VIDBE-Q Volume 68 Issue 1
to speak on this topic is the students I have interacted with as an educator for two
decades. Still, I must disclose that I have not trained in second language acquisition
or language instruction. During the session on February 24th, 2023, we will lay the
foundations to have a better understanding of multilingual learners and discuss
strategies to provide support for your students who speak a home language other
than English.
Heterogeneity is the word for this article, as it is for almost everything we do
in our profession. Based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of
households where English is not the primary or first language has at least tripled.
Based on the most recent U.S. statistics (2019), there are approximately 69 million
people (up from 23 million in 1980) who speak a language other than English in
their homes (Dietrich & Hernandez, 2022). That is nearly one in five adults. In
addition, only about one in eight educators speak a language other than English as
their first language, making the teacher population mostly monolingual (i.e.,
speaking one language) (Floden et al., 2020; Spiegelman, 2020).
The reality is that millions of students are not fluent in English, yet general
access instruction is—primarily— delivered in English, except where bilingual
education is offered and accepted (Li et al., 2010; Zacarian, 2011). Based on data
from the National Center for Educational Statistics, the 2019/20 school year served
10.4 % or 5,115,887 English language learners (ELL; 2021, 2022). Approximately
11-12% of ELL students were dually-identified learners (i.e., those who are ELLs
and have a diagnosed disability; Office of English Language Acquisition, 2021).
Under the IDEA (2004), ELLs are most often diagnosed with either specific
learning disability (44.69%) or speech and language impairments (18.96%; Office
of English Language Acquisition, 2021). However, we have the dilemma of
inadequate assessment systems that result in the overrepresentation of multilingual
