# data[].attributes.body
Under the new ESSA the reports to the state will contain various reports that will not allow schools to exempt EL student data. Schools will be using Title III funds to provide support for EL students, as well as Title I funds, classes will now include  previous EL students and current EL students in order to show growth and progress. Additionally, schools will need to report those 'long-term' EL students, those in the program longer than 5 years and measure their growth.
~GE

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first passed in 1965, is at its heart a piece of civil rights legislation. Its whole purpose is to provide federal funds to states and districts to overcome disadvantages faced by students who have traditionally fallen through the cracks or been intentionally ignored.

In the latest rewrite of the law, which turned No Child Left Behind into Every Student Succeeds, there are some key provisions that shift the way schools will have to identify, serve, test and report information about students who do not speak English.

In four categories in particular, schools will have to make significant changes.

Classifying English learners

The Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to create a uniform process for identifying English learners, assigning them services, and, later, moving them out of EL classes and into general education. Under No Child Left Behind, districts made their own processes, which resulted in a wide variety of criteria for entering and exiting English learner services across districts. The new law creates a level of consistency - at least at the state level, if not nationally.

This is one of the many areas in which state education departments will have to create new systems. School and district officials should be participating in comment periods and listening tours to impact their final state regulations.

Standardized testing

A major victory of No Child Left Behind for the civil rights community was its requirement for every student to be tested every year from third grade through eighth grade and once more in high school. Because NCLB said 95% of students must take the test for the results to be valid, schools could not ignore disadvantaged student populations to focus on easier-to-teach or higher-achieving students.

When it comes to English learners, the testing provisions are controversial. Civil rights groups do not want these students to be ignored, but they also do not want them or their schools to be punished when these students do poorly on a test in English if they don't speak the language.

Delia Pompa, senior fellow for education policy at the Migration Policy Institute, says ESSA frees districts from counting the pass rates of newly arrived immigrant students who don't speak English in their accountability frameworks. Instead, districts can use growth as a measure of academic progress for accountability purposes for students' first two years in the country. By year three, however, immigrant students must be assessed the same way as their peers.

No Child Left Behind-era regulations allowed schools to exempt some students, but ESSA codified that ability into law. And offering the option of measuring growth gives schools an incentive to assess students their first year and at least collect data that provides a basis for measuring future progress.

English proficiency

A major change in ESSA comes with its expectations for English proficiency among the English learner population. While this piece didn't get much attention during negotiations for ESSA, it could require significantly better services for students who do not speak English.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools were held accountable for helping their students improve English proficiency under Title III, which provides money to better support English learner students specifically. Under ESSA, schools must build English proficiency rates into their accountability framework for Title I, which provides money to support low-income students more broadly.

"Title I means English proficiency will get a higher profile and it's also tied to a bigger pot of funding," said Brenda Calderón, an education policy analyst for the National Council of La Raza. "We hope this drives an incentive to make sure English learners are making progress."

Current English learners will be grouped together with former ELs who are as many as four years out of their programs under new ESSA reporting requirements. But while this concerns advocates for its potential to mask the actual performance of current English learners, the English proficiency requirements will clearly show how this smaller population is doing.

Reporting

ESSA brings with it a raft of reporting changes for schools, districts and states, some of them extreme. One area that could impact services for English learners comes with a reinforced emphasis on subgroup accountability. The idea of subgroup accountability means schools and districts are responsible for helping every student succeed, whether they are white, black, brown, rich, poor or disabled.

Under ESSA, a school cannot get a high rating if one of its subgroups is failing across the board. In fact, if English learners are consistently not doing well in a school, that school will be flagged for targeted improvement and administrators will have to outline a plan for improving outcomes, even if the rest of the school is high-performing.

"That's a huge civil rights priority that made it into the law," Calderón said. Still, each state will set its own bar for what consistently underperforming means for a given subgroup.

Pompa, from the Migration Policy Institute, points to two other wins.

First, the English learner subgroup will be further disaggregated so the outcomes of English learner students with disabilities are separated from the English learner population as a whole.

And second, schools will be required to report the number of long-term English learners who continue to receive services for more than five years. Pompa says this could help educators understand the effectiveness of different instructional models for English learners, and other advocates have called it a "name and shame" provision that will incentivize schools to serve these students rather than letting them languish in programs that limit their access to high-level academic content.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 ways ESSA will change how schools serve ELL students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first passed in 1965, is at its heart a piece of civil rights legislation. Its whole purpose is to provide federal funds to states and districts to overcome disadvantages faced by students who have traditionally fallen through the cracks or been intentionally ignored.

# data[].attributes.headline
Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for ELs 

# data[].attributes.subject
Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for ELs 

# data[].attributes.body
Language Objectives are beneficial for everyone. They benefit from the clarity that comes with a teacher outlining the academic language to be learned and mastered in each lesson. This article provides examples for different grade levels/content areas and gives the framework to create your own.
-R

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels.

This article written for Colorín Colorado provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and includes:

what a language objective is

steps that teachers can take to create language objectives

how to implement language objectives in a general education classroom

how to align objectives to content and language standards

ideas and resources on how to support teachers as they become familiar with this practice

how to use language objectives in distance learning environments.

Language Objectives: An Overview
Mrs. Shell has been teaching eighth grade math for twelve years. She has deep content area knowledge and wants to provide all of her students with authentic activities and tasks to relate the significance of the mathematical concepts that she teaches to their lives. Mrs. Shell has always felt successful at teaching her classes but this year has been different. Her sections include students with more diverse backgrounds than previous years, particularly more English learners. As Mrs. Shell was beginning to feel frustrated with her inability to reach all her students because of their needs, she learned about one way to make her content more comprehensible to all her students - creating and posting objectives that tell the students not just what content concepts they will learn in each lesson, but also the academic language they will need to learn and use to meet the state's math standards. With this knowledge, Mrs. Shell is now confident that she not only knows what to teach, but also how to teach it so that all her students can be successful.

Generally speaking, academic English is the language of schooling and the language that helps students acquire and use the content area knowledge taught in schools (Anstrom, DiCerbo, Butler, Katz, Millet, & Rivera, 2010).

Teaching content to ELs: The challenge

In my work supporting general education and ESL/bilingual teachers who provide sheltered instruction for English learners (ELs), I have met many teachers like Mrs. Shell. While these teachers want to provide effective instruction for their ELs, often they don't see themselves as language teachers and so they aren't sure where to begin with their students.

These teachers aren't alone, however, and they are facing a challenge shared by teachers across the country. We know that for school-age students, academic language is crucial for school success (Francis, Rivera, Lesaux, Kieffer, & Rivera, 2006). In addition, research allows us to state with a fair degree of confidence that English learners best acquire English when language forms are explicitly taught and when they have many opportunities to use the language in meaningful contexts (Goldenberg, 2008).

Yet while the explicit instructional support that ESL and bilingual teachers provide is essential to English learners' academic language development, English learners receive a majority of their instruction from general education and content area teachers who may not have experience teaching academic language development.

