May 2011 Archives

Having school-level instructional teams is one tool that has helped San Diego's Chula Vista Elementary School District succeed with English-language learners, according to a long-time administrator in the district.

John M. Nelson III, the assistant superintendent for instructional services and support in the school district, writes in the May issue of The School Administrator, that school-level instructional teams have helped each school to tailor teaching and learning for that site.

In Jan. 2010, I wrote for EdWeek about how implementation of response to intervention, a multi-tiered approach to supporting struggling students, had helped the Chula Vista school district succeed with English-language learners. A third of that district's students are ELLs. I didn't mention in my article how school-level instructional teams supported that implementation.

For any school district wanting to replicate the success of Chula Vista with improving the academic performance of its students, I recommend that you read Nelson's explanation for how instructional teams work there. The teams include the school principal and a subgroup of teachers—usually representatives of each grade level. They've produced some frameworks to support learning, such as content and language objectives derived from the state's standards for each discipline and grade level.

This sounds like the kind of work that ELL experts are suggesting will need to happen as states implement the common-core standards to include ELLs.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:44 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition is hosting a free webinar on how to teach science to English-language learners. It's scheduled for June 7, 3:30 p.m. to 4:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Paula Hooper, a senior science educator and learning research scientist for the Institute for Inquiry, the Exploratorium, is the guest for the webinar. She'll be talking about implementing a science, technology, engineering, and math program in a San Francisco school as well as offering ideas for helping ELLs to acquire science knowledge. The institute, according to its website, provides professional development in inquiry-based learning.

Improving how educators teach science to ELLs is also an interest of Rosalinda B. Barrera, the director of the office of English-language acquisition of the U.S. Department of Education. The clearinghouse has a contract with that office to support states in implementing Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act, the part of the law authorizing funds for English-language acquisition programs. Barrera has told me that her office plans to host a forum about STEM and ELLs sometime this summer.

So stay tuned for more information on this important topic.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The Obama administration wants to see school districts move forward in making native-language assessments available for English-language learners, a White House official said yesterday, prompted by comments from a member of the President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics.

Roberto Rodriguez, a White House adviser on education issues, was prompted to speak about ELL policy issues when Patricia Gándara, the co-director of the Civil Rights Project at the University of California, Los Angeles, complained to him that federal policy has had a role in "killing off our bilingual and dual-language programs because we don't have appropriate assessments."

Gándara expressed concern as well that the federal government has funded two separate competitions for the creation of assessments pegged to the states' common-core academic standards, one for content tests for all students and another separate one for English-language-proficiency tests for ELLs. The developers of each of those kinds of tests "are on different timelines and not even talking with each other," she contended.

Rodriguez answered: "I agree that we backslipped in respect to high-quality bilingual education for our kids."

He said the Obama administration wants to see that the new generation of tests are valid and reliable for ELLs. "It's something we will watch closely," he said. And he added that the administration would like to see native-language tests become available.

Rodriquez told the commission: "The quality of instruction for ELLs needs to be an issue this commission wrestles with."

Talk about the instruction of Latino students with language barriers, however, didn't play a big role in the discussions of the commissioners during the first day of their first meeting.

But the commissioners did talk a lot about how the Spanish-language media can play an important role in helping Latino parents to learn how they can support their children to go to college and earn degrees. One of the commissioners is Cesar Conde, the president of Univision Networks at Univision Communications, Inc., which provides TV and radio programming in Spanish in the United States.

Conde described to the panel a two-year-old campaign, called Es El Momento, underwritten by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (which also helps fund the publisher of Education Week), that aims to build awareness among Latinos of the benefits of a college education. "Most of our community was not aware of the real economic impact of not graduating from high school and not graduating from college," Conde said.

Univision's web site posts materials for the campaign in English and Spanish.

Through the effort, Univision has hosted grassroots gatherings to promote the value of high education attainment in Miami, New York, and Los Angeles. The campaign also involves public service announcements broadcast by TV, radio, and social media, and programming that features education experts talking about issues affecting the success of Latinos in school.

