The Eagle County School District’s multilingual education department wants all students to speak more than one language
English language learner students, 25% of the district, continue to lag behind in graduation rates; pandemic put a dent in bilingual education
Chris Dillmann/Vail Daily
About half of the Eagle County School District’s students live in a household where a non-English language is spoken. Facing district-wide gaps between English language learners and native English speakers, the district’s Department of Multilingual Education is charged with both supporting these students and encouraging all students to speak more than one language.
The district’s multilingual education options provide opportunities for “English language learners and language learners of other backgrounds,” said Jessica Martinez, the district’s director of multilingual education, in a presentation to the school board on Wednesday, Jan. 22.
The multilingual education program has two main goals: to ensure that all English language learners know enough English to achieve academic success, and to encourage multilingual opportunities across the district so that every graduating student can speak more than one language.
District demographics reveal many families speak languages other than English at home
There are 32 languages that district students speak fluently other than English. For the vast majority — 98% — that language is Spanish. The three other languages spoken by more than just one family are Bulgarian (0.3%), Russian (0.3%) and Japanese (0.1%).
Twenty-five percent of Eagle County School District students are considered English language learners according to state guidelines.
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Within this, non-English proficient students make up about 10% of the district’s students, while limited English proficient students, who might speak fluent English but whose literacy lags, make up another 15% of students. Reading and writing “are the last skills to come along when you’re learning a language at a young age,” Martinez said.
Another 20% of the district are fluent in a non-English language but are not considered English language learners. These students typically either entered the school district fully bilingual or started as English language learners but achieved proficiency in English.
Closing the learning gap by graduation
The district sees a learning gap between English language learners and native English speakers at every grade level. “We do see some students achieving and closing the gap (by graduation), but not enough,” Martinez said.
The multilingual education department’s goal is for English language learners to reach a four-year graduation rate of 80%. “We’re slowly creeping toward it, so that’s a great thing,” Martinez said.
In 2024, almost 73% of English language learners graduated from high school within four years. This is close to the district’s 2020 high, which saw just over 73% of English language learners graduate in four years. The English language learner seven-year graduation rate approaches 78%, Martinez said.
The multilingual education program is taking three main tactics to address its goals.
The first is to do intentional language development and language monitoring in classrooms. “During COVID, all of that language development focus went out the window,” Martinez said.
These include setting language and learning targets and pushing for active student participation in the classroom.
The second tactic is to review and update the seal of biliteracy and bilingual pathway awards. While there is a local stakeholder group that meets “pretty regularly” to discuss this, Martinez will also participate in a state-level stakeholder group that will start meeting this month, she said.
Third, the department plans to recognize and document its own successes. “We’ve gone for quite a few years now of feeling struggles and feeling trapped due to COVID constraints and changes and growing pains as things lessened up,” Martinez said. “This year, we are seeing some spectacular things.”
The department is putting together a document on its educational systems.
“There are some really strong foundational pieces we can now put in writing,” Martinez said. “Last year or two years ago, we couldn’t even fathom.”
Offering multilingual education options throughout the district
The high percentage of students coming from non-English speaking households “sets us up really well to have dual language programs because we have those language models coming in an at a similar proportion to our native English speakers,” Martinez said.
As a result, the district offers dual language options at every grade level.
Five of the district’s eight elementary schools have full dual language programs. The programs do best when at least 30% of the school population speaks a non-English language fluently.
A dual language option is offered “in every one of our major communities,” Martinez said.
All four of the district’s middle schools offer a dual language strand of classes for students who choose to be in the dual language cohort. Seventy-five percent of district middle schools offer additional world language classes for students not enrolled in the dual language strand.
‘Struggling to keep the teachers’
Two out of four of the district’s high schools — Eagle Valley High School and Battle Mountain High School — offer the Advanced Placement (AP) Spanish Language course. But since the pandemic, the high schools have struggled to maintain high quality advanced language instruction.