The question becomes then: What do general education classroom teachers need to do in order to support the academic English development of language learners in both face-to-face and virtual environments, especially when English learners are one of many types of students they serve?

Teaching content to ELs: The solution

One principle that teachers of English learners can begin to apply immediately is creating and posting language objectives for their lessons (whether in the classroom or online in a virtual space. Many teachers are familiar with using content objectives to identify what students will learn and be able to do in the lesson. However, they are less likely to include language objectives that support the linguistic development of their students.

Implementing language objectives can be a powerful first step in ensuring that English learners have equal access to the curriculum even though they may not be fully proficient in the language. This is because the second language acquisition process requires opportunities for the language learner to be exposed to, practice with, and then be assessed on their language skills (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

To this end, language objectives:

articulate for learners the academic language functions and skills that they need to master to fully participate in the lesson and meet the grade-level content standards (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

are beneficial not only for language learners but for all students in a class, as everyone can benefit from the clarity that comes with a teacher outlining the requisite academic language to be learned and mastered in each lesson.

Now let's take a closer look at some examples and how to write language objectives.

Back to top

Writing Language Objectives

What is a language objective?

Language objectives are lesson objectives that specifically outline the type of language that students will need to learn and use in order to accomplish the goals of the lesson. Quality language objectives complement the content knowledge and skills identified in content area standards and address the aspects of academic language that will be developed or reinforced during the teaching of grade-level content concepts (Echevarria & Short, 2010).

These objectives involve the four language skills (speaking, listening, reading, and writing), but they can also include:

Below are examples of language objectives for different content areas and grade levels. They come from the Common Core State Standards for Math and English Language Arts (2012) and state standards in New York and California.
Sources:
How do I create effective language objectives?

Dr. Cindy Lundgren discusses the process of writing language objectives in this excerpt from her Meet the Expert interview.

Language objectives are directly correlated to content objectives. Once a teacher determines the lesson topic from the appropriate content standards, the teacher will want to begin thinking about the academic language necessary for English learners to complete the tasks that support the content objectives. This identification of the academic language embedded in the lesson's content will become the basis for the lesson's language objectives.

You can use the following guidelines to start thinking about appropriate language objectives for the lesson:

1. Decide what key vocabulary, concept words, and other academic words students will need to know in order to talk, read, and write about the topic of the lesson. Those words might be taught as a language objective. They should include technical terms, such as ecosystem, and terms like distribution that have different meanings across content areas. Other terms to highlight are those that language learners may know in one context, such as family (as in parents, siblings, etc.), but that have a different use in science (e.g., family of elements in the periodic table).

2. Consider the language functions related to the topic of the lesson (e.g, will the students describe, explain, compare, or chart information). See your state English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards for examples of these functions for English language arts, math, science, and social studies for all English proficiency levels and grade-level clusters.

3. Think about the language skills necessary for students to accomplish the lesson's activities. Will the students be reading a textbook passage to identify the stages of mitosis? Are they able to read a text passage to find specific information? Will they be reporting what they observe during a scientific demonstration to a peer? Do they know how to report observations orally? Acquiring the skills needed to carry out these tasks might be the focus of a language objective.

4. Identify grammar or language structures common to the content area. For example, many science textbooks use the passive voice to describe processes. Additionally, students may have to use comparative language to analyze two related concepts. Writing with the passive voice or using comparative phrases might be a language objective.

5. Consider the tasks that the students will complete and the language that will be embedded in those assignments. If students are working on a scientific investigation together, will they need to explain the steps of the procedure to one another? The language objective might focus on how to explain procedures aloud.

6. Explore language learning strategies that lend themselves to the topic of the lesson. For example, if students are starting a new chapter in the textbook, the strategy of previewing the text might be an appropriate language objective.

(Adapted from Short, Himmel, Gutierrez, & Hudec, 2012. Used with permission.)

Aligning Language Objectives and Standards

English Language Proficiency (ELP) standards

Developing appropriate language objectives for lessons involves becoming familiar with a state's content area and ELP standards. Whereas the content standards will provide the topic of the lesson and what exactly the students should be doing with that topic (e.g., solving problems, creating models, ranking ideas), the English language proficiency or development standards help to identify language skills and functions that students should be working on to achieve academic language fluency. These ELP standards can help to identify:

English Language Arts (ELA) standards

Other resources in addition to the ELP standards are a state's English Language Arts standards or the Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts and Literacy in History, Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects (CCSS). The English Language Arts and Literacy CCSS might be especially useful to teachers of English learners due to its attention to literacy across the content areas.

Additional resources to consult, especially if a state is a member of the WIDA consortium, are the Model Proficiency Indicators (MPIs) outlined in their ELP standards. The MPIs outline what an English learner at a specific level of English language proficiency can do in a language domain (e.g., listening) by addressing the language functions embedded in an example topic for that content area with appropriate scaffolds or support (Gottlieb, Cranley, & Cammileri, 2007). Classroom texts and other materials (e.g., science investigations, primary source documents) are other good sources to consult when preparing a lesson.

Getting Started

How can I get started?

Careful lesson planning

In creating measureable and student-friendly language objectives that support the content objectives, it is important that learner tasks in the lesson are aligned with the objectives. It is not enough to have well-written objectives that promote language acquisition if the lesson is lacking in tasks that support the objectives. If the language objective for a middle school social studies lesson is for the students to orally retell the key characteristics in a historical event using sequential language, it is important that the teacher previews sequential language with the students, such as providing sentence stems or frames, and builds into the lesson some structured pair work so the students have an opportunity to retell the event to a peer. Therefore, careful lesson planning is another essential step in preparing effective language objectives.

Collaboration

It is also useful for content area and ESL/bilingual teachers to plan lessons together, as we saw with the 7th grade science lesson scenario involving Mr. Zhang and Mr. Lewis. In this co-planning scenario, each teacher used his expertise to better integrate content and language instruction for the language learners. This type of collaboration can help a teacher like Mr. Zhang learn more about the second language acquisition process of his students and can help a teacher like Mr. Lewis become more familiar with the grade-level content expectations that his English learners encounter in content area classes.

How do I know which language objectives are best for my students?

The language objective that the teacher selects will depend on what the English learners in the class need most at that point in the year and what language is most important to understanding the content concepts. If the students have already spent a good deal of time working with new vocabulary, then the teacher might consider having students use that vocabulary to develop their writing skill by writing a summary of the process they followed.

Conversely, the teacher might want to help students become more proficient with a particular type of graphic organizer in order to develop more strategic language learning. As all teachers know, teaching is a dynamic and complex process that requires a multitude of decisions to be made. However, the advance planning required in creating language objectives allows teachers to better anticipate the academic English needs of all students thus increasing the comprehensibility of the lessons.

It is important for teachers to realize that even though their lesson may include all four language skills (it is good if they do, since the language skills reinforce one another), they do not need to post a language objective for every language-related item addressed in the lesson. Teachers address many instructional needs in a 50- or 60-minute class period. Rather than highlighting all language uses in a particular lesson, it is important for the teacher to think about what is non-negotiable in that lesson.

