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Through my research and readings it is beyond clear to me that online learning is inherently unequal and that it disproportionately affects ELLs. There is an overwhelming amount of research that points to this but sadly not enough resources to help teachers better support their ELLs online.

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Lack of teachers for online learning= no supports for ELL's

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Lack of teachers for online learning= no supports for ELL's

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Canada's largest school board is once again delaying the start of some of its virtual elementary classes as it tries to keep up with growing demand for online learning.

The Toronto District School Board says 60,000 elementary school students have now signed up for online classes amid rising COVID-19 case numbers, and it originally intended them all to begin their studies on Tuesday.

But the board now says it hasn't been able to assign staff to all classes, meaning some students will have to wait to begin school until they have a teacher in place.

In an interview with CBC Radio's Metro Morning on Tuesday, TDSB spokesperson Ryan Bird said that the board is still trying to hire about 200 more teachers to accommodate the number of elementary students registered for online learning.

That figure was high as 500 yesterday, he said.

Parents and students will have to log on to the board's online learning portal on Tuesday morning to find out if their lessons can get underway on schedule, something some parents are already having challenges with.

Hey <a href="https://twitter.com/tdsb?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@tdsb</a> - the Brightspace chat support told me to start a chat support ticket with the Virtual Learning support through TDSB as I cannot log in with the info provided. I am getting this message... at 8:11am. Help? <a href="https://t.co/b7UTkWT9Vg">pic.twitter.com/b7UTkWT9Vg</a>
&mdash; @alvigeant

Bird said that the board expects between 20,000 and 30,000 students to begin lessons with a teacher today. The remainder will need to do independent lessons until a teacher is assigned to their class, he added.

So when will all elementary virtual learners have a teacher? Bird said the board hopes to have the issues sorted by the end of the week.

"It sounds like we're going to be getting some more [teachers] today. So it is looking very good," he said.

The board has been working "around the clock" to ensure all students who have opted for online learning will have a teacher assigned to their class soon, Bird added.

"We know this is not ideal. This has been frustrating for everyone involved."

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TDSB postpones start of some online classes as e-learning demand surges | CBC News

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Canada's largest school board is once again delaying the start of some of its virtual elementary classes as it tries to keep up with growing demand for online learning. The Toronto District School Board says 60,000 elementary school students have now signed up for online classes amid rising COVID-19 case numbers, and it originally intended them all to begin their studies on Tuesday.

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The correlation between online learning and the achievement gap:

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The correlation between online learning and the achievement gap:

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“Online learning in a school district cannot be implemented with an ‘access for some’ mindset.”

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The Achievement Gap Is ‘More Glaring Than Ever’ for Students Dealing With School Closures

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Millions of American children are disconnected

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An incredible list of resources to support teachers through online learning: 

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An incredible list of resources to support teachers through online learning: 

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Representatives from the ACLU argue that students should be provided with hardware such as a laptop or tablet to complete their online coursework if they do not own one, should be able to freely access software such as online applications or programming needed for school, and should have reliable Internet access at home.

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Ivanka Brutus, a fifth-grade student in a Black and low-income county in Miami, Fla., struggled to complete her coursework when school moved online. Her Internet connection is extremely spotty-the beginning of Tropical Storm Arthur brought flood levels to the county that haven't been seen in 20 years. And as hurricane season continues, it's only expected to get worse. "I have experienced many tough things while learning online," Brutus told The Nation. "I still don't have access to my own computer, and our power can cut off at any time."

Brutus is one of thousands of low-income students of color who struggled to keep up with coursework during the pandemic because of a host of financial and structural barriers. In addition to dealing with an increased health risk and lack of governmental financial aid, these students are also more likely to live in overcrowded or unstable housing, lack access to reliable food that they may have otherwise received at school, and face other obstacles in the way of a fulfilling virtual learning experience.

In anticipation of virtual learning continuing this fall and possibly well into next year, the ACLU is calling on Congress to address inequities among low-income students, students of color, disabled students, and others whose needs are not being addressed through current remote learning strategies. On May 14, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) wrote to Congress demanding that it provide several billion dollars in funding toward equal remote learning access and privacy protections for K-12 students as part of the phase 4 Covid-19 relief package.

According to Senior Advocacy and Policy Counsel Chad Marlow, the ACLU is proposing several strategies to ensure that all students' needs are met in distance learning. Representatives from the ACLU argue that students should be provided with hardware such as a laptop or tablet to complete their online coursework if they do not own one, should be able to freely access software such as online applications or programming needed for school, and should have reliable Internet access at home.

"We want to make the schools understand what their obligations are in terms of providing equal access to remote education," Marlow said. "Students are required under law to provide accommodations to disabled students, poor students, undocumented students, and other students who might have specific needs in this moment, and we want to make sure that everybody's needs are met."

This story was produced for Student Nation, a section devoted to highlighting campus activism and student movements from students in their own words. For more Student Nation, check out our archive. Are you a student with a campus activism story? Send questions and pitches to Samantha Schuyler at samantha@thenation.com. The Student Nation program is made possible through generous funding from The Puffin Foundation.

In its letter to Congress and in letters to state and local leaders from over 25 state chapters, the ACLU is urging members to provide $2-3 billion per month for the duration of the crisis, and at least 30 days after the crisis ends, which would go toward an emergency benefit to make broadband services available to all eligible low-income households. To help students further, the organization is calling on Congress to provide $4 billion for an Emergency Connectivity Fund, proposed by Representative Grace Meng and Senator Ed Markey, to cover immediate assistance for students and library patrons who need access to technology to engage in remote learning in their homes.

The ACLU argues these measures are necessary to address the digital divide that the pivot to online education has exposed: Poor and rural students across the country are struggling to complete coursework because of lack of technology or Internet access. According to 2019 data from the Pew Research Center, only 63 percent of people living in rural America have a broadband Internet connection at home and 46 percent of people living on less than $30,000 a year do not own a computer.

Current Issue

Online learning has understandably been devastating for these communities, and governmental and school-specific responses have often been inadequate. A school district in Philadelphia advised students without a proper Internet connection to study in parking lots to access free Wifi. Students deprived of Internet service in rural Alaska have been forced to study at McDonalds. While federal funding has been set aside for K-12 education through the CARES Act and the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund, this funding has not provided comprehensive care to the nation's most vulnerable students.

"My personal laptop tends to freeze and disconnect from the Internet, and my school laptop is worse," said Angela Muralles, an 11th grader at James Monroe High School in North Hills, Calif. "During my AP English language exam, my computer disconnected from the Internet around five times while my time kept counting down. I also live in a home of eight, and our Internet connection isn't the best. When someone among us has a test, my siblings and I take turns disconnecting from our Zoom classes in order to avoid any technical difficulties. The four of us feel powerless when it comes to this form of education."

