Parents whose native language isn’t English aren’t able to fully engage with school life

Close to 3 in 4 teachers (71 percent) surveyed said they had taught children who speak English as a second language in the past three years. No surprise if you’re a teacher yourself – but definitely surprising to those who aren’t. Something not at all surprising? Over half of the teachers we surveyed said they worry that parents whose native language isn’t English aren’t able to fully engage with school life – not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t have sufficient language skills to be able to do so.

According to the recent survey, the good news is that half (55 percent) of teachers say their schools translate parent correspondence into other languages. But, of these schools, 36 percent rely on a teacher who speaks the language to do it and 16% use a professional translation service – all of which costs a lot of time and money. That’s not great news. The worst news, though, is that more than one-quarter (28 percent) don’t do any translations at all.

The top challenges teachers are most concerned about when it comes to communicating with the parents of English Language Learners:

> 71 percent of teachers said parents not being able to help their children with their homework or at-home projects;
> 50 percent of teachers worried parents have trouble comprehending special education needs or other learning difficulties;
> 58 percent of teachers are concerned about parents understanding any particular praise for, or worries, about their child;
> 40 percent of teachers worry about whether parents will attend teacher-parent conferences; and
> 45 percent of teachers worried that language barriers prevent parents from offering to volunteer on class trips.

In addition, close to half of teachers say that they have had to talk to a parent of an English Language Learner (ELL) about a school matter through their child (46 percent) or an older sibling (49 percent) rather than with the parent directly. It might be why 52 percent of teachers say that parents of ELL learners are sometimes unaware that their child had important tests on certain days.

Research was commissioned by ClassDojo and carried amongst a random sample of 563 U.S. K-12 teachers by SurveyMonkey between October 25-26, 2018.

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