In other words, the teacher should keep the perspective of the English learner in mind and ask, "Of all of the skills and functions addressed in my lesson, which is most important for helping students meet the grade-level standard and develop their language proficiency?" These objectives then must be measureable (i.e., can you see or assess the student's mastery of that objective?) and written in language that accounts for the linguistic and cognitive development of the students.

How can I make language objectives "student-friendly"?

Both of the above objectives are measurable, but both also take into account appropriate developmental stages of the students. Teachers of young students (e.g., PK or K) may even want to consider further adapting the objectives. For example, we have seen kindergarten teachers use symbols such as a pencil to symbolize "write" and a mouth to symbolize "talk" when they post their objectives for the children to see. We have also seen teachers of young learners rely on pictures to show the key terms they want the students to use or to convey the topic of the lesson (e.g., a picture of a ruler and of hands to discuss standard and non-standard measurement).

One way that teachers can ensure that their language objectives are measureable and student-friendly is by using appropriate verbs. Because language objectives should provide students with practice in the four language skills of reading, writing, listening, and speaking, verbs related to those skills might include, but are not limited to, the following:

List

Retell

Summarize in writing

Record

Read

It is also important to not equate low language proficiency with limited cognitive ability. Therefore, teachers will want to make sure that the language objectives they create also reflect tasks that fall on the higher end of Bloom's Taxonomy and use verbs (e.g., orally justify) accordingly.

As noted above in the guidelines to creating language objectives, language functions are also a potential source for language objectives. Verbs related to language functions might include:

When should I share language objectives with students?

To help students take ownership of their learning and provide explicit direction to students, especially the English learners who are processing content in a new language, it is important that objectives be stated at the beginning of the lesson and reviewed with the students at the end of the lesson to allow them to assess if they have met the objectives (Echevarria, Vogt & Short, 2008).

How this happens may differ according to the grade level and content area of the class. Some teachers like to have the students choral read the objectives, while teachers of older students sometimes have them record the language objectives in their journal in addition to asking an individual student to read them aloud. Some teachers, such as those who teach science, like to reveal the objectives later in the lesson, perhaps after the warm up or exploratory activity, so that they can maintain an inquiry-based approach (Echevarria & Colburn, 2006).

Should I differentiate language objectives based on my students' language proficiency?

Although all teachers have students of varying language proficiency and skill levels in their classes, it is not necessary to differentiate language objectives by creating and posting multiple language objectives that reflect these proficiency levels. Rather, teachers should have one language objective that is appropriate for all students to meet. To provide the appropriate differentiation, the teacher would provide different scaffolds (e.g., adapted text, visuals, sentence frames) for students to use in order to reach the objectives.

For example, an appropriate language objective for an upper elementary language arts class might be for the students to be able to orally list text features found in a non-fiction book. For lower proficiency language learners, the teacher may give them a word bank from which to choose the text features; therefore, the students are meeting the same objective but with the appropriate amount of linguistic support from the teacher.

Back to top

Using language objectives in a distance learning environment

While teachers like Ms. Shell understand that the characteristics of good teaching for English learners does not change in a virtual environment, they do understand that instruction will necessarily need to look different in order to account for the challenges that distance learning presents for many learners.

Accordingly, teachers will need to think through how to:

Presenting language objectives

Many different ways exist for teachers to present language objectives in remote learning. For example, teachers might:

begin every virtual class by orally reading and presenting the content and language objectives in their Google slides and then asking students to briefly summarize in the chat box the activities they will be doing in that lesson to meet those objectives.

post the objectives at the top of a shared digital document that serves as a capture sheet for the lesson. A teacher might then ask learners to self-assess their progress towards meeting those objectives at the end of the document.

use live or recorded videos, especially when working with English learners with lower English proficiency. These videos can include props, for example ears to signify a listening objective.

use realia, such as rocks, if one of the lesson's language aims is for students to orally describe different types of sedimentary rocks.

Monitoring student understanding and engagement

Teachers in distance learning environments must also carefully consider how they will assess learner understanding and engagement throughout the lesson. Given the challenges virtual learning platforms present towards capturing data on learner comprehension (e.g., paralinguistic cues such as facial expressions, gestures, posture) teachers working in virtual environments know that it is more important than ever to ensure that students clearly understand the content and linguistic aims for each lesson.

Using comprehension checks and assessing progress

It is also essential that students understand how teachers will measure their progress towards meeting each objective. Towards this aim, teachers must build in multiple comprehension checks throughout the lesson that align to the lesson's objectives. Teachers can:

At the conclusion of a lesson, teachers can assess student progress towards meeting objectives via:

tickets out that are submitted digitally

the recording of a Flipgrid or use of another video platform where learners respond to a prompt that requires learners to use the academic language highlighted in the lesson's objectives.

Teachers can respond to the submitted tickets out or video with feedback that explicitly targets the students use of the language. When appropriate, teacher can provide learners with additional resources and/or support towards mastering that particular language skill or function. Teachers might also use that linguistic data to inform mini-lessons conducted to small groups of English learners during office hours or intervention time.

Next Steps

How can I learn more?

For more information on the SIOP Model, see Making Content Comprehensible for English Learners: The SIOP Model (Echevarria, Short, & Vogt, 2008).

Although language objectives can be implemented in any lesson design approach, they are especially congruent with sheltered instruction and the SIOP Model. Since language objectives ensure that teachers meet the unique linguistic needs of English learners, they are sometimes easier to implement in the context of instructional practices espoused by the SIOP Model.

Practices that focus on explicit academic language teaching include:

Below are other resources that can help you learn more about creating language objectives and about integrating academic language into content area classes.

Back to top

Final Thoughts

We realize that it takes teachers some time to become very comfortable with creating language objectives, but our experience has shown that the implementation of language objectives can bring immediate benefits to instruction. Some immediate benefits include teachers understanding more concretely that they are both a content area and language teacher - as one teacher said in a CAL SIOP Model workshop, "I now see myself as a math teacher AND a language teacher".

We have also observed that when teachers consciously plan to meet the academic English needs of their learners, they end up with better planned learner tasks, and students begin to have more ownership of their content area and language learning. When it comes to building proficiency in academic English, as many teachers in our workshops remind us, "If you want to see it, you have to teach it." Therefore, if teachers want to see language development, language objectives are a great first step in helping teachers explicitly teach it.