Muralles is one of many students struggling to complete standardized testing remotely. Recent AP exams administered online in May caused glitches and technical difficulties for many students, and about 1 percent of students were not able to submit their test, according to the College Board. While some schools such as UC Berkeley have dropped standardized testing requirements in light of the pandemic, most colleges continue to require these tests as part of admissions. As both the SAT and ACT are currently planning to potentially move online this summer, the consequences of students' facing barriers to complete this standardized testing could be formidable.

In addition to Internet and technology concerns, the ACLU's letter to Congress addressed the need to protect student's privacy during online learning. Many have expressed concerns over the surveillance tactics that third-party video applications such as Blackboard and Zoom have employed on users. Zoom in particular has been criticized for privacy violations, including allowing outside websites to join a call without the user's consent and allowing the host of a call, usually a teacher, to track whether other participants have separate browsers open. In the context of virtual learning, this means that students are often surveilled without consent.

"In the rush to roll out these technologies, there was very little attention paid to protecting student privacy, which is a major problem," Marlow said. "Data collection from these third-party applications could have serious implications for students down the line in a number of ways. Students could end up not being able to get home loans, not get into the colleges they apply to, or worse."

According to Marlow, certain data such as a student's name, date of birth, and submitted homework assignments are being uniformly collected by third-party providers. Some providers, like Zoom, allow even more access, as hosts are able to capture the screen of a student or remotely turn on microphones or webcams. Different providers have various regulations surrounding what information is collected, how long they retain the information, and whom they share it with. While providers often boast that users' information is safe and not to be sold, recent discoveries have indicated that this might not always be the case, meaning a student can potentially put personal information at risk every time they log on for class.

"Let's say a student checks a box saying they would prefer to have their provider in Spanish rather than in English," Marlow said. "ICE would be very interested in learning more about this student, and if they or someone in their family is undocumented, they have now been put in an immediate, tangible, and truly problematic risk. The ways that private data is collected on students can be used to disadvantage them later in life, and no student should be exposed to risk because they want to learn during a public health crisis."

Many students are unaware of the risk that these third-party platforms expose them to and are unable to give real consent to being surveilled-still, platforms like Zoom are required for most virtual learning. Students as young as preschool age are in online classrooms during the pandemic. "I am afraid sometimes because apparently people can hack into Zoom and look at us," Brutus, the fifth-grader, said. "It's very scary because we are all only kids and our faces are exposed."

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos stated recently that most students can expect a mix of in-person and online classes in the fall. New York and Virginia are creating contingency plans for an online school year, once more necessitating that funds be found for adequate technology and that proper privacy restrictions be put in place. While some, including many parents, are looking forward to in-person classes so that they no longer are forced to juggle full-time child care with work, others view this shift to remote education as good news. One in five teachers reported being unlikely to return to campus if schools were to reopen in the fall, according to USA Today.

Linda Jordan, a math teacher at a public high school in Georgia, told The Nation that online learning has been beneficial for many of her students. "Every school handled remote learning differently, but we elected to stop holding formal classes and instead just gave the students assignments that they could complete on their own," Jordan said. "If students had a question we could schedule time for a one-on-one call, so they would get more personal attention. Online learning also helped with a lot of behavioral issues, and things like bullying went down as well. My view is that we should be moving more virtual in the future."

Jordan continued that her school provided every student a Chromebook before the pandemic began, and noted that many low-income students at the school were able to get free WiFi through a program that Xfinity offered. Marlow argues that this furthers the ACLU's assertion that students can excel in online learning if provided the proper tools.

"Education in this country is a right, not a privilege," he said. "We have a duty to provide students with a proper education to the best of our ability, even during a pandemic.... There are resources available, and where the resources are not adequate, we need to come up with more."

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Online Learning Isn't Even Remotely Equal

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Ivanka Brutus, a fifth-grade student in a Black and low-income county in Miami, Fla., struggled to complete her coursework when school moved online. Her Internet connection is extremely spotty-the beginning of Tropical Storm Arthur brought flood levels to the county that haven't been seen in 20 years.

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How the lack of access to tech can impact ELLs

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How the lack of access to tech can impact ELLs

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(TNS) - The 12-year-old boy sat in the darkened apartment, a Chromebook resting in front of him as he watched his classmates on the Google Classroom video chat.

Huliser Martin-Morales was participating in only his second weekly video chat with his classmates and teacher this past week. He has missed about six weeks of online instruction because he wasn't able to get the device or the internet connection he needed.

Though Columbus, Ohio, City Schools have been offering Chromebooks and Wi-Fi to kids in need since shortly after school buildings in the state were closed in mid-March because of the coronavirus pandemic, Huliser had trouble getting his equipment. His mother doesn't speak English and his family doesn't have transportation or much knowledge about computer technology.

Huliser finally received a Chromebook from the district a little over two weeks ago, but he wasn't able to get a Wi-Fi hotspot until last week. At that point, there were only three weeks of class left.

Huliser, who was born in Iowa but whose parents are from Guatemala, is one of thousands of students in the country who are struggling with online learning due to poverty and language barriers.

As of May 5, 69% of Columbus City Schools students had the technology they needed to do online learning, according to the district. But a Columbus Education Association survey found that 54% of students - and only 35% of English language learners - were participating in distance learning.

And a recent poll by the National Education Association found that educators who work in schools with a higher percentage of students who get free and reduced meals saw lower class attendance and think online learning may be less effective for their students.

Experts say students who live in poverty may have more distractions at home and less access to the technology needed for online learning.

It can be especially challenging for students and parents who don't speak English, said Lily Eskelsen Garcia, president of the National Education Association.

Boys like Huliser were "having trouble before this crisis," said Eskelsen Garcia. "This has just exacerbated everything."

Huliser has had a hard life - fleeing an abusive father and moving around a lot with his mother - and though his mother, Julie Morales, tries her best, she can't speak English and isn't literate in any language, she said. She also doesn't have a car to pick up school work or a computer for Huliser to use for school.

Still, Morales is proud of her son and relishes any opportunity to show off his honor roll certificates and emphasize how important his education is since she didn't get to go to school while growing up in Guatemala.

"I don't want my kids to end up like me. I want them to study," Morales said in Spanish through a translator.

In 2016, English language learners represented only 3.3% of Ohio students, according to the most recent figures from the National Center for Education Statistics. But all of Huliser's almost 500 classmates at Columbus Global Academy are learning English.

Approximately 8,300 students at Columbus City Schools are English language learners, according to Michael Sain, the district's director of ESL Support Services.

