English Language Learners

For educators teaching English language learners, this page offers up-to-date information related to the professional development opportunities offered by PaTTAN and PDE as well as links to relevant sites and organizations that address the educational needs of ELLs.

Who are our ELLs?

• There are 45,776 English language learners in the commonwealth
• ELLs are enrolled in 462 of 630 local educational agencies in the commonwealth
• More than 200 different languages are spoken by our ELL population
• The top 10 languages spoken in the state make up 85 percent of the total
• 90 languages are each spoken by fewer than four students

The top 10 languages in Pennsylvania: Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, Russian, Arabic, Korean, Khmer, Gujarti, French, Creole & Pidgins (PDE 2008 LEP Report)

The education of English Language Learners is addressed by State regulation
22 Pa. Code § 4.26 :
Every school district shall provide a program for each student whose dominant language is not English for the purpose of facilitating the student's achievement of English proficiency and the academic standards under -language: § 4.12 (relating to academic standards). Programs under this section shall include appropriate bilingual-bicultural or English as a second language (ESL) instruction.

As used here, the term program refers to:

1. planned instructin by a qualified ESL/Bilingual teacher,
2. adaptations/modifications in the delivery of content instruction by all teachers based on the student's language proficiency level and the Pennsylvania Lanugage Proficiency Standards (PA ELPS) for ELLs as well as the Pennsylvania academic standards.