Back to top

Recommended Resources

Further reading

Short, D., Himmel, J., Gutierrez, S., & Hudec, J. (2012). Using the SIOP Model: Professional development for sheltered instruction. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M.E., & Short, D. (2010). The SIOP Model for teaching mathematics to English learners. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

Echevarria, J., & Short, D. (2011). The SIOP Model: A professional development framework for a comprehensive school-wide intervention. Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) Brief. http://www.cal.org/create/resources/pubs/professional-development-framework.html

Himmel, J., Short, D., Richards, C., & Echevarria, J. (2009). Using the SIOP Model to improve middle school science instruction. Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) Brief. http://www.cal.org/create/resources/pubs/siopscience.html

Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2010a). The SIOP Model for teaching history-social studies to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Short, D., Vogt, M., & Echevarria, J. (2010b). The SIOP Model for teaching science to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Vogt, M.E., Echevarria, J., & Short, D. (2010). The SIOP Model for teaching English language arts to English learners. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Jennifer Himmel is the Project Director for the National Center for English Language Acquisition at the Manhattan Strategy Group. She previously served as the SIOP Manager at the Center for Applied Linguistics, a non-profit organization for language education research, policy, and practice in Washington, DC. She has served as a curriculum developer and research associate for the U.S. Department of Education funded project, Center for Research on the Educational Achievement and Teaching of English Language Learners (CREATE) that is investigating academic achievement of ELLs in grades 4th-8th, and as a language testing specialist for the WIDA ACCESS for ELLs® language proficiency test. She currently manages the SIOP Model professional development service line and provides technical assistance and professional development in sheltered instruction to districts and schools.

Video Clips: Language Objectives

How to Write Language Objectives: Tips for ELL Educators

In this video from Syracuse, NY, Jesus Ortiz, a bilingual teacher, learns how to write a language objective from Areli Schermerhorn, a peer evaluator with expertise in ELL and bilingual education.

Dr. Cynthia Lundgren explains language objectives

In this excerpt from her Meet the Expert interview, Dr. Cynthia Lundgren explains the value of writing language objectives when teaching English learners.

Anstrom, K., DiCerbo, P., Butler, F., Katz, A., Millet, J., & Rivera, C. (2010). A review of the literature on academic English: Implications for K-12 English language learners. Arlington, VA: The George Washington University Center for Equity and Excellence. Education.www.ceee.gwu.edu.

Echevarria, J., & Colburn, A. (2006). Designing lessons: Inquiry approach to science using the SIOP Model. In A. Lathman & D. Crowther (Eds.), Science for English language learners (pp.95-108). Arlington, VA: National Science Teachers Association Press.

Echevarria, J., Vogt, M., & Short, D. (2008). Making content comprehensible for English learners: The SIOP Model. Boston: Pearson/Allyn & Bacon.

Echevarria, J., & Short, D. ( 2010). Programs and practices for effective sheltered content instruction. In California Department of Education (Ed), Improving education for English learners: Research-based approaches. Sacramento, CA: CDE Press.

Francis, D., Rivera, M., Lesaux, N., Kieffer, M., & Rivera, H. (2006). Practical guidelines for the education of English language learners: Research-based recommendations for instruction and academic interventions. Portsmouth, NH: RMC Research Corporation, Center on Instruction. www.centeroninstruction.org/files/ELL1-Interventions.pdf

Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English language learners: What the research does-and does not-say. American Educator, Summer 2008, pp. 13-44.

Gottlieb, M., Cranley, E., & Cammilleri, A. (2007). Understanding the WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards: A resource guide. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium.

Short, D., Himmel, J., Gutierrez, S., & Hudec, J. (2012). Using the SIOP Model: Professional development for sheltered instruction. Washington, DC: Center for Applied Linguistics.

World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (2007). WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards. Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium http://www.wida.us/standards/elp.asp

You are welcome to print copies or republish materials for non-commercial use as long as credit is given to Colorín Colorado and the author(s). For commercial use, please contact [email protected] .

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Language Objectives: The Key to Effective Content Area Instruction for English Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This article provides an overview of how to use language objectives in content-area instruction for English learners and offers classroom-based examples from different grade and subject levels.

# data[].attributes.headline
House Passes Bill to Boost Bilingual Education

# data[].attributes.subject
House Passes Bill to Boost Bilingual Education

# data[].attributes.body
New Mexico (2019):  It is called the Bilingual Teacher Preparation Act. The bill is aimed at “creating a pipeline of new educators to serve the very significant need in New Mexico.” The House passed the legislation 63-0, and it now heads to the Senate.
-R

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
SANTA FE - A proposal aimed at boosting the number of bilingual teachers in New Mexico won overwhelming approval in the state House on Thursday.

The legislation, House Bill 120, calls for expanding state efforts to prepare teachers to educate students who are English-language learners, especially Hispanic and Native American youngsters.

Supporters say the proposal would help address last year's landmark court ruling that found New Mexico is failing to provide a sufficient education to all students. The decision focused on "at-risk" students, such as those who speak another language and are learning English.

The legislation would establish a loan program to help college students preparing to become teachers with a focus on teaching English to speakers of other languages. It would also help students who want to teach in bilingual programs.

Participants would have to agree to teach in New Mexico public schools. They could apply for loans to cover their college tuition, fees and books.

Rep. Tomás Salazar, D-Las Vegas, said there aren't enough New Mexico teachers trained to help English-language learners.

The bill is aimed at "creating a pipeline of new educators to serve the very significant need in New Mexico," he said.

The Housed passed the legislation 63-0 on Thursday, and it now heads to the Senate.

Establishing the proposed Bilingual Teacher Preparation Act is expected to cost about $5 million a year. Salazar said the state budget proposal under consideration this session has about $25 million available that could be tapped for that purpose.

House lawmakers spoke in English and Spanish on Thursday as they spoke in favor of the bill.

"Everyone knows when you learn in two languages, you are much better as a scholar," said Rep. Christine Trujillo, an Albuquerque Democrat who started her teaching career as a bilingual educator. "Your universe broadens."

The bill is co-sponsored by four Democratic lawmakers in the House - Salazar, Trujillo, Joy Garratt of Albuquerque and Derrick Lente of Sandia Pueblo.

The House on Wednesday also passed a proposal that would provide assistance and training about cultural and linguistic teaching strategies to educators in rural parts of the state. That proposal, House Bill 111, also heads to the Senate now for consideration.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
House passes bill to boost bilingual education

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
SANTA FE - A proposal aimed at boosting the number of bilingual teachers in New Mexico won overwhelming approval in the state House on Thursday. The legislation, House Bill 120, calls for expanding state efforts to prepare teachers to educate students who are English-language learners, especially Hispanic and Native American youngsters.

# data[].attributes.headline
ELs and The Growing Need for Qualified Teachers

# data[].attributes.subject
ELs and The Growing Need for Qualified Teachers

# data[].attributes.body
The National Council on Teacher Quality (2014) shows that only 24 percent of programs train general elementary teacher candidates to support EL students. Even though ESSA requires schools to begin reporting EL progress on standardized tests, no new federal policies have prioritized teacher training for ELs.
-R

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
English learners and the growing need for qualified teachers

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In the Trump era, immigration has become a regular topic of conversation in discourse and debates, touching a range of public policy areas-including education. The nation's immigrant population has...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first passed in 1965, is at its heart a piece of civil rights legislation. Its whole purpose is to provide federal funds to states and districts to overcome disadvantages faced by students who have traditionally fallen through the cracks or been intentionally ignored.