Between March 23 and May 8, the district issued Chromebooks to the families of 3,155 English language learners, or an estimated 6,334 students, Sain said. That's more than 75% of the English language learner students in the district, he said.

The district is doing its best to work with parents and students who don't speak English, Sain said. It set up a phone line so parents can call in and ask questions or get help getting online.

At Columbus Global Academy, staff members have been working to identify students who aren't logging in, said Derick Vickroy, the school's principal. They then reach out to them with bilingual support, he said.

Sain said students who have had delays getting online can pick up where their classes are now or they can do optional makeup work given by their teachers.

"That's providing that grace piece," Sain said. "We can't really hold these kids accountable."

Columbus City Schools also has changed its grading policy for the last part of the school year to address the disparities in online learning, Vickroy said.

"We're acknowledging this is an unprecedented time and we're trying to move forward during the crisis as best we can," he said. "It's not a realistic expectation to do four or five weeks of work to catch up."

Since school buildings have closed in Ohio, Huliser has been home during the day in the East Side apartment he shares with his mother, his uncle and a family friend. Last Wednesday, he woke up early for his class' weekly video chat at noon. The preteen wakes up at 1 p.m. on other days.

Huliser said he likes math the best and feels like he's caught up with his classmates, despite missing several weeks of online schooling.

The seventh grader has been attending Columbus Global Academy for two years and prefers going to class in person.

Sick during the last few days that classes were held in person in mid-March, Huliser didn't understand why his school building was no longer open because of the coronavirus pandemic.

"My first thought, without lying, was vacation," Huliser said, with a grin. "But it got weirder. I couldn't do anything, I couldn't go outside."

Now, he just wants to return to school.
©2020 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio). Distributed by Looking for the latest gov tech news as it happens? Subscribe to GT newsletters. Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Immigrant Students Face Barriers With Online Education

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(TNS) - The 12-year-old boy sat in the darkened apartment, a Chromebook resting in front of him as he watched his classmates on the Google Classroom video chat. Huliser Martin-Morales was participating in only his second weekly video chat with his classmates and teacher this past week.

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This journal considers three main reasons why ELs were more disadvantaged than other students by the educational impacts of COVID‐19.

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CURRENT ISSUES IN TESOL: TESOL AND THE COVID‐19 PANDEMIC

First published:

1 INTRODUCTION

The March 2020 closure of most schools in the United States due to the COVID‐19 pandemic marked a sudden and dramatic shift in how teaching and learning happened. All the 55 million K‐12 students were deeply affected by the move from face‐to‐face to remote learning. However, the 4.9+ million English learners (ELs) and their families were disproportionately affected by the abrupt change from physical to virtual classrooms (Napolitano, 2020). We consider three main reasons why ELs were more disadvantaged than other students by the educational impacts of COVID‐19.

First, U.S. schools with more socioeconomically marginalized families, including a larger proportion of immigrant families, were less prepared to provide resources for the move to remote learning. Second, there were significant communication challenges with multilingual families while trying to organize and distribute resources; there was often a flood of information in English to students and parents with minimal accommodation for EL families. Third, even when online resources and remote learning were put in place for content‐area learning, they often did not support students' English acquisition, lacking meaningful social interactions needed to support second language (L2) learning. Finally, we consider some of the silver linings, namely opportunities for classroom teachers to connect with immigrant families in new ways and for students to learn to use language and technology for real‐world problem solving.

2 ACCESS, REMOTE LEARNING, AND SOCIOECONOMIC MARGINALIZATION

In most states the closures were announced in mid‐March, and the immediate challenge for educators became to figure out how to teach remotely. In our state of Ohio, the school calendar runs from late August to early June, meaning that there were still three full months (about 275 hours) of instruction to fulfill, along with completion of grading and testing, including language proficiency assessments for ELs. For many urban school districts including ours, there was no existing virtual platform to replace the classroom. By contrast, a nearby suburban district already utilized Canvas, an established online learning management system. This system was already familiar to teachers and students and had integrated tools for turning in and grading assignments, connecting to other software used for online content‐area tasks, and communicating between teacher and students. However, most underfunded urban districts had no platform and teachers therefore had to cobble together lessons from different sources. Because of the educational funding formula in the United States, suburban districts usually are much better funded than urban ones: city schools receive an average of US$2,100 per student less than suburban schools, and even within urban districts predominantly White schools receive US$1,321 more per student than schools with a majority of culturally and linguistically diverse students (Bellan, 2019). Among the many consequences of this resource gap is that districts with more ELs had far less technology infrastructure to manage the transition to online learning. Often EL teachers turned to Google Classroom and other open access resources, though most teachers simultaneously had to learn how to use the platform as they were also figuring out how to plan lessons for online delivery. Many secondary teachers struggled to find online content that included accommodations appropriate for ELs. Moreover, the interfaces of most sites were not designed with L2 English students in mind. The result was a patchwork of tools, sites, and platforms that was often frustrating for students and parents.

Our local school system is a large, urban district of about 50,000 students, 13% of whom (about 8,300 students) are designated as English learners. Their home languages are mainly Spanish, Arabic, Somali, and Nepali, but also include over 100 other languages. Eighty percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Like many urban districts, schools in the district are designated as Title I, meaning that they receive federal funding based on serving a high percentage of low‐income students. Across the United States, 79% of ELs attend Title I schools (U.S. Department of Education, 2015). The difficulties educators faced in lower income schools, therefore, disproportionately affected ELs.

Initially, the priority for ELs trying to move to remote learning was internet access. Although over 98% of schools in the United States have broadband internet, Latina/o students in the United States are three times as likely as White students to have no internet access at home (34.6% to 12.1%, U.S. Department of Education, 2018). The Pew Research Center reports that 18% of Latino/a teenagers do not have access to a home computer, double the rate of White students at 9% (Little, 2020). For many families, smartphones are their only means of online access. Like many, our district arranged to distribute the schools' laptops to families, and about 75% of EL families checked them out (King, 2020). However, this did not solve the connectivity problem. Some areas, like Dayton, Ohio, put the idle school buses to use by moving them to the parking lots of apartment complexes where their families live to create wifi hotspots (Nelson, 2020). In our district, schools closed mid‐March; however, a May 5 poll found that only 35% of ELs were participating in remote learning (King, 2020). In some areas, local nonprofits such as the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Michigan collaborated with schools to obtain low free or affordable internet connectivity (Lazarín, 2020).

