When the Software Catalog Has No Room for Pashto or Dari

An approved software catalog can clear privacy and accessibility review and still leave a newcomer student unable to write a sentence in the language they read best. English learners were 10.6 percent of US public school students in fall 2021. Translating an interface is one problem; typing in that language is a different one, and it is rarely reviewed.

TL;DR: Multilingual access gets reviewed as a translation question, which covers menus and family letters but not whether a child can produce text in their own script. Federal data put English learners at 10.6 percent of public school enrollment in fall 2021, from 0.8 percent in West Virginia to 20.2 percent in Texas, and more than 80,000 Afghans resettled here from 2021. Home-language input capability is a criterion a technology director can add to the next catalog review without a new budget line.

Read the language column on your own approved list

Open the district's approved-tools inventory and try one filter: which of these accepts typed input in Persian, Pashto or Dari, and which of them teaches a child to produce it. Interface language is usually documented. Input capability usually is not documented at all, because nobody asked the question at intake, and a vendor is not going to volunteer a gap.

The population behind the question is not hypothetical. NCES reports English learners at 10.6 percent of US public school students in fall 2021, some 5.3 million children, ranging from 0.8 percent in West Virginia to 20.2 percent in Texas. More than 80,000 Afghans were resettled during Operation Allies Welcome in 2021, the Urban Institute records, with more than 70,000 of them on two-year humanitarian parole; Child Trends' toolkit for schools working with Afghan families notes that the US Afghan immigrant population has nearly quadrupled to roughly 195,000 in a decade. Those children are in elementary and middle school now, in the 2026-27 catalog review cycle.

Interface translation and input capability are different requirements

A translated menu tells a child what a button does. It does not give them a keyboard.

Typing in Persian, Pashto or Dari needs three things a translated interface does not supply: a right-to-left script that runs the other way across the screen, a layout mapping the child's fingers can learn, and instruction in that script rather than a transliteration. The scripts are also not interchangeable. Dari uses the Persian script with Afghan vocabulary and pronunciation, while Pashto adds retroflex consonants that neither Persian nor Dari uses, so a tool that handles Persian input does not automatically handle a Pashto speaker's alphabet.

This matters for a specific classroom moment. A newcomer who is literate in Pashto at grade level can write an argument, cite evidence and organize a paragraph. Hand them an English-only input path and all of that becomes invisible, and the teacher's first data point on that child is an empty document.

A district that can translate its parent letters but cannot let a child type in their own alphabet has solved communication and left production unsolved.

A catalog-review criterion you can add this cycle

This costs a form field and ten minutes per tool, not a budget request.

Score every tool on the current list, not only the new applicants. If the district's digital-equity plan commits to access for multilingual learners, this is what turns that sentence into something an audit can check. The US Department of Education's Newcomer Tool Kit, published for educators working directly with immigrant, asylee and refugee students, is the reference to hand to the committee that says this is out of scope.

A criterion that fits in a form field is the only kind that survives a procurement cycle.

The objection: home-language typing is not the district's job

Put the strongest version of it on the table. Our mandate is English acquisition and grade-level content. Title III money exists to move English proficiency. No state assessment rewards this district for a child's Pashto typing speed, and if home-language practice takes minutes out of English instruction, the trade is bad for the student.

Most of that is right. If the choice were English instruction against Pashto keyboarding, English wins on the child's own interest, and I would not argue the other way. But the cheapest version of home-language input does not compete for those minutes. It sits where the school already schedules technology practice, and the keyboard habit being built is the same habit in either script: a stable finger-to-key mapping and eyes on the screen. What I cannot show you is a study proving that Pashto practice raises a child's English typing speed. Nobody has run it, and I am not going to imply otherwise.

What we built, and what we cannot claim

We built structured courses in Persian, Pashto and Dari because we could not find them elsewhere, which is a statement about our own catalog rather than a survey of the market. Meta Typing Club runs right-to-left lessons in multiple international languages, more than 2,400 in total, with per-language speed and accuracy for each student, and homework a teacher can assign to a class or to named students with an optional due date. As far as we are aware, structured Pashto and Dari courses are close to unique. Check that claim yourself against your own list; that is the whole point of this post.

Now the limits, because a technology director is going to find them anyway. There is no Clever, ClassLink, OneRoster, LTI or SAML integration, so no roster sync: a school adds students by CSV file or one by one, and a teacher or parent can create an account with a first name, last name and practice languages, no child email address, and no date of birth collected. Our public School Agreement states that student data is stored and processed in the United States, but our subprocessors are not publicly documented, so we are in no position to assert a compliance posture; an adult can delete their own account in Settings, and a child account is deleted by the parent, teacher or school that created it. A single school can buy a plan at a published yearly price, and districts and school networks receive a quote; an independent teacher can evaluate on their own account at no cost and with no student limit, and once a real school class is on it, that is school use and goes through your data privacy agreement first.

Ask us for a signed data privacy agreement, a named subprocessor list, a written retention period and a statement of what a child account stores, and ask every other vendor on the list the same four questions.

Key takeaways

• English learners were 10.6 percent of US public school students in fall 2021, 5.3 million children, from 0.8 percent in West Virginia to 20.2 percent in Texas.
• More than 80,000 Afghans resettled in the US during Operation Allies Welcome in 2021, and the Afghan immigrant population has reached roughly 195,000.
• Interface translation and input capability are separate requirements; a translated menu does not give a child a keyboard in their own script.
• Pashto is not covered by Persian support, because it adds consonants Persian and Dari do not use.
• Four review questions turn a digital-equity commitment into an auditable criterion, at a cost of about ten minutes per tool.
• Meta Typing Club has no rostering integration; a school adds students by CSV file or one by one, or a teacher or parent creates them, with no child email and no date of birth collected.
• Districts and school networks receive a quote; an independent teacher's own account is free with no student limit, but it is one teacher's evaluation.

Frequently asked questions

How do I find out whether anything on our approved list supports these languages?

Ask each vendor two questions in writing: which languages accept typed input, and which have a lesson sequence rather than a translated interface. Then verify by typing a sentence in a live account and reloading. Ten minutes per tool, and the answers belong in the inventory.

What does this cost for a district?

Districts and school networks receive a quote billed by invoice or purchase order; a single school sees published yearly prices, USD 250 for School Plus and USD 500 for School Pro. Ask for a written per-student quote with a term length before it reaches a budget conversation, and price the privacy review separately from the license.

Does this need a new data privacy agreement?

If student records touch it, yes, on your template or a consortium one. The national agreement route is well used: the Student Data Privacy Consortium counts more than 222,000 executed agreements since 2016. We are a typing platform, not a compliance authority, so hold us to the artifacts rather than to assurances.

Can we import our roster?

Partly. There is no Clever, ClassLink, OneRoster, LTI or SAML integration in the product, but a school can upload a CSV file with OneRoster-style column names or add students one by one. That is still a cost in setup minutes, and it is also why a pilot can run on neutral class identifiers with the name mapping kept inside the school.

We have 30 newcomer students. Is that enough to justify this?

Thirty students is one section, and the criterion costs about ten minutes per tool to apply regardless of headcount. Whether a purchase follows is a separate question with a quote attached. Adding the question to the review costs nothing and stops the gap being rediscovered next year.

What to change in the next review cycle

Home-language input is a review criterion, not a purchase decision, and the two should not be confused. Add the four questions to the intake form for the 2026-27 cycle, score the tools already on the list, and see whether any of them lets a Pashto-literate ten-year-old produce a paragraph. If none does, look at the structured Pashto typing course and the Dari lessons, read how a district vets a child-facing vendor's data practices, and ask us for a written quote.