In the latest rewrite of the law, which turned No Child Left Behind into Every Student Succeeds, there are some key provisions that shift the way schools will have to identify, serve, test and report information about students who do not speak English.

In four categories in particular, schools will have to make significant changes.

Classifying English learners

The Every Student Succeeds Act requires states to create a uniform process for identifying English learners, assigning them services, and, later, moving them out of EL classes and into general education. Under No Child Left Behind, districts made their own processes, which resulted in a wide variety of criteria for entering and exiting English learner services across districts. The new law creates a level of consistency - at least at the state level, if not nationally.

This is one of the many areas in which state education departments will have to create new systems. School and district officials should be participating in comment periods and listening tours to impact their final state regulations.

Standardized testing

A major victory of No Child Left Behind for the civil rights community was its requirement for every student to be tested every year from third grade through eighth grade and once more in high school. Because NCLB said 95% of students must take the test for the results to be valid, schools could not ignore disadvantaged student populations to focus on easier-to-teach or higher-achieving students.

When it comes to English learners, the testing provisions are controversial. Civil rights groups do not want these students to be ignored, but they also do not want them or their schools to be punished when these students do poorly on a test in English if they don't speak the language.

Delia Pompa, senior fellow for education policy at the Migration Policy Institute, says ESSA frees districts from counting the pass rates of newly arrived immigrant students who don't speak English in their accountability frameworks. Instead, districts can use growth as a measure of academic progress for accountability purposes for students' first two years in the country. By year three, however, immigrant students must be assessed the same way as their peers.

No Child Left Behind-era regulations allowed schools to exempt some students, but ESSA codified that ability into law. And offering the option of measuring growth gives schools an incentive to assess students their first year and at least collect data that provides a basis for measuring future progress.

English proficiency

A major change in ESSA comes with its expectations for English proficiency among the English learner population. While this piece didn't get much attention during negotiations for ESSA, it could require significantly better services for students who do not speak English.

Under No Child Left Behind, schools were held accountable for helping their students improve English proficiency under Title III, which provides money to better support English learner students specifically. Under ESSA, schools must build English proficiency rates into their accountability framework for Title I, which provides money to support low-income students more broadly.

"Title I means English proficiency will get a higher profile and it's also tied to a bigger pot of funding," said Brenda Calderón, an education policy analyst for the National Council of La Raza. "We hope this drives an incentive to make sure English learners are making progress."

Current English learners will be grouped together with former ELs who are as many as four years out of their programs under new ESSA reporting requirements. But while this concerns advocates for its potential to mask the actual performance of current English learners, the English proficiency requirements will clearly show how this smaller population is doing.

Reporting

ESSA brings with it a raft of reporting changes for schools, districts and states, some of them extreme. One area that could impact services for English learners comes with a reinforced emphasis on subgroup accountability. The idea of subgroup accountability means schools and districts are responsible for helping every student succeed, whether they are white, black, brown, rich, poor or disabled.

Under ESSA, a school cannot get a high rating if one of its subgroups is failing across the board. In fact, if English learners are consistently not doing well in a school, that school will be flagged for targeted improvement and administrators will have to outline a plan for improving outcomes, even if the rest of the school is high-performing.

"That's a huge civil rights priority that made it into the law," Calderón said. Still, each state will set its own bar for what consistently underperforming means for a given subgroup.

Pompa, from the Migration Policy Institute, points to two other wins.

First, the English learner subgroup will be further disaggregated so the outcomes of English learner students with disabilities are separated from the English learner population as a whole.

And second, schools will be required to report the number of long-term English learners who continue to receive services for more than five years. Pompa says this could help educators understand the effectiveness of different instructional models for English learners, and other advocates have called it a "name and shame" provision that will incentivize schools to serve these students rather than letting them languish in programs that limit their access to high-level academic content.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4 ways ESSA will change how schools serve ELL students

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Elementary and Secondary Education Act, first passed in 1965, is at its heart a piece of civil rights legislation. Its whole purpose is to provide federal funds to states and districts to overcome disadvantages faced by students who have traditionally fallen through the cracks or been intentionally ignored.

# data[].attributes.headline
Language Demands to Grow for ELLs Under New Standards (GE)

# data[].attributes.subject
Language Demands to Grow for ELLs Under New Standards (GE)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Students required to go well beyond grammar, vocabulary

Putting the common-core standards into practice in classrooms is a monumental change for teachers in the nation's public schools, but for educators who work with English-language learners, the shifts in instruction are expected to be even more groundbreaking.

That's because the new academic expectations for English/language arts and mathematics now adopted by all but four states require much more sophisticated uses of language than the mishmash of standards that have been in use for years across the states, say language-acquisition experts.

Grammar and vocabulary, for example, are often the primary focus of instruction for English-learners, as is teaching students to master certain language functions, such as suggesting or complimenting. Under the standards developed through the Common Core State Standards Initiative, however, instruction for English-learners will have to move far beyond those fundamental components of learning the language to include instruction on how to read and comprehend complex texts and to construct and convey arguments in writing across the content areas.

"For the most part, the profession has focused on bits and pieces of language," said Aída Walqui, the director of teacher professional-development programs for WestEd, a San Francisco-based education research firm. "The common core is really going to require teachers to move from understanding language as form or function to understanding it as activity and giving students the supports they need to participate in academic activities using language.

"Vocabulary and grammar are still important, but at a lower level of importance," she added. "That's going to be a momentous change."

This work will no longer be just the province of English-as-a-second-language teachers. The common core demands that teachers across all content areas teach literacy skills and the so-called "academic language" that is at the heart of their area of expertise.

As some states and districts-such as the Miami-Dade County school system in Florida, where 58,000 students are English-learners-push ahead on an early timeline with turning the standards into actual classroom instruction, language scholars, policymakers, advocates, and educators around the country continue to wrestle with important questions about how the language needs of English-learners will be met under the more-rigorous standards. A number of small- and large-scale efforts are taking shape to develop tools, resources, and instructional supports to help ensure that English-learners-the fastest-growing subgroup of students in the nation-will have the same access to the rigorous instructional levels of the common core as their peers who are native English speakers.

'Academic' vs. Everyday

Helping English-learners surmount the higher expectations of the common standards will depend largely on how well teachers get them to understand academic language, in contrast to the informal, everyday English they use outside the classroom.

One of the most far-reaching efforts under way to help teachers in that vein is a project led by the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment consortium, a group of 27 states that currently share a common set of English-language-proficiency standards. Using broad input from member states, language experts at WIDA are working to finalize a new edition of the consortium's five English-language-development standards that will show clearly the connections between the content standards of the common core across every grade level and the academic language that will be necessary to teach across the varying levels of English proficiency.