An Es El Momento (which translates as "It's the moment") education awareness event at California State University in Los Angeles drew 20,000 people, said Eduardo Padrón, the president of Miami Dade College and the chairman of the commission. "That's a testimony to the fact that Latino families really care," he said.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

President Obama has selected two experts on English-language learners to be among the 15 members of the newly formed President's Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanics. I'm headed downtown right now to attend the commission's first meeting.

The two researchers on the panel who specialize in the education of English-language learners are Patricia Gándara and Alfredo J. Artiles.

Gándara is the co-director of the Civil Rights Project based at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has conducted a lot of research about how many English-language learners don't have access to the core curriculum in schools.

Artiles is a professor of education, culture, and society at Arizona State University and has conducted important studies on English-language learners who have disabilities.

The other commissioners are Alicia Abella, Sylvia Acevedo, Daniel J. Cardinali, Francisco G. Cigarroa, Cesar Conde, Luis Ricardo Fraga, JoAnn Gama, Maria Neira, Lisette Nieves, Darline P. Robles, Ricardo Romo, Manny Sanchez, and Marta Tienda.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Massachusetts school districts are likely mistakenly identifying some English-language learners as having disabilities when they don't and also are not adequately serving many of those who are properly identified, a report released today concludes.

The author of the hard-hitting report, Maria de Lourdes B. Serpa, a professor of bilingual special education at Lesley University in Cambridge, Mass., reports that the proportion of English-language learners placed in special education increased from 9.8 percent to 14.8 percent in Massachusetts over the last decade. (Nationwide, about 13 percent of all children are identified with having disabilities and experts have always told me that the proportion should be the same for ELLs as non-ELLs.)

The report was released today by the Mauricio Gastón Institute for Latino Community Development and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts Boston. I bring it to your attention because the identification of ELLs with disabilities has proved to be a persistent challenge across the nation. Officials of New York City's school system, for example, have told me that in the school district's 2009 demographic report, 22 percent of the city's ELLs were classified as having a disability.

The office of English-language acquisition of the U.S. Department of Education also sees the identification and education of ELLs with disabilities to be enough of a challenge that it co-hosted a daylong forum on the subject with the Council of the Great City Schools last week in Las Vegas.

Serpa says that the recent dramatic increase of ELLs in special education raises questions about the effectiveness of the ballot measure implemented in 2003 in the state that restricted the use of students' native languages in schools. She cites research on similar restrictive language policies in Arizona and California that found that when language support for students was decreased, special education placement increased. That same research showed that ELLs in English immersion classes—the default educational approach for ELLs in Arizona, California, and Massachusetts—were almost three times as likely to be placed in special education as ELLs who were in bilingual education programs.

The report, however, doesn't give enough evidence for readers to conclude that the proportion of ELLs with disabilities spiked only after implementation of the language-restrictive policy in 2003. It shows that during the 2001-02 and 2002-03 school years, that proportion climbed steadily. The ballot measure was passed in November 2002. The proportion also declined from its peak for the decade of 16 percent in the 2008-09 school year to 14.8 percent this school year. The report doesn't include statistics prior to the 2001-02 school year.

In addition, the report says, the process that many Massachusetts school districts use for identifying ELLs is so fraught with problems that some such children get stuck in the prereferral mode of the evaluation process for years and are never placed in special education when they should be and some others are placed in special education when they don't have a disability at all but rather are struggling with a language barrier.

Serpa does not just toss out generalizations without backing them up. She carefully explains federal laws protecting the rights of both children who are new to English and children who have disabilities and spells out how Massachusetts schools are not complying with those laws.

For example, she quotes the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act as saying that assessments should be provided and administered in a child's "native language or other mode of communication." She contends that typically school districts use American English, norm-referenced tests to evaluate ELLs that are translated into the native language "on the spot without validation." She adds, "This procedure is not acceptable. The evaluation of ELLs suspected of a disability should include English-proficiency measures and academic skills measures."

Also, she points out that two categories of disabilities in which ELLs are overrepresented are "communication impairment" and "intellectual impairment." Those kinds of disabilities seem particularly vulnerable to misdiagnosis with ELLs, she says. "In other words, the distribution of diagnoses makes it appear likely that some students whose limited-English skills make it hard to keep up with classroom work are being labeled as having disabilities and are being inappropriately assigned to special education programs, when the school itself is failing to meet the student's educational needs."

