These programs have primarily taken the form of grant money available for school districts, or money to incentivize current or prospective members of the education workforce to get a bilingual or ELL endorsement.
Currently, Washington State has 87 schools in 38 school districts operating dual language programs (OSPI, 2020), and the state government has sought to support and expand these programs over the last 4 years.
In 2015, the state legislature passed a budget that appropriated funds for OSPI “to implement a K-12 dual language expansion grant program to build and expand well implemented, sustainable dual language programs and create state level infrastructure dedicated to dual language instruction” (SB 6052 § 501(36)(a), 2015).
In 2017, House Bill 1445 was passed to formally create the K-12 dual language grant program and “grow capacity for high quality dual language learning in the common schools and in state-tribal compact schools” (HB 1445 § 2(1)(a), 2017).
The final budget for the 2019-2021 biennium exceeded the requested amount and OSPI was granted $3,288,000 towards supporting and expanding the K-12 dual language grant program (HB 1109, 2019). OSPI’s 2019-21 Biennial Budget Decision Package (2019) indicates that these funds may be used for teacher recruitment, “program evaluation, instructional coaching, school visits, professional learning, [and] supplemental instructional materials” (p. 8), as well as 3.5 full-time equivalent employees to provide administrative support for the program.
Recruiting Washington Teachers (RWT) is a type of “Grow Your Own” program, which focuses on helping high school students “explore cultural identity and educational opportunities through the lens of the teaching profession” (PESB, 2019d, para. 1). The goal of this program is to “strengthen the pathway from high school to teaching,” and hopefully produce more certified teachers with strong ties to the community (PESB, 2019d, para. 2).
An expansion of the RWT program, the Bilingual Educators Initiative, was mandated in 2017 through HB 1445 and is geared directly towards training a dual language teacher workforce (PESB, 2019e).
The RWT Bilingual Educators Initiative aims to take bilingual high school students and encourage them to become bilingual teachers or counselors in that same community (PESB, 2019e). This initiative takes the same approach overall as the RWT program but provides additional “resources for supporting teacher academies with a bilingual focus” and incorporates the seal of bi-literacy (PESB, 2019e, para. 3), which is a proficiency that students can test for in high school (OSPI, 2019a).
The funds for expanding an RWT program to include the Bilingual Educators Initiative are available in $10,000 mini grants (PESB, 2019e). In the 2018-19 school year, four of these grants were awarded to a combination of districts and district consortiums, representing seven school districts in total (PESB, 2019e). The RWT program has been given $1,244,00 in funding for the 2019-21 biennium “with priority given to programs that support bilingual teachers, teachers from populations that are underrepresented, and English language learners” (HB 1109 § 503(1)(c)).
Washington state also just completed a Grow Your Own pilot program, which was privately funded by the Gates Foundation (PESB, 2019f). This pilot program supported seven districts to help them “build an educator workforce... representative of the student population the districts serve” and fill high need subject areas (PESB, 2019f, para. 1). Though school districts can implement grow your own programs on their own – and many are, through the Recruiting Washington Teachers program – the future of this state-level program is currently undecided.
To prepare the state for the rapidly increasing demand for bilingual educators, several programs have been implemented by the PESB, the Washington Student Achievement Council (WSAC), and OSPI. These programs take the form of scholarships for current or prospective teachers, initiatives to help schools recruit from the local labor pool, and stipends for teachers and paraeducators with certain certificates or endorsements.
PESB and WSAC offer a suite of “conditional” scholarships to support teacher workforce training (Washington Student Achievement Council [WSAC], 2019). While not expressly for training bilingual educators, these scholarships have been created to help alleviate shortage areas, which are defined as “subjects or locations of high need” (WSAC, 2019, para. 1).
Since there is a statewide shortage of bilingual and ELL endorsed teachers, these programs are thought of as part of the solution. Additionally, the section in the 2019-21 biennial budget passed by the Washington legislature that provides funding for these scholarships says explicitly that “priority shall be given to programs that support bilingual teachers and English language learners” (HB 1109 § 1401(5)(b)).
For an explanation of the different conditional scholarships available to prospective bilingual educators, please see Appendix A.
As funding increases for dual language education in Washington, OSPI has plotted out next steps for dual language education in the 2019-21 biennium. Other than continued funding for the programs outlined previously, OSPI plans to build the dual language support network and implement new standards to support districts in building these programs (OSPI, 2019c).
These efforts will include the beginning of the Tribal Dual Language Professional Learning Network, the adoption of “Spanish Language Arts and aligned English and Spanish language proficiency standards,” and establishing a rubric based on a statewide framework that can be used to self-evaluate a K-12 dual language program (OSPI, 2019c, para. 3).]
