This qualitative case study examines how one bilingual teacher draws on their critical consciousness to support immigrant students and their families. Drawing on the construct of conscientization, I argue praxis is the embodiment of critical consciousness through acts of responsiveness and actions educators enact to rewrite unjust spaces and…

This study employs an exploratory descriptive quantitative statistics design. District-level results in the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) are explored to describe the achievement gaps that exist in districts implementing Transitional Bilingual Education (TBE) programs and districts implementing Dual Language (DL)…

This qualitative case study explored the use of Readers Theater through the experiences of emergent bilingual students in a first-grade bilingual classroom. Readers Theater is a strategy that has produced great results in helping the development of literacy in reading fluency, motivation, and comprehension. The research regarding the use of…

Dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs are critical sites for exploring language ideologies given the policy goals of student bilingualism, biliteracy, and biculturalism. Drawing on a larger study of language ideological inquiry, this article used predominantly interview data to explore the articulated language ideological stances of…

The purpose of this study was to compare reading scores of students and school systems using the Trilingual process (public charter district) to students and school systems using the Dual Language, Bilingual, and ESL process (public school district). Participants were low socioeconomic status Grade 3 Hispanic/Latinx students. Focused in this…

This explanatory-sequential mix-methods study explored Northeast Texas rural educators' perceptions of language and emergent bilingual (EB) students, and educators' preparation and practices used in the classroom to meet this ever-growing and diverse multicultural group. Educators' ideologies and practices in the United States, especially in…

Texas Education Code requires school districts to provide bilingual education to English learners when enrollment reaches 20 or more students in the same grade level with the same first language (Texas Education Code, 2019a). Rural school districts in Texas are challenged to hire sufficient certified bilingual teachers to implement a consistent…

The purpose of this report is to provide information about the academic performance of emergent bilingual students in the Austin Independent School District (AISD). This document summarizes performance on the State of Texas Assessment of Academic Readiness (STAAR) tests, end-of-course (EOC) tests, the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment…

In the past 20 years, both school choice policies and dual language bilingual education (DLBE) programs have proliferated across the US. This project examines the intersection of the two trends, examining how school choice policies have shaped DLBE at the district, school, and program level, through the eyes of 22 public school administrators in…

The current study analyzes the relationship between elementary school reading achievement and participation in the following language acquisition programs--transitional bilingual, developmental, two-way bilingual immersion, and English immersion. With a focus on the achievement of Spanish-dominant English learners, the study uses multilevel models…

Bilingual education as a whole has been gentrifying, as more privileged students replace Transnational Language Learners (TLLs) in bilingual education spaces and policies (Valdez et al. in Educ Policy 30(6):849-883, 2016. https://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2102/10.1177/0895904814556750). We argue this is an extension of coloniality (Mignolo in Local histories/global…

This article shares findings from the implementation of an ongoing National Professional Development (NPD) project that advances second language literacy and biliteracy in secondary content areas. The project is part of a research-practice partnership between a large public university and two school districts in south Texas that engages in-service…

This report summarizes the academic performance of emergent bilingual students, also known as English learners, for the 2019-2020 school year, in the Austin Independent School District. Results are presented from the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS), advanced placement (AP) course enrollment and exam performance,…

Student learning objectives (SLOs) have become an increasingly popular tool for teacher evaluations as an alternative to Value-added Models (VAMs). However, the use of SLOs faces two major challenges. First, the target setting is mostly subjective and arbitrary. Second, there is little evidence on the reliability and validity of the tool. In this…

This study examined levels of English proficiency before and during the COVID-19 pandemic among English learner students in grades 3-12 in Texas. In 2020-2021, nearly 750,000 students in grades 3-12--approximately one in five Texas students--were English learner students. In accordance with Texas state law and the Every Student Succeeds Act,…