The report contains a number of recommendations to improve processes for identifying and educating ELLs with disabilities, such as that the state should provide additional guidance on interventions, referral, nondiscriminatory assessment and evaluation of ELLs.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:26 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Over at the Teacher channel, educators are giving advice to a teacher of English-language learners on how to work within constraints provided by administrators that don't seem to show an understanding of the needs of such students.

The teacher (we don't know if it's a man or woman) says that he/she has been charged with correcting ELLs' speaking skills and told at the same time to use a PowerPoint presentation and particular reading textbook. The teacher poses this question: "How does a PowerPoint lesson help students practice their English-speaking skills if I do more talking than they do, and if there are very few speaking opportunities for them?"

A couple of suggestions from readers in the forum are for the teacher to create a PowerPoint that is a game that requires students to respond verbally, or that includes open-ended questions for students.

The discussion touches on a point that I've heard a number of researchers in the field talk about recently, that teachers should facilitate student-to-student interaction in their classes so that ELLs have opportunities to practice using the language. But it may take some extra effort by teachers to counter more traditional approaches to education in which teachers do most of the talking in a class, and to help administrators understand what kinds of approaches are most effective with ELLs.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:17 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

If you have implemented a novel approach to educating English-language learners that shows promise, the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition would like to know about it. The clearinghouse has a contract with the U.S. Department of Education to support states in how they use federal dollars for English-language-acquisition programs.

The clearinghouse has called for educators to write about their innovations with ELLs in 300 words or less and submit them for review. (Hat tip to the Center for Applied Second Language Studies at the University of Oregon for publicizing the call for submissions.) The clearinghouse will select innovations to post on its web site.

So far, the clearinghouse has posted a description of one innovation, the recognition of the bilingual skills of students by some California schools with a "seal of biliteracy" that appears on the transcript of graduating seniors. The seal recognizing students' competence in two languages is now given out in 37 school districts, including the school district of Albuquerque, N.M.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:35 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

New assessments for the Common Core State Standards Initiative should pay particular attention to how formative tests designed within the assessment systems can improve outcomes for English-language learners, a researcher from WestEd contends in a paper released this week. He says that formative assessments should directly inform teacher instruction and student learning through various practices, tools, and processes.

In laying out his vision for how assessments pegged to the common-core standards could be made valid and reliable for ELLs, Robert Linquanti, a senior research associate for WestEd, a San Francisco-based education research firm, argues that many assessments now in use for accountability under the No Child Left Behind Act are rather rough measurement tools. He says, for example, "that assessment and accountability systems generally treat the [English-learner] category as binary (a student is EL or not), when in fact EL students exhibit language competencies on a continuum that extends from the lowest levels of English proficiency through exit-level performance standards and beyond."

So how to capture that continuum in assessments?

Linquanti explains that the new content assessments are expected to include benchmark assessments that will be implemented at key intervals throughout a school year, formative assessments that can be used to inform teacher practice and student learning, and summative assessments aligned to academic standards.

While the least used in U.S. schools, formative assessments may hold the greatest promise for improving outcomes for English-language learners, Linquanti says. He writes that formative assessments take place within instruction through informal observations and conversations as well as carefully planned methods that give teachers a chance to gather evidence.

Fortunately, Linquanti says, researchers have been making progress in creating formative assessments relevant for ELLs. He cites a project implemented by the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment consortium. It's called FLARE, which stands for the Formative Language Assessment Records for English-Language Learners. He also mentions a WestEd professional development program called Quality Teaching for English Learners that includes formative assessments>. (I featured this program in EdWeek last spring.)

Linquanti says future assessments should integrate this kind of professional development model that enables teachers to evaluate if ELLs are meeting language and content objectives.

Linquanti also makes the point that before students are given an assessment, they must have a chance to learn the material. He emphasizes that ELLs have to get an opportunity to acquire the discipline-specific English language they need in the first place. That means that all teachers must have expertise to help students develop the specialized vocabulary, sentence-level structures, and discourse patterns needed for the particular content areas they teach, he says.

Linquanti's suggestions for how ELLs can best be included in the next generation of content assessments were published in a report, "The Road Ahead for State Assessments," released yesterday by the Policy Analysis for California Education and the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy. My colleague Catherine Gewertz blogged about it over at Curriculum Matters.

