Standards

English-Language Proficiency and Common Core: A Guide for States

By Lesli A. Maxwell — September 28, 2012 1 min read
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The Council of Chief State School Officers this week released a new set of guidelines that are designed to help states revise, revamp, or rewrite their English-language proficiency standards so that they align with the common core standards in English/language arts and mathematics, as well as the new content standards that are still under development for science.

CCSSO assembled a who’s who team of writers to create the guidebook which has a mouthful of a name: “Framework for English Language Proficiency Development Standards corresponding to the Common Core State Standards and the Next Generation Science Standards.” Susan Pimentel, one of the lead writers of the common core’s English/language arts standards, was in charge of the effort.

The framework, its writers say, will help states ensure that their English-language proficiency standards “enable ELLs to meet the more rigorous academic content expectations now manifested in the [Common Core State Standards] and [Next Generation Science Standards].” It explains the types of language practices it takes to transmit ideas and information—such as saying, writing, doing, and being—that ELLs must acquire in order to have success in mastering the new content standards in all three subject areas, as well as the academic language demands students will encounter.

I’ll be delving into this new guide much more for an Education Week story next week.

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A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.