How to Center Emergent Bilingual Students in Your HQIM Implementation (in Texas)

For Texas school systems, the conversation around high-quality instructional materials (HQIM) goes beyond simply selecting materials. Selecting materials is the first step. But an equally important question, one that is particularly urgent for the state’s emergent bilingual (EB) students, centers around implementation and access.

 How do we implement those materials so every student can access the rigorous learning they were designed to provide?

With emergent bilingual students representing a significant portion of Texas enrollment, districts cannot address their needs as an afterthought through add-ons in the implementation process. They must be considered from the beginning. For district leaders navigating instructional materials adoption and implementation, centering emergent bilingual students requires attention to three interconnected areas: materials, instruction, and systems.

Start with access, not remediation

HQIMs are built around grade-level standards and appropriately challenging content. Yet access to rigorous content is sometimes unintentionally reduced for emergent bilingual students because they are still developing English. Language proficiency should not determine a student's opportunity to engage with grade-level ideas.

As leaders plan implementation, the question should not be: How do we make this easier for EB students? 

Instead, ask: What linguistic supports will allow students to engage with the same rigorous content as their peers? 

This distinction matters. Effective scaffolds, such as purposeful opportunities for speaking and writing, explicit attention to academic language, strategic use of students' home languages, visual and contextual supports, and structured interaction, provide access without lowering expectations.

Look beyond standards alignment

Selecting materials aligned to the TEKS is essential, but alignment alone does not indicate whether a curriculum provides strong opportunities for emergent bilingual students to learn content while developing language.

During selection and implementation, districts should examine whether materials consistently:

• Provide meaningful opportunities for students to listen, speak, read, and write about grade-level content.
• Embed language supports within core instruction rather than relying primarily on supplemental intervention.
• Support teachers in connecting content and language objectives by including the ELPS in a meaningful and actionable way.
• Build background knowledge and vocabulary without reducing the intellectual demand of tasks.
• Recognize multilingualism as an instructional asset, including opportunities for cross-linguistic connections when appropriate.

The goal is not to find a separate curriculum for emergent bilingual students. The goal is to ensure the core curriculum works for the students who will actually use it.

Make EB students visible in implementation data

Implementation monitoring often focuses on questions such as: Are teachers using the materials? Are they following the lesson sequence? Are students completing the tasks? 

These questions are important, but they are incomplete. Leaders should also consider: Who is participating in the learning, and who is not yet accessing it?

Classroom observations, student work, teacher feedback, and student data should help leaders understand whether EB students are engaging in grade-level tasks, producing academic language, participating in meaningful discourse, and receiving the scaffolds embedded in the materials. 

This shifts implementation monitoring from measuring curriculum usage to examining student access and instructional quality.

Build teacher capacity around the materials

Even the strongest curriculum cannot anticipate every student, classroom, or linguistic need. Teachers need support in understanding when to use the curriculum's scaffolds, when additional support may be necessary, and how to adapt instruction without unintentionally reducing rigor. This means professional learning for HQIMs should not live separately from professional learning for emergent bilingual students.

Curriculum and instruction teams, multilingual education leaders, special programs teams, campus administrators, and professional learning teams need shared ownership of implementation. When these functions operate independently, teachers are often left to figure out how the pieces fit together.

Make EB success a measure of HQIM success

Ultimately, centering emergent bilingual students is not an additional initiative. It tests whether HQIM implementation is accomplishing what it promises. 

Texas district leaders have an opportunity to move beyond asking whether high-quality materials have been adopted and begin asking whether those materials are creating high-quality learning experiences for every student.

When emergent bilingual students are visible in selection criteria, professional learning, classroom implementation, and continuous improvement, HQIMs become more than a curriculum decision. They become a lever for building coherent instructional systems where rigorous content and language development work together and where multilingualism is recognized as an asset to learning.

The measure of successful HQIM implementation is not simply whether the materials reach every classroom; it is whether every student can access the learning within them.

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ELSF offers hands-on support for Texas districts and publishers working to strengthen instructional materials for emergent bilingual students. Learn more about our services for districts and our services for content developers.

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