Texas Must Expand Excellent Education for Emergent Bilingual Students – IDRA 2025 Policy Digest for Texas
All students must be able to learn in a language they understand.
Emergent bilingual students have the right to excellent schools that support bilingualism and biliteracy in both a student’s home language and English.
Emergent bilingual students make up over 23% of students in Texas. These are students who speak a language other than English and are learning coursework in their home language while they also learn English.
To serve them, programs must be well-funded, have high-quality trained and certified teachers, use appropriate quality instructional materials, and accurately track students’ progress and achievement in both languages. But limited access to dual language programs and a longstanding shortage of certified bilingual education teachers present challenges for students to access excellent educational opportunities from early grades through high school.
IDRA Policy Recommendations for 2025
The legislature can make sure emergent bilingual students have equitable and excellent education. IDRA urges the legislature to…
- Authorize agency support to assist districts with bilingual program monitoring, technical assistance and educator training for effectively teaching emergent bilingual students, as outlined by HB 2164 (88R).
- Expand and improve dual language pathways for high school students to graduate with achievement in bilingualism and biliteracy, also called the Seal of Biliteracy.
- Increase the number of quality certified bilingual education teachers through preparation program support, strengthened teacher retention strategies and higher teacher pay.
- Ensure students and families who speak languages other than English have access to quality public education without barriers regardless of citizenship.
Resources
Tools
Issue Brief: High Quality Bilingual Education Programs Need More Support to Realize State Goals, IDRA Issue Brief by Chloe Latham Sikes, Ph.D., May 23, 2022
Report: Creating a More Bilingual Texas, report by IDRA and Every Texan, March 2021
Issue Brief: Dual Language Funding
Bilingual Allotment Data Dashboard: IDRA created this data dashboard to show scenarios of how increasing the bilingual education allotment will impact schools within each Texas House or Senate district.
Dashboard: English Learner Funding Data Dashboard
Video gallery: IDRA Education Advocacy and Testimony
Webinar: Highlights for Creating a More Bilingual Texas
Communicating Effectively
Infographic: Celebrating Emergent Bilingual Students
Web page: Emergent Bilingual Terminology
Op-ed: Not aiding DACA students merciless
For historical resources sampled from IDRA’s over five decades of work for emergent bilingual students, visit our Emergent Bilingual Student Education webpage.
