How COVID-19 pandemic magnified challenges for Arizona students not proficient in English

Excerpt from "How COVID-19 pandemic magnified challenges for Arizona students not proficient in English"

ARIZONA - Fernanda Davila speaks only Spanish at home. The 8-year-old elementary school student lives with her parents, immigrants from Mexico, and her two younger siblings.

But at school, Fernanda's classes are taught only in English under a law passed by voters in 2000. Because of the language gap, Fernanda already struggled to understand teachers, especially when learning math. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, learning via a computer made it even harder.

All students in Arizona faced challenges when schools closed during the pandemic. Learning switched from the classroom to online instruction via Zoom for more than a year from March 2020 until spring 2021.

Standardized test data reviewed by The Arizona Republic shows that students in English language learner programs, like Fernanda, fared the worst during the pandemic.

A main reason is that students who didn't speak English faced additional challenges learning remotely because of language barriers, experts say. Long-standing inequities also played a role, they say.

"The pandemic had a really significant impact on English language learners, and I don't think it's talked about enough," said Erin Hart, senior vice president and chief of policy at Education Forward Arizona. The nonprofit seeks to improve Arizona education through programs and advocacy.

The challenges students faced when schools closed during the pandemic were magnified for students such as Fernanda whose first language is not English. English learners in Arizona are a large and growing group.

When learning suddenly switched from the classroom to remote learning via Zoom on computers, students such as Fernanda missed out on body language and other nonverbal cues, she said.

Fernanda Davila, 8, pauses to think as she completes homework in her Phoenix home on March 8, 2022.
Fernanda Davila, 8, pauses to think as she completes homework in her Phoenix home on March 8, 2022.
MONICA D. SPENCER/THE REPUBLIC
"Students had to grapple with their ability to be digitally literate, so that was a barrier for a lot of families. Imagine having to do that on top of not understanding English fully," Hart said.

What's more, parents of ELL students were often unable to help students with their schoolwork because they also didn't speak English. Parents who don't speak English had trouble communicating with teachers, creating even more barriers, Hart said.

"I think families were all in a different place, but I think especially for ELL students these issues are just magnified so much more, and the hurdles were so much bigger than other families had to face," Hart said.

The data shows that students in English language learning programs in Arizona had the lowest passing rates of any group, including students classified as homeless students, and special needs.

Fewer than 2% of ELL students who took the standardized math and reading tests during the 2020-21 school year passed the exams. It’s important to note that ELL students were not required to take the tests during the pandemic, so a large number did not. That makes it difficult to compare to previous years.

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