Linquanti hasn't written his paper in a vacuum. He mentions a number of heavyweights in the ELL field who gave him feedback on his vision before it was released. Last month, I quoted some of those experts in an article for EdWeek about some of the issues state consortia face in designing new assessments to include ELLs.

Along with the paper on assessments for ELLs, the report includes a paper on computer adaptive assessments and one about assessing students in science. "None of these topics has received the attention that it deserves in the current debate on assessment policy," the paper says.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

President Obama has carried through on his promise to set up an advisory commission on Hispanic education. A notice in the Federal Register on Friday announces the commission will hold its first meeting on May 26 and 27.

The promise was written in an executive order on Hispanic education signed in October. The members of the commission, who aren't named in the press release I got from the White House today, will be sworn in by U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor the evening of May 26 at the Smithsonian Castle.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 12:03 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The leaders of the office of English-language acquisition of the U.S. Department of Education haven't been churning out new federal policies regarding ELLs, but they're working hard to raise awareness about the needs of ELLs within the department and to build links with school districts across the nation, I gathered from an interview on Friday. For more than an hour, I spoke with Rosalinda B. Barrera, the director of the office, and Joanne H. Urrutia, the deputy director, in their offices in downtown D.C.

Barrera started her job late August (see my profile of her from November) and Urrutia, the former director of bilingual education and world languages for the Miami-Dade School District, began her post in early February. Barrera is the first political appointee to direct the office of English-language acquisition, or OELA, since May 2008.

So far, Barrera has focused on building an infrastructure (that means stepping up collaboration between her staff and the staff in other divisions of the department and getting a place at high-level meetings) so that ELLs are included in Education Department initiatives, and conducting "national conversations" on ELL issues in the five states that educate the most English-language learners: California, Florida, Illinois, New York, and Texas.

The conversations just wrapped up. A need for better assessments for ELLs and better preparation for all teachers to work with such students topped the issues, the women said. Also, they said, educators would like to see accountability goals for ELLs changed so that the students' growth in academic achievement is taken into account, not just whether they reach a particular proficiency bar.

And what policies might OELA advocate to respond to these issues?, I asked.

They steered away from being pinned down on specifics, but Barrera said she will take advantage of the bully pulpit and "we have become quite skilled at collaboration."

Barrera added that it's important to take the time to build partnerships and to exchange information with people in the field. "I don't want this office to be perceived as, 'You're in your ivory tower creating policy that's divorced from the field,' " she said.

Barrera has been out and about. Besides participating in the national conversations on ELLs, she was an observer during a monitoring visit for English-language-acquisition programs funded with Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act in New York state.

It seems to me that these women do have their hands on the pulse of what are some of the most challenging issues for school districts to educate ELLs. They've invited people to their offices to discuss early-childhood education and teacher preparation and plan to soon host similar sessions on parental engagement and standards and assessments.

They say they have a goal of reaching beyond communication with state education officials, which the department does through Title III grants, to educators at the district level on best practices for ELLs.

They've taken a step in that direction in planning a forum on how to improve education for English-language learners with special needs. The one-day meeting is scheduled for Wednesday in Las Vegas and is being co-sponsored by OELA and the Council of the Great City Schools. The key audiences are directors of ELL programs and directors of special education programs in urban school districts. Invited to share their expertise on this topic are school districts in Austin, Texas; Chicago, Dallas; Miami; New York City; and San Diego.

When I asked Barrera to sum up her agenda for OELA, she said that "content achievement is extremely important to us, so that we don't reduce the schooling of English-language learners only to a language issue."

She added that helping ELLs to acquire academic content is about "accelerating and supporting, not just remediating."

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 9:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

I'd like to report on one aspect of the Pennies for Peace program, run by the Central Asia Institute, that I didn't cover in my blog post yesterday in which I summarized the institute's defense of how it has handled donations. A news report by "60 Minutes" and an online article by journalist Jon Krakauer has questioned how the institute has used its funds and the truth of stories about the life of the institute's executive director, Greg Mortenson, that he has published in his nonfiction books.

In an article in this week's issue of Education Week, I wrote about those allegations, and I included information from Anne Beyersdorfer, a spokeswoman for the institute, who said that the Pennies for Peace program restricts the use of all its donations for education programs in Central Asia.

