needs of professional development for teacher in a dual language education program? How are these similar or different from the needs of other teachers?
One of the most senior teachers at Golondrina strongly resisted implementation of dual language and shared her concerns with some of the incoming parents. As a principal, how would you handle this situation, knowing that this teacher has political capital in the school?
Resource Allocation Questions
Principal Hernandez acquired special permission to obtain fiscal flexibility in her budget. How can principals go about obtaining this flexibility in their schools? What are the typical impediments to reallocating resources?
To what extent are theories of economic efficiency applicable to school settings (e.g., Levin et al., 2012)? What are the pros and cons of trying to apply these theories to schools?
What are some examples of waste in your school and how can those resources be reallocated to more effective purposes?
In seeking to identify strategies for raising student achievement, what are some alternatives to lowering class sizes? To what extent does class size reduction serve as a tradeoff for other instructional strategies that may improve outcomes at your school or district?
What do you see as the pros and cons of changing teacher assignments between school years (across grades or subject areas)?
What are some strategies principals can use to create shared planning time among teachers to allow for professional learning communities?
Looking back over Tables 2 and 3, what other changes could Dr. Hernandez make to improve her instructional resource allocation?
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.