A teacher who educates students receiving English as a Second Language (ESL) lessons in Middle Tennessee told Fox 17 Nashville on Wednesday that the number of students who do not speak English is straining the state’s resources.
The outlet reported an anonymous teacher reported 1,000 ESL students in one district, with 120 in kindergarten alone, and that many of the foreign-born students are years behind their American counterparts.
“We have third graders who are coming in on a kindergarten level and being expected to master third-grade material and teachers in the classroom are freaking out,” the educator reportedly told the outlet. The educator added, “It’s hard to put yourself in one place where they’re all at because they’re scattered around in different classrooms so it’s hard, they’re really stretching us thin,.”
Costs for English language instruction in Tennessee schools has increased repeatedly since at least 2016, when it doubled over the course of a single fiscal year.
While not all students enrolled in ESL lessons in Tennessee are children of illegal immigrants, the report of strained ESL resources comes as the United States continues to receive thousands of illegal immigrants daily, with more than 12 million entering over the duration of the Biden-Harris administration.
The report follows a 2023 estimate by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) that found Tennessee annually spends approximately $517 million to educate the children of illegal immigrants. It additionally estimated by FAIR there were 162,000 illegal immigrants in the state at that time.
With the total burden of illegal immigrants estimated at $971.3 million for Tennessee taxpayers, education amounted to more than half of the cost.
A Tennessee Department of Education document explains schools in the Volunteer State are required by the U.S. Department of Education and the Department of Justice (DOJ) to provide “the identification of language minority students by level of English language proficiency,” then provide “ESL services to those students identified as Language learners.”
The state funds school districts’ ESL programs through attendance reporting of ESL students, meaning funding is only updated once per school year.
In 2021, the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) reported that approximately 25 percent of all public school students in the United States are now from an immigrant-headed household, including the children of both legal and illegal immigrants.
The CIS report found that 22 percent of public school students now speak another language at home, more than double the number from 9 percent in 1980.
It additionally revealed that most students who speak a language other than English at home live in an area where 39 percent of other public school students also speak a language other than English.
Tom Pappert is the lead reporter for The Tennessee Star, and also reports for The Pennsylvania Daily Star and The Arizona Sun Times. Follow Tom on X/Twitter. Email tips to pappert.tom@proton.me.