I didn't include this point, however, in yesterday's blog post. I just received an email from Beyersdorfer, and she stressed the importance of telling supporters that their donations to Pennies for Peace were specifically allocated to building and supporting schools abroad.

Here are her own words:

Just wanted to clarify after reading your blog that CAI has made it clear that supporters have the opportunity to restrict their donations for use on educational programs in Central Asia; and that the Pennies for Peace program is a restricted program and every penny goes (and has always gone) to help children and their families in educational opportunities with schools, supplies, teacher salaries, and scholarships.

She referred readers to this link.

Yesterday Mortenson posted a letter to supporters on the institute's web site indicating that his role with the organization will change. He pointed supporters to a special spring issue of "Journey of Hope," which he noted "contains answers to numerous questions raised in light of recent media criticism." (That's the publication I blogged about yesterday.)

"In the near future, as well as in the long-term, we will continue to work hard, and make the necessary changes to ensure that Central Asia Institute and Pennies for Peace thrive as my role is redefined," he said.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:55 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Schoolchildren and teachers who are wondering if the money they raised to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan through Pennies for Peace reached its destination may want to read the Central Asia Institute's latest statement defending its use of donations.

Greg Mortenson, the executive director of the Central Asia Institute, which runs Pennies for Peace, and the author of the best-selling book Three Cups of Tea, has been under fire for misrepresenting events in his life in his book and misusing donations to the institute. Such allegations were made last month by the news program "60 Minutes" and in an online exposé published by journalist Jon Krakauer.

I wrote about the controversy and how some educators were rethinking their support for Pennies for Peace in the recent issue of Education Week.

A special issue of "Journey of Hope" posted on the web site of the Central Asia Institute on May 6 provides information to answer what the publication's authors say are the "most-commonly asked questions" from supporters. Some new financial information is included in those answers that the institute had not released previously. For example, to answer an inquiry seeking more information on what the institute has spent on programs versus overhead, the publication says that on average 78 percent of funds have been spent on programs. It adds that out of $60 million the institute has raised over the past 15 years, about 38 percent has gone to a fund "dedicated and restricted solely for overseas projects." The report says that fund now has $20 million.

The publication gives a number of reasons why schools may have been found either not to be in use or not receiving funds from the institute. Some may have been closed for two or more months for the winter, the publication says. Another possibility is that a disgruntled former manager of programs in one particular region of Pakistan wasn't honest with Mortenson and the board of the institute of the status of the schools, it says.

The publication doesn't give any additional information other than what Mortenson has said already in a statement or an interview with Outside magazine to respond to allegations that parts of Mortenson's books have been fabricated or embellished.

By answering an inquiry about how the institute can defend a claim that 11 schools were built in the Kunar Province of Afghanistan, when only three were built ("60 Minutes had shown a news clip of Mortenson claiming 11), the publication says that, in fact, four have been built in Kunar Province and work on five more was begun but has been suspended several times.

But this explanation, in fact, does acknowledge that the claim was not accurate because nine schools is still short of 11 schools.

I agree with Outside magazine, that one explanation provided in the publication "appears intentionally misleading." The publication provides information to answer the following question: "Every nonprofit must file an annual tax return. According to reports, your nonprofit only filed once in 14 years—is that true?" The answer given by the Central Asia Institute is "No. IRS 990 forms filed for every year since CAI's inception are available on our web site..."

As Outside points out in a May 7 blog post, Steve Kroft of "60 Minutes" observed that the Central Asia Institute had released only one audited financial report in 14 years, which some might view as a very low number for such a large nonprofit organization.

I agree that the explanation is misleading because it gives the impression that supporters are not savvy enough to know the difference between a tax return and a financial audit.

I suspect that educators who have supported schoolchildren to raise money for Pennies for Peace will not be convinced that they haven't been burned until they get some more comprehensive explanations.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:15 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In September, the New York City Department of Education expects to open a new school for English-language learners that has a mission of preparing them to graduate with skills recognized by the graphic-arts industry.

I just received a press release from the Internationals Network for Public Schools that says that nonprofit organization is partnering with the New York City Department of Education to open the new school for ELLs. Called the Crotona International High School, it will be located in the Bronx and share space with the Grace Dodge Technical and Career High School.