The resources ELs' immigrant families had access to and their ability to support their children in remote learning was also profoundly affected by their work situation. Many of our immigrant parents work in food processing factories or warehouse jobs such as Amazon fulfillment centers, and were thus designated essential workers by the state. They were, therefore, not affected by loss of income as those who were laid off, but it did increase their chances to be exposed to the virus and also made it more difficult for them to be home to watch over their children's online learning (Lazarín, 2020). This also made it harder for teachers to reach parents to organize their children's remote learning schedule.

3 COMMUNICATIONS WITH STUDENTS AND FAMILIES

During the first weeks of the school closure, the initial challenge teachers faced was establishing reliable communication with students and families in order to organize the move to remote learning. The challenge was magnified with students and families whose home language is a language other than English. The announcements district administrators in our area made to families were usually translated into the five most common home languages (Spanish, Somali, Nepali, French, and Arabic). However, families with other home languages were unable to receive announcements and information in this manner. Moreover, the parents of students of limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) do not always have the type of literacy skills to fully interpret formal announcements (often translated through Google) from school; this was particularly an issue for some of our Nepali families.

Educators took on the laborious task of personally reaching out to students and families to ensure they were connected to their teachers and had all the necessary information and technology available for remote learning. Much of this work fell to bilingual instructional assistants and teachers to make phone calls and track who was being contacted. Teachers in our district were supposed to log student contacts on the school student spreadsheet, and the campus teacher portal, and an ESL‐specific spreadsheet created by the district to track EL students. The result was that the information was inconsistently collected (e.g., even though many content teachers work with ELs, they did not have access or even know about the district ESL spreadsheet), making it hard to know if reliable communication had been established with individual students and families. In our district, most of our bilingual instructional assistants and social workers are Spanish speakers, so they were able to reach those families relatively well; however, communication with many families from other language backgrounds proved much more difficult. The site Colorín Colorado stresses the importance of using family liaisons and community partners to connect with hard‐to‐reach students (Breiseth, 2020). The priority in initial contact with families was to document whether their children had access to food, internet, and a device to make remote learning possible (Rani, 2020).

In our district, high school EL teachers had particular difficulties getting their students to consistently engage. Since they were not physically in class during the day, many high schoolers took jobs (often in the same warehouses where their parents work), and ended up working long hours. Also, we found that the students who were most in need of resources to get set up with remote learning-checking out a laptop, contacting the internet provider to sign up for the 60‐day free service being offered-were the ones who had most difficulty figuring out how to access what they needed. For our teachers, the transition from regular to remote learning was complicated by the fact that when the school initially closed most of us believed it would be temporarily; it was spring break time anyway and we thought we would be back in two or three weeks. Therefore, the first few weeks were not spent organizing the transition, and it wasn't until April that the district announced that school would be moved online for the rest of the school year that most teachers realized the implication of what was happening and had three days to pack up their classrooms and prepare learning packets for students.

4 REDUCED OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Research in second language acquisition has established that meaningful opportunities for social interaction with sustained comprehensible input are key to L2 learning (Cummins, 2007). In typical school settings, ELs benefit from rich language interaction with their peers for both social and academic purposes. As schools moved to emergency remote learning, the main strategies for making input comprehensible such as the use of verbal and nonverbal cues and physical objects were largely lost. This was exacerbated at the secondary level where remote learning activities are designed for content instruction, very rarely sheltered for ELs. Although some online programs include translation tools and read‐aloud texts, they still lack appropriate accommodations to make content instruction effective for ELs, particularly for SLIFE.

The transition to remote learning also resulted in a shift in the L2 skills students were practicing. During regular classes, students routinely engage in listening and speaking, whereas the hastily assembled learning packets focused almost entirely on reading and writing. This affected ELs at the primary level who were emergent readers, since they could not receive the one‐to‐one or small group instruction required to build early fundamental skills of reading through scaffolded oral interactions. Early grade ELs often receive literacy instruction from a combination of the classroom teacher, bilingual instructional aides, and the ESL teacher or literacy coach. They often use level‐based reading groups and running records (Wright, 2019) to support early literacy learning. Online instruction meant the loss of this type of differentiated learning supported through oral interactions. At the secondary level, the heavy emphasis on reading in remote learning made it even more difficult for ELs because reading skills in particular take much more time to develop before they can be used solely as the means of content instruction. Many teachers reported that it was only near the end of the school year that they were able to reliably hold synchronous real‐time small group sessions using tools like Google Meet.

5 SILVER LININGS AND MOVING FORWARD

The unexpected change to emergency remote learning was stressful and frustrating for students and their teachers. ELs were affected even more than most of their peers because of the socioeconomic marginalization of many immigrant families, the additional challenges of communicating with L2 students and families, and the diminished conditions for second language acquisition. Nevertheless, the radical changes in teaching and learning brought about by the pandemic did have at least two positive aspects.

One silver lining was the connections wrought between teachers and parents. While much TESOL professional development stresses the important of making home-school connections, the pandemic was a true exercise in building a line of communication between classroom teachers and the families of their students. Parents gained more insights into the actual content and processes of their children's learning, which for many immigrant families likely helped them better understanding the "inner workings" of U.S. classrooms. For teachers it helped us grasp what sort of real‐world challenges our students face in trying to complete academic tasks, from not having a quiet, individual space at home to do schoolwork to the very real need of many families to work long hours to put food on the table. The connections forged between families and EL educators this spring will likely pay dividends for students down the road.

The second positive outcome that we observed from remote learning was our EL students' ability to use different technologies and platforms to do creative problem solving in the actual challenges they encountered. While we often preach about the importance both of having students become more proficient in technology and promoting higher‐order thinking skills, the change in learning modality forced them to put it into practice. For example, many of my (Derek) high school ELs had never used email. To facilitate online instruction the district provided students with an email address which presented the opportunity for students to become familiar with using email to communicate with teachers and counselors. In order to submit written work, students had to complete the assignment, take a picture of it with their phone, create a portfolio by exporting photos of their work to a Google Slides presentation, and then submit it as an email attachment to me. The students, although already proficient users of smart phones and social media apps, were forced to learn additional real‐world applications of technology.

6 THE AUTHORS

Peter Sayer is an associate professor of language education studies at the Ohio State University (OSU).

Derek Braun is a doctoral student in foreign/second and multilingual language education at the Ohio State University and a sheltered science teacher at Beechcroft High School in Columbus, where he teaches students from many different language backgrounds.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of teachers, students, and families to continue to support teaching and learning during what has been an unprecedented event in our lifetimes. Peter would like to thank the teachers in his endorsement courses at OSU for sharing their experiences and contributing ideas to this paper. Derek thanks the district's ESL office for their support and leadership navigating all the challenges encountered from distance learning.