For example, in 1st grade, the common core calls for pupils to "write opinion pieces in which they introduce the topic or name the book they are writing about, state an opinion, supply a reason for the opinion, and provide some sense of closure." The WIDA edition clearly spells out the grade-level vocabulary words and expressions that teachers should use-such as fact, paragraph, topic sentence, main idea, detail-while teaching that writing standard to students at all levels of English development. The WIDA edition also offers example topics that are pulled directly from a content standard in the common core and provide teachers with the types of support and scaffolding of academic language that they need depending on students' proficiency.

The new edition is also more explicit in showing teachers the cognitive demands required of the core-content standards and how to adjust instruction in line with English proficiency.

"I am hoping that teachers can see how to differentiate their instruction, so that even if you are a level-one English-learner, your teacher is going to have the tools to help you access the content even though you don't have much English," said Margo Gottlieb, WIDA's lead developer of common assessments for English-learners.

The final version of WIDA's English-language-development standards should be published by June, and, starting in late summer, the group will hold four regional conferences around the country to provide training to teachers and school administrators on the new edition and its connections to the common standards.

WIDA is also leading the effort of a group of 28 states to design new assessments of English-language proficiency that will measure the language demands of the common standards.

Readying Exemplars

Another major initiative unfolding to craft an array of free instructional resources for teachers of English-learners is centered at Stanford University, where Kenji Hakuta, an education professor and an expert on English-learners, is co-chairing a project with María Santos, a former director of English-learner programs for the New York City school system, that will map out the English-language demands of the common standards. Ms. Walqui of WestEd is also on that team of experts.

Earlier this month, the team launched its Understanding Language website with a dozen papers related to the common core and ELLs, along with a collection of practice and policy briefs that will address key issues.

The project is well-funded, with separate, $1 million grants from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (Both foundations also support some areas of coverage in Education Week.)

Ms. Walqui said the group is hard at work devising "exemplars" to demonstrate to teachers what planning a unit for ELLs under the common core would look like. The first exemplar, she said, is scheduled to come out in June and will focus on middle school English/language arts, because "it's a critical transition point for English-learners."

The key for lesson planning is that the goals for students must be the same, Ms. Walqui said, but that there are multiple pathways for students of varying developmental levels of English to achieve the goals.

"The differentiation is within the activities or versions of the activities for students," she said.

As the team publishes its exemplars, it will host webinars to train teachers, Ms. Walqui said.

The Council of the Great City Schools-which represents 67 urban school systems that are home to 30 percent of the nation's English-learners-is involved in a multitude of initiatives to help its member districts implement the common standards as thoughtfully and carefully for ELLs as they do for students who are not learning English. The rigor of the common core is also providing a prime opportunity for some districts to improve their services for English-learners, said Gabriela Uro, the manager of English-language-learner policy and research for the Washington-based council.

"The English-language-learner programs in many of our districts need ramping up anyway, and now they understand that if you are going to improve those programs, you needn't bother improving to the current standard," Ms. Uro said. "You need to design it for the common core."

For nearly two years, the council has offered sessions on the common core during the regular meetings Ms. Uro conducts with district directors of English-learner programs. Part of that has included bringing in language-acquisition experts to explain the implications of the new standards for ELLs and to show explicitly, for example, how to teach complex texts to English-learners.

The council is also coordinating a project to help districts provide information to parents of ELLs by writing guides on the new standards in Spanish, Chinese, and up to eight additional languages that are represented in urban school systems.

Ms. Uro is also serving on the steering committee of the Stanford project to keep "the district perspective in the mix and to make sure that we bring all of this down to a greater applicability at the district level."

Districts Adapt

In the 345,000-student Miami-Dade school system, teachers and school administrators are largely forging ahead on their own to adapt the new standards for English-learners, said Karen Spigler, the administrative director of language arts/reading and bilingual education/world languages for the district. This year, the common-core standards are already implemented in kindergarten and 1st grade, with 2nd and 3rd grades on tap to begin in the fall, she said.

The district offered teams of teachers in those early grades a two-day training to focus on how to bridge instruction-especially in reading-from the state standards they have been using to the common core, Ms. Spigler said.

A major component of that training, she said, was explaining to teachers how they must incorporate more nonfiction into the curriculum and how to figure out ways to judge the complexity of those texts for students.

"Our early-grade teachers think about children reading 'stories,' but we have to shift our thinking to how do we prepare them to read a science piece or something about the environment," she said.

Another big shift for teachers-especially those working with ELLs-will be letting students struggle with difficult texts.

"That's huge," Ms. Spigler said. "We have been very focused on making everything readable for kids, and they haven't been as successful in independently reading difficult texts."

The vast majority of English-learners in public schools are native Spanish-speakers. That reality has led to at least one large-scale, formal undertaking to translate the common standards into Spanish and provide "linguistic augmentation" to account for the differences between the two languages when necessary.

Called Common Core en Español, the project is being led by ELL practitioners in San Diego, in collaboration with San Diego State University, the California education department, and the Council of Chief State School Officers.

"We are staying very aligned with the common core. It's the same content," said Silvia C. Dorta-Duque de Reyes, a bilingual-services coordinator in the San Diego County office of education. "But because of the challenges that English-learners face in accessing academic content as they learn the language, one of the ways to differentiate for them is to provide the access through their primary language."

The content standards have already been translated, Ms. Reyes said, and now the team is in the midst of providing the "augmentation" to show, for example, that in Spanish, students must learn accentuation and accent rules.

After a peer-review process over the summer, the goal is to publish the translations and make them available to all states and school districts by the end of the year, she said.

Ms. Reyes is also serving on a key panel of experts in California who are charged with revising the state's English-language-development standards so that they are in line with the common core. And she is providing professional-development seminars to school administrators and leaders to help them prepare for implementation in another year or so.

Many frontline teachers in California, however, aren't at the point of being trained for the shift to the common core. The new assessments for common core will roll out during the 2014-2015 school year.

"These teachers are still being held accountable for results on the [state test]," Ms. Reyes said.

Published in Print: April 25, 2012, as Sophisticated Language Use Awaits ELLs in Standards

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
Back to Top

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
literacy & common standards special report

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Language Demands to Grow for ELLs Under New Standards

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Putting the common-core standards into practice in classrooms is a monumental change for teachers in the nation's public schools, but for educators who work with English-language learners, the shifts in instruction are expected to be even more groundbreaking.

# data[].attributes.headline
Thousands of English-Learners Fall Short on Test of Language Skills (GE)

# data[].attributes.subject
Thousands of English-Learners Fall Short on Test of Language Skills (GE)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
A change to how a widely used English-proficiency test is scored has led to thousands of students being retained in English-language-learner classes and created budgeting and staffing challenges for some school districts.

The change has rattled educators in states with an established English-learner student body, such as Nevada; those with fast-growing populations, such as Tennessee; and even states, such as Maine, that have a relatively small percentage of students who don't yet communicate fluently in English.

Those three states and more than 30 others belong to the WIDA, or the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment consortium, and use a test it designed to assess students' English proficiency.

The scoring adjustment to the test known as ACCESS 2.0 raises the bar for English-language proficiency and took effect in the 2016-17 school year. With the change, English-learners must demonstrate more sophisticated language skills in four domains-listening, speaking, reading, and writing-to achieve the same proficiency-level scores.