The International High Schools enroll only students who have been in the United States for four years or less. The schools have a reputation in New York City for having graduation rates for ELLs that are much higher than average for such students in the city's schools. I visited and wrote about one of these schools, Brooklyn International High School, in 2007.

The school for ELLs with a career and technical focus will join the network of 14 other International High Schools. A dozen are in New York City, one is in San Francisco, and one is in Oakland, Calif.

The new school in the Bronx will open with a class of 9th graders.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

In a speech today in El Paso, Texas, calling for comprehensive immigration reform, President Obama said "we're going to keep fighting for the DREAM Act." He said it was a "tremendous disappointment" that the act, which would have provided a path to citizenship for some of the nation's undocumented students, wasn't approved by the U.S. Congress last year.

Most of the president's speech focused on why Republicans and Democrats in Washington should work together to pass legislation to reform immigration laws in a big way. The president made the case that he's addressed the concerns of Americans who felt that the federal government hadn't paid enough attention to enforcement of immigration laws. For example, the federal government has strengthened border security, he said.

"We have gone above and beyond what was requested by the very Republicans who said they supported broader reform as long as we got serious about enforcement," the president contended.

Also today, Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, a Democrat, signed a bill in to law that gives undocumented students in-state college tuition rates in Maryland, the Associated Press reported.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 4:04 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The federal government is trying to make it absolutely clear that schools must enroll children regardless of their immigration status and that they shouldn't be carrying out any practices that would discourage immigrant families from having their children participate in school.

Over at The School Law Blog, my colleague Mark Walsh summarizes the contents of a "dear colleague letter" released by the U.S. Department of Education on May 6 that tells schools they must make sure their requests for particular documents during enrollment don't have a chilling effect on immigrant students' school participation.

The letter says schools can ask for children's Social Security numbers to use for student identification purposes, but they should tell parents why they are asking for the numbers and also explain that such disclosure is voluntary.

Back in 2007, I reported that several states have policies or regulations that clarify what kinds of documents schools can request to establish whether a parent or legal guardian of a student is a resident of a school district.

This is the first time I recall over the last decade that the U.S. Department of Education has released anything in writing clarifying the matter.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:01 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Learning the Language is taking a break until Wednesday, May 11.

Feel free to talk among yourselves in the comment section of the last few blog posts.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 3:35 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

A lot of the talk during the webinar I moderated yesterday about improving literacy for English-language learners involved how to make sure those students aren't "an afterthought" in districts' overall instructional plans. An archived version of yesterday's event is available at edweek.org.

The fact that ELLs often aren't considered upfront when a district embarks on a new plan is one of the reasons so many of them are struggling in the nation's schools, the guests said. And they're hoping this won't happen with implementation of the states' common-core academic standards.

"Our districts are moving so quickly [in carrying out the common-core standards] that we are very worried they won't wait for these other [English-language-proficiency] standards to be developed," said Gabriela Uro, the manager of ELL policy and research for the Council of the Great City Schools and a webinar guest. Uro's presentation included an analysis of how the common-core standards differ from typical state standards in use now. For example, they have a stronger focus on reading informational text and less of an emphasis on reading literature than many states' standards. She said her organization is banking on the fact that the common core will bring greater access to ELLs to the core curriculum, though she acknowledged it's not a given.

The other guest, Diane August, a senior research scientist at the Center for Applied Linguistics, added that school districts need to be establishing protocols for how students at different levels of language proficiency function in meeting common-core standards.

August also stressed the importance of ELLs getting the chance to learn English through interaction with native-English speakers in classes. She said that one way this can be done is by pairing a proficient-English student with one who is less proficient for activities. Also, teachers can differentiate instruction by working with a small group of students who are less proficient on an activity while the rest of the students in the class are paired up for a learning task.

Uro said the districts that have been most successful with ELLs are those that make an explicit effort to include them in the overall program, with a coherent plan that is informed by the analysis of student data.