“Since COVID, we’ve had some major losses at the high schools as far as world language teachers,” Martinez said. “We did have quite a few of our powerhouses that supported our seal of biliteracy and brought in some higher-level Spanish courses, they left during COVID.”
The district also removed its world language graduation requirement for students to reduce the overall number of credits needed to graduate during the pandemic. The requirement has not yet been revived.
Perhaps as a result, there is lower student interest in taking world language classes at the high school level. “We do see that it’s not as high of an interest as it was previously,” Martinez said. “It’s just not on kids’ minds as much as it was before.”
School and district leaders are considering bringing back the world language graduation requirement.
“We’re having discussions with the high school counselors and administrators, so it’s on the table,” said Phil Qualman, district superintendent. “We haven’t made any decisions on it yet.”
The district has struggled to provide additional advanced-level Spanish classes due to challenges with hiring and maintaining teachers. At the high school level, students can take Spanish literature classes if they have already taken the highest-level Spanish course at their school — likely AP Spanish Language — but schools do not always offer AP Spanish Literature. There are also native language courses.
Seal of biliteracy
The district offers a seal of biliteracy to students who can prove they have achieved high-level biliteracy in English and another language. The seal of biliteracy requires that students graduate with college ready English (measured via the SAT and/or Accuplacer, the academic assessment they take in their 11th grade year), an additional college-ready language (like achieving a three out of five or higher on the end of year AP Spanish Language test), community service and a presentation to a panel of bilingual community members where students reflect on their journey to becoming bilingual and biliterate and discuss how they will use their skills in their future.
“What we’ve found is that students tend to actually use their skills in their future when they go through this reflective process,” Martinez said.
Students who achieve the seal of biliteracy receive a stamp on their diplomas when they graduate. “I see a lot of pride in our kids and our families when they get the chance to participate in the seal of biliteracy,” Martinez said.
The department wants to see an increase in students graduating with the seal of biliteracy. In 2024, 10% of students graduated with the seal, down from 15% in 2020.
While in the past, the number of graduates that achieve the seal of biliteracy has been relatively even between the district’s two major high schools, the scale has been tipped in favor of Eagle Valley High School since the pandemic.
“Battle Mountain has taken the hits a lot as far as being able to keep their higher-level Spanish teachers, so because of that, we don’t have the strong advocacy for the seal of biliteracy that we do at Eagle Valley High,” Martinez said. There is a test the district offers that students can take instead of taking the AP Spanish Language course and test, but students need to be aware of the offering and opt in to take it.
The lack of higher-level Spanish classes may have prohibited some bilingual students from achieving the seal of biliteracy in recent years. “I do think we’ll be able to bring those students back in as long as we’re able to be consistent,” Martinez said.
Additional challenges: Straining interpretation services, fear amongst families
The district has just four language interpreters to assist families. Over the last few years, there has been a higher demand for interpretation and translation services, straining these interpreters.
“Coming back from COVID, we’re seeing a lot of events happening at schools after hours … and it’s wonderful, but it’s really stretching our interpretation staff thin,” Martinez said. “Ideally, we would have one (interpreter) in each school that would also act as a family liaison and do parent outreach,” Martinez said.
The department has been testing out different technological interpretation options at events like school board meetings.
The multilingual education department has also been hearing concerns from students and families related to recent federal political changes.
“There is a lot of fear. You’re probably seeing that and hearing about that, or will be in the next couple of weeks, because we do see a lot of families stressing out kids, and the things that they’re talking about with different changes in our political climate. It’s really difficult for students to learn when they’re living with a lot of fear,” Martinez said.
In recent years, the district has also seen an increase in students whose formal education has been interrupted. “That means (for example) they come as a ninth grader, the last time they were in school was in first grade, and the only thing they can do is read their name or write their name,” Martinez said. “We do see huge gaps in education in some of the newer immigrants that we’ve been seeing in the past couple of years.”
These students need interventionists, Martinez said, as their learning needs are so far behind their peers that it poses extreme challenges to meet their needs in age-appropriate classrooms.
