Utah faces a shortage of educators with the knowledge and skills needed to effectively support multilingual learners (MLs). Key challenges include:

• Limited educator preparation for teaching MLs and supporting their literacy development
• Few opportunities to build strong partnerships between schools and multilingual families and communities
• A lack of professional learning pathways for Utah educators to develop these specialized skills
• Limited national collaboration to advance professional learning in this area

To address these challenges, we created APEX (Advancing Pathways toward Educational eXcellence), a U.S. Department of Education–funded project.
APEX aims to:

• Strengthen teachers’ knowledge and skills for educating MLs
• Develop curricula, research, and practice briefs focused on evidence-based strategies
• Support both pre-service and in-service teachers of MLs
• Provide advanced credentials and certifications for current and future educators

APEX creates resources that incorporate evidence-based practices identified by the What Works Clearinghouse's (WWC) Educator's Practice Guide for teaching MLs. Key strategies include:

• Teaching academic vocabulary words intensively
• Integrating oral and written English language instruction into content-area teaching
• Providing small-group instructional intervention
• Strengthening family and community engagement in ML education
• Promoting family literacy using evidence-based strategies

The project also collaborates with the Teaching and Learning Coalition for Multilingual Education (TLC4ME), a national research consortium supporting quality research and practice across institutions and states.