Is Funding for English Learners Equitable Across CT and MA Public School Districts?

Introduction: English Learners

In Connecticut, Multilingual learners (MLs) are defined as public school students whose primary language is not English and whose English proficiency poses a barrier to equitable learning in the regular school program. Massachusetts, similarly, defines ELs as any student who does not speak English or whose primary language is not English and who is unable to satisfactorily complete classwork in English. English learners are also commonly referred to as English learners (ELs) and English language learners (ELLs).

Educational funding for ELs ensures that students and educators have the resources to remove linguistic barriers to prioritize accessible education and maximize long-term success. The purpose of this data story is to answer the question, “Do Connecticut and Massachusetts equitably distribute school funding across districts with higher percentages of multilingual learners?” In Massachusetts, 90% of school districts have at least one EL student; however, 19% of all districts have at least 100 ELs. Similarly, 7% of Connecticut school districts have over 20% of ELs in their student population. Equitable funding signifies that the money allotted to EL programs is proportional to the percentage of ELs within each district. This is in contrast to having equal funding for all districts without accounting for the change in need across districts.

Funding for ELs ensures equitable learning opportunities for the 10% EL students who make up an increasing proportion of public school students, in both Connecticut and . Notably, districts in Hartford and New Haven serve EL students who speak over 50 unique languages at home. In the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts, funding for elementary-secondary education is sourced from federal grants, state funds, and local funds. Connecticut’s Bilingual Education Program and Massachusetts’s Transitional Bilingual Education Program are designed to help students become proficient in English, such that they are able to master the same academic content as their peers. Both programs use English as the instructional language to facilitate this learning. By understanding the funding that is available for the Bilingual Education Programs, the Transitional Bilingual Education Program, and other school-based support, we can better understand how multilingual funding varies across different school districts in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Change default navigation labels (such as "Section 1") to customized labels to guide your readers. While some authors use traditional headers (such as "Findings" or "Sources & Methods"), you're welcome to innovate with more creative headers (such as "Why It Matters" or "How We Made This"). Be sure to EDIT names in TWO locations in the template: the Navigation Container (around lines 30-50) and the corresponding Sections labels further below. EDIT only the reader-friendly labels, and do not change the underlying code.

Table 1. Explore the intereactive table . This table shows the precentage of English Learners in Massachussetts by district.

EDIT Section 3 Label

Create a separate section to describe how you obtained your data, key steps in your process, and cautions for interpreting its meaning. Write for an audience of future Trinity College students who may wish to replicate your steps. Write in HTML format and always include links to data sources, like this example from CT Open Data. Also link to your shared Google Sheets when appropriate.

Give credit to people, organizations, resources, and tools that helped you to create this data story. Write in HTML format and include links when appropriate. When you paraphrase or quote from a specific reading, cite it using any standard academic citation style (such as MLA or APA inline citations), and include the full reference in a bibliography section at the end of your data story. For help with creating citations, I highly recommend the Zbib.org tool. Insert any URL, but you may need to click the Edit button to manually add missing details, such as author and date if the tool does not automatically recognize them, as shown in Image 1 and 2 below.

Image 1: After inserting a URL into the ZBib.org tool, you may need to click the Edit button to manually add missing details.

Image 2: Clicking the Edit button in ZBib allows you to enter or correct missing details, such as the full Website Title.

Below are sample sentences with MLA inline citations that would appear in the body of the data story, followed by the full references that would appear in the bibliography at the bottom:

Sample sentences

The City of Hartford recently created a housing code that requires the registration of the full names and contact information for all owners of apartment buildings -- including the officers of Limited Liability Corporations (LLCs) -- in order to "close municipal loopholes that allow anonymous slumlords to operate unchecked" (Lurye).

In most towns, the percentage of high-needs students enrolled in traditional public schools surpasses those enrolled in magnet, charter, and technical schools in the most recent academic year (“Resident Town Export”).

...later, insert a bibliography at the end of your data story:

Works Cited:

Lurye, Rebecca. “New Housing Code in Hartford Would Keep Slumlords from Hiding Behind LLCs.” Hartford Courant, May 31, 2019. https://www.courant.com/community/hartford/hc-news-hartford-housing-code-20190531-hcke2jo2x5fpdgz75xf4hlv2ki-story.html.

“Resident Town Export.” CT.Gov EdSight, https://public-edsight.ct.gov/Overview/Resident-Town-Dashboard/Resident-Town-Export. Accessed 29 Nov. 2022.

Optional Hint: To display a clickable web link in the bibliography, look at the HTML code in GitHub for the examples above. See how the URL appears twice: once in the "href" and again in the display text. This is not required for your data story, but it looks good and helps readers to click and view your sources.

EDIT Section 4 Label: Advanced Tips

All of your data visualizations should be interactive. But if you need to insert a static image, you can prepare a JPG or PNG file (preferably with all lower-case text and no spaces in the filename) and upload it directly into your GitHub repo, as shown below:

Next, write an HTML image tag ("img") that points to a source image ("src") stored in your repo, as shown below:

Figure 2: Describe your image in a caption, and always credit the source if someone else created it.

Optional Subheaders

Use subheader tags (such as "h4") to break up long sections of text without creating a new section.

Collaborate with Co-Author

Compose and edit your data story in Google Docs, where co-authors can work simultaneously. When you're ready to migrate to GitHub, create ONE data story template in ONE author's GitHub account, because only ONE person can edit at a time. But the GitHub account owner can go to Settings > Collaborators > Add People to invite a co-author by using their GitHub username, as shown below. But be careful not to overwrite each other's edits!

Change background colors

This template uses Bootstrap background colors. For example, search this "index.html" file for "bg-primary", which sets the navigation bar (line 28), header (line 56), and footer (around line 245) to blue. Changing it to "bg-secondary" switches those colors to gray. Learn about other color options at the link above.

Quicker Edits on your Local Computer

Instead of slowly making edits on GitHub and waiting for them to appear online, you can quickly make multiple edits in your local computer and view them instantly in your browser. Here's a list of steps:

1. Go to your GitHub repo and select Code > Download Zip and uncompress the folder.

2. Install a code editor tool. My favorite free open-source option is the open-source Pulsar text editor, but there are many other options.
3. Open the "index.html" file with your code editor and make edits.
4. In your browser, go to File > Open to view the "index.html" file that is on your local computer. Since this version is temporarily stored on your local computer, your browser bar will display its location in a local format "file..." rather than the online format "https..."

5. In your code editor, save changes to your "index.html" file, then refresh your browser to instantly view your changes made on your local computer.

6. After editing, upload the contents of "index.html" from your local computer to your online GitHub account, then view your edits the public web.

Two Options for Tables

If you need to create a table, first try the Datawrapper Tables tool -- see HODV Chapter 8 -- and embed the results like this:

Table 1: Add your standalone caption here.

A second option is to use the Tables Generator HTML tool. Go to File > Import or manually enter your table data, then Generate the HTML code, and paste it here, similar to this sample:

Header A	Header B	Header C
123	456	789
987	654	321

Table 2: Add your caption here.