Student scores in many states dipped under the more demanding standards this past spring, extending the time that many will need to remain in support services, such as English-as-a-second-language classes.

In Nevada, state administrators estimate that only 2 percent, or 1,500, of the state's 75,000-plus English-learners will move out of all language-development courses this year. In past years, between 12 percent and 14 percent of students moved out.

"We anticipated that there would be a drop," said Karl Wilson, Nevada's program supervisor for ELLs. "We were surprised that the drop was so significant."

Figuring out whether students need that support and when they no longer require it is crucial to the success of English-learners. When moving students out of language-support services-commonly called reclassification-occurs too early, English-learners can find themselves struggling.

If the process happens too late, students may be restricted from taking higher-level courses that would prepare them for college.

The scoring change-rolled out in the spring to reflect the new language demands in the more-rigorous academic standards adopted by states in recent years-is the first for WIDA in more than a decade.

"What's being asked of students, not just English-learners, is categorically different than it was in the past," said H. Gary Cook, the director of research for the WIDA consortium, a group of education agencies that share English-language-proficiency standards and assessment for ELLs that are aligned with the Common Core State Standards. "If the education system doesn't change accordingly, I don't foresee progress."

ELL Performance Is Critical

The consternation over the test scores comes as schools brace for another monumental change.

This coming school year, the performance of English-language learners will have a much greater impact on how schools are judged under the federal Every Student Succeeds Act.

It is another signal that the significance of English-learners-who now make up nearly 10 percent of K-12 enrollment-is on the rise as this population grows and the changes in federal law mandate a more precise measurement of how those students are performing in school.

"States are paying a tremendous amount of attention to this issue and really working hard to figure out how to get this ... right," said Scott Norton, the director of strategic initiatives in standards, accountability, and assessment for the Council of Chief State School Officers.

For WIDA-member states, getting it right includes setting the cutoff scores that students earn to transition out of English-learner services. States have the discretion to set the cut scores that students earn to transition out of English-learner services.

Tennessee plans to temporarily adjust its English-learner exit criteria to avoid "unnecessarily" retaining students in ESL classes.

"Almost all of our state's English-learners would be retained in ESL programming because they didn't meet our state's exit criteria," said Sara Gast, a spokeswoman for the Tennessee education agency.

To set its permanent criteria, the state plans to study the relationship between student scores on the ACCESS 2.0 exams and state tests in other subjects. Maine is among the states that have already lowered their exit criteria in response to the ACCESS cutoff-score changes.

The shock that states are experiencing is similar to the adjustments made when adopting the common-core-aligned assessments known as the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers and Smarter Balanced.

"Moving from one test to another and raising standards ... is not really a new thing," Norton said. "It takes a while for everybody to adjust, both on the instructional side and on the student-expectation side. And it usually causes some concern out in the districts until people adjust."

Count Ignacio Ruiz among the concerned.

Ruiz, the assistant superintendent for ELLs in the Clark County, Nev., schools, expects the change to be significant for his district's 61,000 English-learners.

After the 2015-16 school year, roughly 16 percent tested high enough to exit English-support services.

That percentage dropped to less than 8 percent in the latest round of testing. That means about 5,400 fewer students tested out of support services.

A More Accurate Test?

Similar scenarios have played out in districts around the country.

From Baltimore to Boise, Idaho, fewer students have transitioned out of English-support classes. With fewer students moving out of English-language-development classes, educators face the prospect of educating hundreds, if not thousands, more ELLs than district leaders budgeted and planned for.

That's most likely a result of more states, including WIDA-member districts, leaning almost exclusively on English-language-proficiency exams to determine when students no longer need extra English support.

"While this test is more rigorous, we think in the long run it's a more accurate test," said Stacey Roth, Boise's administrator of student programs. "We want to ensure that our kids truly have reached proficiency."

But sometimes that's not even enough to determine when students are ready to move on. Research from the federal Regional Education Laboratory at WestEd has found that middle- and high-school-age English-learners who are deemed proficient still often struggle to grasp academic concepts.

In acknowledgment of that research and other data, ESSA requires states to monitor former English-learners for four years, two years longer than what was previously required.

"It's not just about the proficiency piece, but that we have the right information to get students to proficiency," Ruiz said. "We want to make sure that when we say a student is exiting, that will translate to them being able to have success in those high-stakes tests."

While Ruiz supports the tougher standards, he's worried about students, including long-term ELLs-those not considered proficient after years in U.S. schools-who may become frustrated at the prospect of another year in support services.

In Boise, educators saw fewer elementary students reclassified as proficient, even those who are clearly bilingual, because their writing skills, like those of almost all children in that age group, are still developing.

Educators and advocates remain worried about other potential pitfalls of relying on a single assessment.

A report written for CCSSO concludes that states should use at least two measures, including observations of how students use language in classroom settings, to determine whether a student no longer needs English-language instruction.

Prior to ESSA, most states had a mishmash of ELL exit procedures, with districts often deciding when the students no longer needed support. With the new law's aims to make policies consistent, fewer states may rely on teacher input or evaluation-making tests such as ACCESS 2.0 the only way out of English-support classes.

"States really need to pay attention to these students. Many are trying," said Cook, the WIDA research director. "Ultimately, we rely on our member states to support the decisionmaking with the data."

Published in Print: July 19, 2017, as Thousands of ELLs Fall Short on Test of Language Skills

Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.
Back to Top

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Thousands of English-Learners Fall Short on Test of Language Skills

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A change to how a widely used English-proficiency test is scored has led to thousands of students being retained in English-language-learner classes and created budgeting and staffing challenges for some school districts.

# data[].attributes.headline
ESSA and underserved populations (ELL's)- (GE)

# data[].attributes.subject
ESSA and underserved populations (ELL's)- (GE)

# data[].attributes.body
The changes in ESSA bring changes to how states report on students' academic performance, especially the sub groups. One of the big changes is that if one of the sub-groups is under performing for some time, the school will need to be labeled as under-performing.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
This Newsbrief gives our sense of important and timely federal educational news within the followingprocess and To advance educational excellence and equity, we must prioritize the needs of our most vulnerable students and communities. To accomplish this goal, we need clear processes for the development of policy, and we need to take into account opposition to current and proposed policies and practices - protest - as a healthy part of those processes. :
Federal Update

October 26, 2018

The vast majority of states do not appear to be fully complying with requirements under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to hold schools and school districts responsible for the academic performance of historically underserved student groups, including racial minorities, students with disabilities, and English learners.

There are two basic legal requirements under ESSA:

1. The ratings that schools receive have to take into account the performance of each and every of the vulnerable student groups specified in the law.

2. Schools have to be identified as needing improvement if the performance of any of these student groups is below a certain level for a certain amount of time.

