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District presents 2024-25 emergent bilingual progress; TELPAS shows growth with areas to improve
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Summary
Montgomery ISD's annual Limited English Proficiency (LEP) report showed increases in emergent bilingual enrollment and gains on English proficiency measures, while identifying needs for more ESL-certified teachers and targeted support at the high school level.
Montgomery ISD presented its required annual report on emergent bilingual student progress for the 2024-25 school year at the Oct. 21 board meeting, highlighting growth in identification and English-language proficiency alongside staffing and achievement gaps the district plans to address.
"Would you believe that last year, we had 19 different home languages represented within our emergent bilingual student body in Montgomery ISD?" said Jennifer DeHart, the district testing coordinator and bilingual/ESL specialist, introducing the report. DeHart told trustees the district provided dual-language immersion and English-as-a-second-language (ESL) program models, and that 126 teachers district-wide held ESL certification during 2024-25.
DeHart said the district's emergent bilingual population increased to 385 students, including 129 served in the dual-language program and 243 in ESL programs; 29 students reclassified to English proficient in that year. On the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS), 36 percent of emergent bilingual students achieved an "advanced" composite level and 37 percent scored at the "intermediate" level. For third through eighth grades, STAR assessment results showed reading as the strongest subject for the group, while social studies lagged. At the high school level, U.S. History and Biology had stronger outcomes than English I and II, where less than 50 percent of emergent bilingual students were proficient.
DeHart said the district is increasing supports for teacher certification and professional development. "We need to increase our number of ESL certified teachers as this population continues to grow," she said, and noted the district reimburses the testing fee upon passing and pays for a substitute teacher if the candidate attends a prep course.
The presentation included professional development examples such as content-based language instruction and TELPAS preparation. Trustees asked about incentive structures for certification; DeHart described the existing reimbursement and substitute-support practices but did not cite additional incentive programs.
The district will continue targeted professional development and recruitment of ESL-certified teachers as part of its stated goals to raise English proficiency and subject-area achievement for emergent bilingual students.
