In February 2018 Jim Reams wrote an edCircuit report on rising numbers of English language learners, with examples from Norwalk, Idaho and Chicago. Below it, a 2026 update adds the most recent federal figures on who these students are and where they attend school.
Are we doing enough to help ELL students?
edCircuit Breakdown
In Norwalk, CT, the district is seeing remarkable progress for students in their ELL program. According to Superintendent Steven Adamowski, Norwalk has become a district of choice for ELL students, partly because of their success among the district’s ELL students. Several ELL students have become valedictorians recently.
Norwalk is increasing their budget for ELL teaching, which cost approximately 30% more per student than teaching native English speakers. In Idaho, there is a $3.87 million line item in the budget for ELL education, which translates to $210 per student. That is down from $250 per student just two years ago, and lawmakers are hoping to increase the line item number by $1 million.
In Chicago, two students were honored who showed the most improved academic improvement in the Niles Township High School District 219, Niles North junior Joselyne Ramos-Jacobo and Niles West junior Rami Roeil. Both students are products of the school’s ELL program. “Joselyne is a great student,” according to ELL teacher Fred Wulfram. “She has shown the drive and desire to learn through her effort in and out of the classroom, and it shows with her consistent great results in all areas of learning: listening, speaking, reading and writing! She is a pleasure to have in class.”
edCircuit Analysis
With immigrant population from around the world increasing in many U.S. school districts, the need for effective ELL programs and teachers to run them become magnified. A lack of mastery of the language results in poor performance in school, discouraging kids and often leading to them dropping out.
In Texas, 52% of all public school students are categorized as Hispanic, and the makeup of Hispanics in the general population is rising. One teacher in Austin sees opportunity in ELL programs to improve standardized test scores in an unexpected subject, math.
Joy Lin, an educator in Austin, and an academic advisor to Sentence Analytics sees otherwise excellent math students get stymied by math questions on tests not because of the mathematics, but because of the wording of the problems. Complex word problems make math tests more of an English test for these kids, and she sees opportunities to improve outcomes through sentence diagramming. “You have to break down the sentence to realize what words are the important verbs or important nouns and what words are just descriptive,” she says. “You’re trying to get the essence of what the sentence is saying.”
ELL programs in schools in 2026: who is enrolled and what leaders should plan for
ELL programs in schools serve a larger share of students than when the report above was written, and the most recent federal numbers show where the growth is. The term English language learner is still common in schools, while the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) uses the term English learner. Both describe students who are developing English proficiency while they study grade-level content. The figures below come from the NCES Condition of Education indicator, last updated in May 2024, and describe fall 2021.
How many students, and where
English learners were 10.6 percent of public school students in fall 2021, about 5.3 million students, up from 9.4 percent, or 4.6 million, in fall 2011. Enrollment dipped to 5.0 million in fall 2020 and rose again the next year. The share differs widely by state. Texas had the highest at 20.2 percent, followed by California at 18.9 percent and New Mexico at 18.8 percent, while West Virginia had the lowest at 0.8 percent. Thirteen states and the District of Columbia had shares of 10 percent or more. Between 2011 and 2021 the share rose in 38 states and the District of Columbia and fell in 12, with Rhode Island showing the largest increase at 6.9 percentage points.
Location matters for planning. The share was 9.8 percent in cities, 7.9 percent in suburbs, 7.5 percent in towns and 4.8 percent in rural areas. A rural or small-town district with a few English learners spread across several schools faces different choices from a city district with hundreds.
Grade levels and home languages
English learners are concentrated in the youngest grades: 14.7 percent of kindergartners, compared with 10.5 percent of sixth graders, 9.0 percent of eighth graders and 6.1 percent of twelfth graders. The indicator does not explain the pattern. For a principal it suggests kindergarten and early elementary teachers are most likely to need training and support.
Spanish was the home language of 76.4 percent of English learners, about 4.0 million students. Arabic followed at 2.5 percent, then English at 2.2 percent, Chinese at 1.8 percent and Vietnamese at 1.4 percent. Language diversity is growing at the edges: the number of English learners with Swahili as a home language rose from about 6,000 in 2011-12 to 21,800, and Portuguese from 15,700 to 50,200. A district can have a strong Spanish-language plan and still need interpreters, family outreach and materials for languages it has not served before.
Services and students with disabilities
About 93.1 percent of English learners, 4.9 million students, received services in English language instruction educational programs in fall 2021, down from 94.5 percent in fall 2011. The share varied by state: Georgia had the lowest at 48.9 percent and Illinois 55.3 percent. NCES also reports that 15.8 percent of English learners were students with disabilities, compared with 14.7 percent of all public school students, which means districts need ways to tell language development needs from disability needs and to serve students who have both.
What this means for the examples in the original
The 2018 report described Norwalk’s budget for English learners and a line item in Idaho, along with student honors in Chicago. Those budget figures are from 2018, and this update did not verify current spending in either place, so they should be read as examples from that year. The numbers above support the report’s central point that more districts need effective programs and trained teachers. The report’s Austin example, in which a teacher saw otherwise strong math students held back by the wording of test questions, is covered in more detail in edCircuit’s article on the English inside math exams.
A leader reading these figures can take three steps: look up the district’s own share of English learners by school and grade, list the home languages of enrolled students rather than assuming one, and ask whether early-grade teachers have the time and training the kindergarten numbers suggest they need.
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