1 INTRODUCTION

The March 2020 closure of most schools in the United States due to the COVID‐19 pandemic marked a sudden and dramatic shift in how teaching and learning happened. All the 55 million K‐12 students were deeply affected by the move from face‐to‐face to remote learning. However, the 4.9+ million English learners (ELs) and their families were disproportionately affected by the abrupt change from physical to virtual classrooms (Napolitano, ). We consider three main reasons why ELs were more disadvantaged than other students by the educational impacts of COVID‐19.

First, U.S. schools with more socioeconomically marginalized families, including a larger proportion of immigrant families, were less prepared to provide resources for the move to remote learning. Second, there were significant communication challenges with multilingual families while trying to organize and distribute resources; there was often a flood of information in English to students and parents with minimal accommodation for EL families. Third, even when online resources and remote learning were put in place for content‐area learning, they often did not support students' English acquisition, lacking meaningful social interactions needed to support second language (L2) learning. Finally, we consider some of the silver linings, namely opportunities for classroom teachers to connect with immigrant families in new ways and for students to learn to use language and technology for real‐world problem solving.

2 ACCESS, REMOTE LEARNING, AND SOCIOECONOMIC MARGINALIZATION

In most states the closures were announced in mid‐March, and the immediate challenge for educators became to figure out how to teach remotely. In our state of Ohio, the school calendar runs from late August to early June, meaning that there were still three full months (about 275 hours) of instruction to fulfill, along with completion of grading and testing, including language proficiency assessments for ELs. For many urban school districts including ours, there was no existing virtual platform to replace the classroom. By contrast, a nearby suburban district already utilized Canvas, an established online learning management system. This system was already familiar to teachers and students and had integrated tools for turning in and grading assignments, connecting to other software used for online content‐area tasks, and communicating between teacher and students. However, most underfunded urban districts had no platform and teachers therefore had to cobble together lessons from different sources. Because of the educational funding formula in the United States, suburban districts usually are much better funded than urban ones: city schools receive an average of US$2,100 per student less than suburban schools, and even within urban districts predominantly White schools receive US$1,321 more per student than schools with a majority of culturally and linguistically diverse students (Bellan, ). Among the many consequences of this resource gap is that districts with more ELs had far less technology infrastructure to manage the transition to online learning. Often EL teachers turned to Google Classroom and other open access resources, though most teachers simultaneously had to learn how to use the platform as they were also figuring out how to plan lessons for online delivery. Many secondary teachers struggled to find online content that included accommodations appropriate for ELs. Moreover, the interfaces of most sites were not designed with L2 English students in mind. The result was a patchwork of tools, sites, and platforms that was often frustrating for students and parents.

Our local school system is a large, urban district of about 50,000 students, 13% of whom (about 8,300 students) are designated as English learners. Their home languages are mainly Spanish, Arabic, Somali, and Nepali, but also include over 100 other languages. Eighty percent of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch. Like many urban districts, schools in the district are designated as Title I, meaning that they receive federal funding based on serving a high percentage of low‐income students. Across the United States, 79% of ELs attend Title I schools (U.S. Department of Education, ). The difficulties educators faced in lower income schools, therefore, disproportionately affected ELs.

Initially, the priority for ELs trying to move to remote learning was internet access. Although over 98% of schools in the United States have broadband internet, Latina/o students in the United States are three times as likely as White students to have no internet access at home (34.6% to 12.1%, U.S. Department of Education, ). The Pew Research Center reports that 18% of Latino/a teenagers do not have access to a home computer, double the rate of White students at 9% (Little, ). For many families, smartphones are their only means of online access. Like many, our district arranged to distribute the schools' laptops to families, and about 75% of EL families checked them out (King, ). However, this did not solve the connectivity problem. Some areas, like Dayton, Ohio, put the idle school buses to use by moving them to the parking lots of apartment complexes where their families live to create wifi hotspots (Nelson, ). In our district, schools closed mid‐March; however, a May 5 poll found that only 35% of ELs were participating in remote learning (King, ). In some areas, local nonprofits such as the Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services in Michigan collaborated with schools to obtain low free or affordable internet connectivity (Lazarín, ).

The resources ELs' immigrant families had access to and their ability to support their children in remote learning was also profoundly affected by their work situation. Many of our immigrant parents work in food processing factories or warehouse jobs such as Amazon fulfillment centers, and were thus designated essential workers by the state. They were, therefore, not affected by loss of income as those who were laid off, but it did increase their chances to be exposed to the virus and also made it more difficult for them to be home to watch over their children's online learning (Lazarín, ). This also made it harder for teachers to reach parents to organize their children's remote learning schedule.

3 COMMUNICATIONS WITH STUDENTS AND FAMILIES

During the first weeks of the school closure, the initial challenge teachers faced was establishing reliable communication with students and families in order to organize the move to remote learning. The challenge was magnified with students and families whose home language is a language other than English. The announcements district administrators in our area made to families were usually translated into the five most common home languages (Spanish, Somali, Nepali, French, and Arabic). However, families with other home languages were unable to receive announcements and information in this manner. Moreover, the parents of students of limited or interrupted formal education (SLIFE) do not always have the type of literacy skills to fully interpret formal announcements (often translated through Google) from school; this was particularly an issue for some of our Nepali families.

Educators took on the laborious task of personally reaching out to students and families to ensure they were connected to their teachers and had all the necessary information and technology available for remote learning. Much of this work fell to bilingual instructional assistants and teachers to make phone calls and track who was being contacted. Teachers in our district were supposed to log student contacts on the school student spreadsheet, and the campus teacher portal, and an ESL‐specific spreadsheet created by the district to track EL students. The result was that the information was inconsistently collected (e.g., even though many content teachers work with ELs, they did not have access or even know about the district ESL spreadsheet), making it hard to know if reliable communication had been established with individual students and families. In our district, most of our bilingual instructional assistants and social workers are Spanish speakers, so they were able to reach those families relatively well; however, communication with many families from other language backgrounds proved much more difficult. The site Colorín Colorado stresses the importance of using family liaisons and community partners to connect with hard‐to‐reach students (Breiseth, ). The priority in initial contact with families was to document whether their children had access to food, internet, and a device to make remote learning possible (Rani, ).

In our district, high school EL teachers had particular difficulties getting their students to consistently engage. Since they were not physically in class during the day, many high schoolers took jobs (often in the same warehouses where their parents work), and ended up working long hours. Also, we found that the students who were most in need of resources to get set up with remote learning-checking out a laptop, contacting the internet provider to sign up for the 60‐day free service being offered-were the ones who had most difficulty figuring out how to access what they needed. For our teachers, the transition from regular to remote learning was complicated by the fact that when the school initially closed most of us believed it would be temporarily; it was spring break time anyway and we thought we would be back in two or three weeks. Therefore, the first few weeks were not spent organizing the transition, and it wasn't until April that the district announced that school would be moved online for the rest of the school year that most teachers realized the implication of what was happening and had three days to pack up their classrooms and prepare learning packets for students.