I'm looking for examples of middle schools or high schools that mix ELLs and non-ELLs in classrooms for core subjects, such as math, social studies, and science, and feel confident that everyone is getting access to grade-level content. If your school fits that profile, drop me a line.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 3:04 PM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The field of preschool education is "moving in the right direction" in developing effective tools to assess preliteracy for bilingual youngsters, a researcher said during a forum last week hosted by Princeton University.

Sandra Barrueco, an assistant professor of psychology at the Catholic University of America, in Washington, recently reviewed 19 preliteracy assessments for their validity and reliability with children who speak Spanish at home. She deemed three quarters of the measures to be suitable, and noted that in a couple of cases, the Spanish versions are better than the English versions. Her findings are published in a book, Assessing Young Latino Children Within and Across Two Languages: Approaches and Measures, which is expected to be published by the Paul H. Brookes Publishing Co. Inc., in Baltimore, in November.

I wrote about her presentation and others about preschoolers from immigrant families in a story posted at www.edweek.org this morning.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

Here's a reminder that ELL experts Diane August of the Center for Applied Linguistics and Gabriela Uro of the Council of the Great City Schools will be guests at a free webinar at edweek.org today about how to improve literacy for English-language learners. It's scheduled for 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. Eastern time. I'll be moderating, and the event is sponsored by Imagine Learning.

Some of the discussion will focus on how districts can consider the needs of English-language learners in implementing states' common-core academic standards.

If you're teaching or otherwise not available to tune in, you can pull up the webinar in the archives at our web site 24 hours after it's over.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

More than two years after President Obama was sworn into office, I still don't have a clear idea of the Obama administration's approach to supporting the education of English-language learners. And a report on how to improve education for Latinos released last week by the U.S. Department of Education and the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanics doesn't offer a lot of additional clues.

But that doesn't stop me from trying to read between the lines. The report mostly talks about how organizations that target Latinos have received financial support under various Education Department grant programs. But it also gives a shout-out to English-language learners with a mention about ELLs and assessments, three paragraphs about "supporting English Learners," and one paragraph about "accountability for ELs."

What I find noteworthy is that, in contrast to the George W. Bush Administration, which steered away from promoting bilingual education, the report's only example of a school district that is successful with English-language learners happens to be one that "has focused solely on developing students' English-language proficiency by significantly expanding its dual language programs over the past five years." By choosing to feature ELLs in the Saint Paul Public School District, the Obama Administration is not avoiding a mention of bilingual education.

At the same time, the report indicates that the Obama Administration doesn't take a stance on whether bilingual education or English-only instruction is more effective. It includes this statement: "While there are certain practices that have been shown to benefit ELs, more research and evaluation is needed on the types of language-instruction education programs that are most effective for English-learners."

The report implies that accountability for English-language learners under the No Child Left Behind Act has had some problems by pointing out that some states don't have common criteria across their school districts for identifying English-language learners. The Obama Administration's blueprint for the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the recent call for consortia of states to apply for grants to create English-language-proficiency tests to align with states' common core academic standards, both call for consistency within states or among states regarding the definition for English-learners.

Otherwise, in talking about accountability, the report draws attention to the agreement signed by the Boston school district and the Justice and Education departments to improve the education of English-language learners. My read on this: enforcement of civil rights laws will continue to play a large role in the Obama Administration's approach to English-language learners.

Lastly, the report expresses faith that English-language learners will not be an afterthought in the creation of assessments to align with the states' common core academic standards. It says: "From the beginning, these tests will be designed to fully include English-Learners (ELs) and to ensure that they are appropriately assessed."

I'm not so sure this is the case. A number of experts in the field have told me that they are concerned that the needs of ELLs aren't being considered up front in the creation of those tests. When I checked in with the two consortia developing those tests a few weeks ago, I found that while they both planned to use universal design principles so that test items would be valid for ELLs, no substantial work had yet been undertaken for the participants in the consortia to create a "common definition" for ELLs, a requirement of the grant.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend

The last round of "national conversations" on the education of English-language learners that was postponed because of the shutdown of the federal government that almost—but didn't—happen has been rescheduled for May 9 and 10.

The forums will take place in New York City and Charlotte, N.C. They are hosted by the office of English-language acquisition of the U.S. Department of Education in partnership with other divisions of the Education Department and the White House.

Posted by Mary Ann Zehr at 11:11 AM | Permalink | Leave a comment | Recommend