Staffing and Staff Preparation: Serving Multilingual Learners [Video]

The third key topic of the Dear Colleague Letter focuses on staffing and the preparation of staff. In brief, schools and state education agencies must “sufficiently staff and support the language assistance program” (U.S. Departments of Justice and Education, 2015, p. 8).

Guiding Questions

• What are the federal requirements for sufficiently staffing and supporting language assistance programming?
• What action steps should be taken to sufficiently staff and support language assistance programs?

What Schools Need to Know

It is important to ensure that:

• Educators who are working with MLs have the training and credentials needed for effectively teaching MLs.
• Educators are receiving sufficient professional development to obtain these skills.
• Evaluators (e.g., supervisors, administrators), instructional coaches, peers and others who conduct observations and support educators of MLs are familiar with the skills needed to provide highly effective instruction for MLs and have had sufficient training and experience doing so.

There are many pathways that schools and districts can use to …