4 REDUCED OPPORTUNITIES FOR ENGLISH LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

Research in second language acquisition has established that meaningful opportunities for social interaction with sustained comprehensible input are key to L2 learning (Cummins, ). In typical school settings, ELs benefit from rich language interaction with their peers for both social and academic purposes. As schools moved to emergency remote learning, the main strategies for making input comprehensible such as the use of verbal and nonverbal cues and physical objects were largely lost. This was exacerbated at the secondary level where remote learning activities are designed for content instruction, very rarely sheltered for ELs. Although some online programs include translation tools and read‐aloud texts, they still lack appropriate accommodations to make content instruction effective for ELs, particularly for SLIFE.

The transition to remote learning also resulted in a shift in the L2 skills students were practicing. During regular classes, students routinely engage in listening and speaking, whereas the hastily assembled learning packets focused almost entirely on reading and writing. This affected ELs at the primary level who were emergent readers, since they could not receive the one‐to‐one or small group instruction required to build early fundamental skills of reading through scaffolded oral interactions. Early grade ELs often receive literacy instruction from a combination of the classroom teacher, bilingual instructional aides, and the ESL teacher or literacy coach. They often use level‐based reading groups and running records (Wright, ) to support early literacy learning. Online instruction meant the loss of this type of differentiated learning supported through oral interactions. At the secondary level, the heavy emphasis on reading in remote learning made it even more difficult for ELs because reading skills in particular take much more time to develop before they can be used solely as the means of content instruction. Many teachers reported that it was only near the end of the school year that they were able to reliably hold synchronous real‐time small group sessions using tools like Google Meet.

5 SILVER LININGS AND MOVING FORWARD

The unexpected change to emergency remote learning was stressful and frustrating for students and their teachers. ELs were affected even more than most of their peers because of the socioeconomic marginalization of many immigrant families, the additional challenges of communicating with L2 students and families, and the diminished conditions for second language acquisition. Nevertheless, the radical changes in teaching and learning brought about by the pandemic did have at least two positive aspects.

One silver lining was the connections wrought between teachers and parents. While much TESOL professional development stresses the important of making home-school connections, the pandemic was a true exercise in building a line of communication between classroom teachers and the families of their students. Parents gained more insights into the actual content and processes of their children's learning, which for many immigrant families likely helped them better understanding the "inner workings" of U.S. classrooms. For teachers it helped us grasp what sort of real‐world challenges our students face in trying to complete academic tasks, from not having a quiet, individual space at home to do schoolwork to the very real need of many families to work long hours to put food on the table. The connections forged between families and EL educators this spring will likely pay dividends for students down the road.

The second positive outcome that we observed from remote learning was our EL students' ability to use different technologies and platforms to do creative problem solving in the actual challenges they encountered. While we often preach about the importance both of having students become more proficient in technology and promoting higher‐order thinking skills, the change in learning modality forced them to put it into practice. For example, many of my (Derek) high school ELs had never used email. To facilitate online instruction the district provided students with an email address which presented the opportunity for students to become familiar with using email to communicate with teachers and counselors. In order to submit written work, students had to complete the assignment, take a picture of it with their phone, create a portfolio by exporting photos of their work to a Google Slides presentation, and then submit it as an email attachment to me. The students, although already proficient users of smart phones and social media apps, were forced to learn additional real‐world applications of technology.

6 THE AUTHORS

Peter Sayer is an associate professor of language education studies at the Ohio State University (OSU).

Derek Braun is a doctoral student in foreign/second and multilingual language education at the Ohio State University and a sheltered science teacher at Beechcroft High School in Columbus, where he teaches students from many different language backgrounds.

Acknowledgments

We would like to acknowledge the tremendous efforts of teachers, students, and families to continue to support teaching and learning during what has been an unprecedented event in our lifetimes. Peter would like to thank the teachers in his endorsement courses at OSU for sharing their experiences and contributing ideas to this paper. Derek thanks the district's ESL office for their support and leadership navigating all the challenges encountered from distance learning.

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The disparate impact of COVID‐19 remote learning on English learners in the United States

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CURRENT ISSUES IN TESOL: TESOL AND THE COVID‐19 PANDEMIC First published: The March 2020 closure of most schools in the United States due to the COVID‐19 pandemic marked a sudden and dramatic shift in how teaching and learning happened. All the 55 million K‐12 students were deeply affected by the move from face‐to‐face to remote learning.

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"a lot is missing when it comes to online learning. For instance, non-verbal communication. Body language is an essential tool humans use to communicate, and that can be diminished or missing online." 

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"a lot is missing when it comes to online learning. For instance, non-verbal communication. Body language is an essential tool humans use to communicate, and that can be diminished or missing online." 

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Haz clic aquí para leer este artículo en español.

Amid the remote learning experiment sweeping North Carolina and the nation, there are some students impacted more by the change than others. For non-native speaking English students who struggle to both learn the language and get good grades in the best of times, the challenge of learning from home increases the difficulty level of their task.

Emily Francis, an English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher at Concord High School in Concord, says trying to teach her students remotely is taking some getting used to.

"It's like I'm talking to myself, and it's so different," she said. "Language is acquired through interaction."

If you visited Francis' class before COVID-19, you would see just how much her relationships with students matter. There is an easiness with which she relates to her students that helps facilitate learning. A lot of that goes missing in the switch to remote learning.

"Being with them in a classroom is just so different than posting assignments online," she said. "It's just a whole different ball field."

Joan Lachance is an associate professor of education and the Graduate Certificate/TESL Minor program director for UNC Charlotte's Teaching English as a Second Language Programs. She said that it's not just interactions with a teacher that ESL students are missing. It's the give and take they usually have with one another in the classroom.

"From a language development perspective and even from a brain development perspective, we know that language development is a social construct, and kids need to sit with each other and have lots and lots of peer interaction," she said.

Interaction between students can help facilitate skills like problem solving, not to mention the fact that students are more willing to try speaking in a second language if they are doing so with other students focused on the same task, Lachance said. These are things that just can't be replicated online, she said.

Lachance also said that a lot is missing when it comes to online learning. For instance, non-verbal communication. Body language is an essential tool humans use to communicate, and that can be diminished or missing online.

And remote learning can be particularly difficult for ESL teachers, because they are often co-teaching with traditional classroom teachers. That means that the ESL teacher needs to be able to coordinate what he or she is teaching with the traditional classroom teacher, or in some cases, multiple traditional classroom teachers.

"Is the general education teacher able to include the ESL teacher in all their Canvas courses with all their students?" Lachance asked. "Or does the ESL teacher need to have their own Canvas page?"

And all of these challenges are just the ones that come up assuming everybody has access to the tools they need to do remote learning. But that is a wrong assumption to make.

Francis said her school called all of their students to see who had an electronic device and who didn't. Those who didn't could make an appointment to pick one up.

But some of the parents of her ESL students work one or more jobs and couldn't get out of work long enough to pick up a device. And then, even if a student is able to get a device, there is the question of understanding how to access remote learning.

"You have to be fluent in the language just to know how to access the content, and a lot of my students are not," Francis said. "We're still having to contact parents at least three times a week. If we see students who have not accessed any of the documents that we have online for them, then we will have to provide paper assignments for them."

And then, what if the students don't even have the time to do the remote learning? Francis said that is a problem she has run into with some of her students.

She said students tell her they can't do the face-to-face online instruction because they're working. Their parents told them that if they're not going to go to school, then they need to be working. And there are other challenging situations that keep students from class as well.

"I have other students who are having to stay home with other siblings, so they will say Ms. Francis, I can't do the face-to-face because I have four siblings running around me," she said.

Nevertheless, Francis said she's been encouraged by her students. She has a kid at home too, and it's hard for her to find time. But she is staying in contact with students via email, social media, and phone.

"I'm not worried about them not doing it. I think it's just a tool for them to be able to keep themselves in the learning path," she said. "It's just the matter of keeping your brain sharp."

And she said that even if a student can't practice their English skills with anybody in person, speaking and reading in their native language can still help grow the language synapses in their brains.

Another issue around remote learning is concern about safety. Some ESL students come from families where some or all of the members may be undocumented.

"I think another layer that we're all maneuvering through for the first time in this way is just the notion of digital securities," Lachance said.

Ivanna Mann Thrower Anderson, an ESL / Title III Consultant at the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI), said that her team is on the board of a national organization called the National Association of English Learner Program Administrators. Anderson is the immediate past president. She said they have reached out to the federal Office of English Language Acquisition to ask questions around security, and they're hoping that guidance will be coming from the federal government soon.

Anderson's team at DPI has been busy helping out ESL teachers around the state. She said the department has a section online with resources for English learners. Anderson points out that while ESL students are learning English, the same can be said for most young students.

DPI also has put together an English-learners support team, full of administrators and educators with expertise on ESL. That group usually does face-to-face professional learning and coaching, though obviously things are a little different now.

The team has put together things like webinars and Twitter chats. They're doing a series of talks aimed at helping teachers find better strategies for teaching online. And Anderson said that what she's hearing from the field is positive. She said teachers are exchanging notes and talking together to figure out how to do remote learning better. They're not just interested in improving now, but also being ready if something like this happens again.

"Our teams are really listening to what's being said around the state and really trying to do everything we can to provide the resources that are needed," she said.

Despite all the challenges faced by the ESL community - both students and teachers - Lachance said she is confident that everybody will come through. ESL professionals are a dedicated bunch, she said.

"Any of us in teaching English as a Second Language ... we will do whatever it takes to support our students and support the teachers who support the students," Lachance said.

Here is a complete list of resources Anderson sent EdNC.org:
EL Sites: DPI Resource Site National Sites
Alex Granados

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Haz clic aquí para leer este artículo en español. Amid the remote learning experiment sweeping North Carolina and the nation, there are some students impacted more by the change than others. For non-native speaking English students who struggle to both learn the language and get good grades in the best of times, the challenge of learning from home increases the difficulty level of their task.

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Video: ELL students left behind amid COVID-19 and virtual learning

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With so many schools across the country beginning the academic year with remote learning educators are increasingly worried some students could slip through the cracks fall further behind. Particularly those learning English as a second language ABC's air arrest of takes a look at the challenges they may face this fall.

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Challenges ELL students may face during virtual learning: 

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Challenges ELL students may face during virtual learning: 

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- teachers say teens are picking up jobs to support their families during the economic crisis, rather than attending classes.
-There is less discussion with online learning- you could theoretically stay on mute the whole time. If you're not talking to people every day in that language you're learning, it’s hard to stay motivated and practice.
-Tech issues: access to computers and internet is not equitable. Then there is the issue of helping families log on.

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The USA TODAY Network series Hecho en USA, or Made in America, focuses on the nation's growing Latino community. Roughly 80% of all Latinos living in the U.S. are American citizens, but media coverage of Hispanics tends to focus on immigration and crime, instead of how Latino families live, work and learn in their hometowns. Hecho en USA tells the stories of the nation's 59.9 million Latinos - a growing economic and cultural force, many of whom are born in the U.S.
In normal times, teacher Ariana Tabaku helps her students learn English with structured curriculum, face-to-face encouragement and high fives.

None of that is possible during the coronavirus outbreak. So she became a professional fundraiser. An IT specialist. A video producer. And that's what it took just to get her students - all of whom speak a different language at home - logged in.

During the school closures to contain the spread of the coronavirus, educators are worried about students falling behind. This period of remote learning, technology divides and lowered expectations has stalled progress for almost everyone.

But students who are still learning English - a group that's swelled to 5 million nationwide, about three-fourths of them Latino - are losing even more ground. For them, that doesn't just mean a lower GPA or having to attend a less-selective college. It means potentially not graduating or not advancing to a post-secondary education.

It means not mastering a skill critical for upward mobility in America.

"My students often drop two reading levels during the summer break," said Tabaku, 27, who teaches at Port Towns Elementary School in Bladensburg, Maryland.

She has no idea how far behind they'll be once school resumes in some form come fall.

Scrambling for technology

Tabaku had to scramble to help families with the basics of technology before she could even think about teaching.

Port Towns has more than 1,100 students, and about half of them are learning English. Almost all of Tabaku's students are Latino; a handful are from Africa.

When she learned some of her working parents were missing Chromebook distribution days at school, she raised $1,300 to buy 20 tablets. She set them up with the right apps for each student and drove her Toyota Scion around Prince George's County on the weekends, dropping them off at their homes.

"One child went to hug me for a tablet," she said. "I had to tell him I can't."

She recently spent 90 minutes on the phone with a father who couldn't log in. And she enlisted her boyfriend, who is bilingual in Spanish and English, to help make YouTube videos to guide her Spanish-speaking families through using Google Classroom.

Teacher appreciation soars: It only took a coronavirus pandemic

She and her colleagues are up against a confluence of social, academic and financial pressures that make the progress of English learners precarious right now.

Such students are likely to live in low-income households, which means less money for supports in the home, such as tutoring, computers and internet.

They're likely to come from large families, which means if they have a computer or tablet in the home, they're more likely to have to share it with siblings. Prince George's County distributed only one Chromebook per family, Tabaku said.

Emerging bilingual students form a group that's growing fast - from 3.8 million in 2000 to 5 million in 2016. The share of Latino students in America's schools is growing even faster from 16% in 2000 to 26% in 2015, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Out of the 13.1 million Latino children in public schools, the vast majority speak, read and learn in English in mainstream classrooms.

By definition, the approximately 5 million who are English learners speak a different language at home. And since everybody is spending a lot of time at home right now, many are not conversing in English as frequently.

If they can become proficient, there's good news: Multilingual students who advance out of English learner status tend to match or outperform their native English-speaking peers academically, new research has shown.

"Learning language is a dynamic process," said Amaya Garcia, deputy director for English learner education at New America, a nonpartisan think tank in Washington.

Amaya Garcia, deputy director for English learner programs at New America

You need to be able to hear it. You need to speak it back. That speaking and listening part is being left out of the equation.

"You need to be able to hear it. You need to speak it back," she said. "That speaking and listening part is being left out of the equation for students with limited (technological) access."

New to the country - during coronavirus

Even before the school closures, English learners trailed traditional students academically. For students with limited English skills, 67% graduated from high school after four years in 2016, compared with 84% of all students, according to federal data.

Most emerging bilingual students were born in the U.S. but aren't proficient in English yet for a variety of reasons: Perhaps they don't hear enough English at home, or perhaps they're fluent in multiple languages but can't quite grasp the academic form of English necessary for school. Some also have special learning needs or disabilities.

A smaller number of students are recent immigrants. Some have fled strife and trauma and been out of school for years before they entered an American classroom.

In Texas, the Northside Independent School District in San Antonio has more than 107,000 students, including about 10,000 English learners.

Since the coronavirus school shutdowns, more than 100 students have joined the district. All are new arrivals from other countries who have never met their teachers in person and have never been in an American classroom. Their first introduction to school in the U.S. has been learning from home.

All of Northside's communications are in both Spanish and English. Because so many students are immigrants, Northside also translates information into Arabic, Tamil, Vietnamese, Pashto and Telegu.

Bilingual education: More U.S. schools are teaching students in two languages

When the district asked families to fill out an electronic form to receive a computer or a Wi-Fi hotspot, it went a step further with its newcomers who don't speak English well. Staff members called each family, with an interpreter on the line, to gauge their needs.

They've been able to reach about 85% of their English learners, said Victor Raga, who oversees those programs at Northside. Others have moved or change phone numbers or staff otherwise can't find them.

"For some of our families, this is the first time they've ever had their hands on a computer. It's a novelty, and they don't understand how it works," Raga said.

"What they do know is that their kids are supposed to go to and from school every day."

Working leaves little time for school

Across America, teachers say teens are picking up jobs to support their families during the economic crisis, rather than attending classes.

Latino students especially are pitching in, their teachers say.

"A lot are really adults on their own," said Matt Clark, an English as a Second Language teacher at Waltham High School in Massachusetts, about 10 miles outside of Boston.

Most of Clark's students are Latino. In recent years, his school has received more students from Central America who arrived here alone, without their parents.

"They might be living with a 21-year-old cousin and their wife and kids," Clark said. "There's a heavy push for them to contribute to their households."

Recently, one of Clark's students called into a class session from the construction site where he was working - during his lunch break. Another student called in from his landscaping job.

Matt Clark, English as a Second Language teacher at Waltham High School in Massachusetts

I had another kid call in from his landscaping job. Another who works in a local grocery store picked up a ton of extra hours.

"Another who works in a local grocery store picked up a ton of extra hours," Clark added. "She hasn't attended the virtual class sessions, but she did all the work I posted on Google Classroom. We haven't gotten formal guidance(from administrators) on how to address that."

To be accommodating, the school has made student work optional - it doesn't count for a grade. But engagement dropped precipitously once students discovered that, Clark said.

He worries that if his older teenagers aren't advancing their English now, they're even less likely to develop those skills once they're out of school.

Even for those who stay engaged, the expectations for remote learning are low.

Clark would usually see his students in class for eight hours per week. Now, the expectation is that students study Englishfor about two hours per week.

To complicate matters further, many students are living with several family members. They may struggle to find quiet places to connect.

"Sometimes students are trying to speak, and there's screaming babies in the background," Clark said.

English learners on mute

Emerging bilinguals generally start by attending self-contained classes taught by ESL teachers. As they advance, they start to attend regular classes, where mainstream teachers must integrate them into the fold.

Often, that's not happening right now.

"It's almost like the screen makes the students feel more anonymous and isolated," said Marisa Crabtree, who teaches English development at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles.

About two-thirds of her students are Latino; the other third are Asian.

Marisa Crabtree, English development teacher at Lincoln High School in Los Angeles

It's almost like the screen makes the students feel more anonymous and isolated.

"Many will just sit there with their audio on mute," she added. "In a live classroom, they'd be expected to speak English."

Crabtree said most of her English learners are hard-working students who want to improve. But they find it difficult to practice remotely.

"If you're not talking to people every day in that language you're learning, I think it's hard to stay motivated and practice," she said.

Garcia, from New America, said districts must better help all teachers support English learners. This fall, they may be teaching face to face - or, depending on coronavirus outbreaks, they may once again teach remotely, at least a few days a week.

When schools reopen: Scheduled days home, more online learning, lots of hand-washing

That makes it even more important for schools to invest in programs that help teachers integrate language learning into their lessons. But money is likely to be in short supply because of declining tax revenue.

The alternative is students may languish.

Martha Elena Cruz lives in Chicago with her four children and her husband, who contracted COVID-19 in April and has been staying home from work to recover.

Remarkably, nobody else in the apartment has tested positive. But Cruz worries that her children are falling behind. Many families she knows aren't connecting with Chicago Public Schools at all because they don't understand the technology, she said.

"It's difficult because you have to have a good internet connection, and we live in a basement, and there is no good signal," she said in Spanish.

When the internet fails, Cruz said, her children become distracted.

And then their connection to their teacher and their class disappears.

Contact Erin Richards at (414) 207-3145 or erin.richards@usatoday.com. Follow her on Twitter: @emrichards
Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.

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Coronavirus' online school is hard enough. What if you're still learning to speak English?

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The USA TODAY Network series Hecho en USA, or Made in America, focuses on the nation's growing Latino community. Roughly 80% of all Latinos living in the U.S. are American citizens, but media coverage of Hispanics tends to focus on immigration and crime, instead of how Latino families live, work and learn in their hometowns.