Here are examples from three states. Check out this resource to do this analysis for your own state.
According to a recent study by the Alliance for Excellent Education, only 17 states are in full compliance with the first requirement and only 6 states are in full compliance with the second requirement. There is disagreement among members of the U.S. Senate and the United States Department of Education (US ED) about whether the states are non-compliant with ESSA and whether anything should be done. It does not appear that US ED is likely at this time to take any action to bring states into greater compliance with these legal requirements.

California

California is at risk for non-compliance with the ESSA requirement that the performance of each and every required student group be specifically factored into the ratings that schools receive. California uses a color-coded dashboard system to assign school ratings, with blue being the best rating, red being the worst, and yellow in the middle. Schools are rated by color in each of five categories and receive two color-based ratings within each category: one for performance in the current year and one for improvement from the prior year. Because schools in California do not receive an overall rating, it is not clear how the performance of any one student group factors into a school's color ratings.

California is non-compliant with requirements about identifying schools for improvement based on the performance of every student group specified by the law. California identifies schools for improvement based on the overall number of red and/or orange ratings that a school receives. For this reason, it does not appear that California is identifying schools for improvement based on the performance of each of the student groups specified in the law.

New Jersey

New Jersey appears to be compliant with the ESSA requirement that the performance of each and every required student group be specifically factored into the ratings that schools receive. When New Jersey calculates the annual percentile ranking of its schools, it factors in the academic performance of specific student groups as an independent and substantial portion of each school's rating. To its credit, the performance of student groups makes up 50 percent of a school's rating.

New Jersey is at risk of noncompliance with ESSA's requirements about identifying schools for improvement based on the performance of each student group specified by the law. While New Jersey meets some of ESSA's requirements for identifying schools in need of improvement, in order for the performance of a specific student group to trigger a school as being found in need of improvement, that student group has to have low performance across all indicators in the state's accountability system, not just one.

Illinois

Illinois appears to be compliant with the ESSA requirement that the performance of each and every required student group be specifically factored into the ratings that schools receive. If a school in Illinois has even one underperforming student group, that school cannot receive either of the top two ratings in the state's accountability system.

Illinois is at risk of noncompliance with ESSA's requirements about identifying schools for improvement based on the performance of every student group specified by the law. In Illinois, the academic performance of a student group can only cause a school to be identified for improvement when that group performs in the bottom 10 percent across all indicators in the state's accountability plan. If, however, any student group does not meet the 95 percent testing participation requirement for three consecutive years, that can be a reason that a school is identified for improvement.

The Process

Every state in the country submitted a consolidated ESSA state plan to US ED to demonstrate how they will comply with the requirements of ESSA. US ED has approved each and every state plan.

Civil rights groups have publicly stated their concerns that US ED has approved state plans that are not in compliance with ESSA's requirements. Democrats in Congress have raised similar concerns, but their concerns have generally not been shared by Congressional Republicans, who currently control oversight of US ED.

In a recent appearance before a House committee, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos reiterated her belief that all approved state plans are in compliance with federal statutory requirements. It appears for the moment that next steps on these matters will be taken on a state level and will not be decided by federal authorities.

Get Informed

Take Action
Call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-2311 to speak with your members of Congress about how US ED is - or should be - engaging in oversight of how states are measuring the academic performance of various student groups and holding schools and school districts accountable for the performance of each and every one of these groups.

Take Local Action

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What States' ESSA Non-Compliance Means for Underserved Student Groups

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This Newsbrief gives our sense of important and timely federal educational news within the followingprocess and To advance educational excellence and equity, we must prioritize the needs of our most vulnerable students and communities.

# data[].attributes.headline
Academic discussions in the classroom (GE)

# data[].attributes.subject
Academic discussions in the classroom (GE)

# data[].attributes.body
This article discusses the many benefits of classroom discussions for all students,  but especially for  EL students as it helps students to use the language in authentic contexts, they produce language in a purposeful way, and they are able to listen to ideas and build on these. Students still need the support to produce the language with various strategies, in small groups/pairings, and by allowing students to elaborate with extended responses.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
One of the many things I love about working for Oakland, California schools is serving a community rich in diversity of culture and language. At the same time, it is no easy task ensuring that our English Language Learners (ELLs) are meeting grade-level content standards while mastering a second language.

Much of ELL instruction has been focused on 30-60 minutes of English Language Development (ELD) each day. Taken alone, this daily block of language instruction, isolated from any grade-level content, is not going to get us the results our students need and deserve. Rather, we need to see language-rich instruction throughout the day, embedded in and woven through the content areas.

What would it look like if language instruction occurred throughout the day? What would it take for every teacher to be a teacher of language in their discipline? These questions led us to identify Quality Academic Discussion as one district-wide strategy to foster collective responsibility for accelerating the language and content outcomes for our ELLs.

What Is an Academic Discussion?

In Oakland, we are greatly influenced by Jeff Zwiers and Marie Crawford's book Academic Conversations (2011), and we believe academic discussion demonstrates the following characteristics:

Purposeful and sustained conversations about content

Anchored in grade-level texts and tasks

Students work together to co-construct knowledge and negotiate meaning

Students use "talk moves," such as asking for clarification, paraphrasing, and building on or disagreeing with a previous idea

Why are Academic Discussions So Important for Our ELLs?

Academic discussions help all students develop reasoning skills and deepens understanding of content and multiple perspectives. For ELLs, academic discussions are critical to language and content development because:

ELLs need the opportunity to hear language in authentic and varied contexts. Teachers, as well as students with higher language proficiency, serve as language models. Particularly important is exposure to discipline-specific language so ELLs hear what it sounds like to communicate in an array of academic contexts.

ELLs need opportunities to produce language in contextualized and purposeful ways. They need to practice applying form (e.g., grammar, vocabulary) and function (e.g., language used to clarify, explain, argue) to communicate and build ideas.

ELLs benefit from redundancy of ideas and their related vocabulary. Discussion allows for multiple opportunities to hear new concepts and content explained, analyzed, and interpreted.

How Do We Make Sure Our ELLs are Fully Engaged in and Benefiting from Academic Discussions?

Just because we give students the opportunity to discuss, doesn't mean they will. We need to provide additional supports and structures so that the students who can benefit the most from academic discussion actually do! Here are five important teaching strategies you can use to support your ELLs to fully participate:

1. Mix up your grouping structures, but give more time to pairs. Whole group discussions provide a great opportunity to model discussion skills, to hear a broad perspective of ideas, and to synthesize learning from small group or pair conversations. The biggest payoff, however, is paired conversations, because they maximize speaking time and increase overall engagement. Even when the structure is a whole-group discussion, consider inserting paired conversations ( Turn and Talk or Think-Pair-Share) throughout to allow for ELLs to rehearse their ideas and related academic language.

2. Use discussion strategies that require every student to talk. You can simply open a discussion with a Round Robin, or use Talking Chips or Discussion Cards that allow for equitable participation. Watch students actively participate in discussions in Participation Protocols for Academic Discussions.

3. Provide language support. Providing students access to language resources, such as sentence stems and word banks, gives students both the academic language and confidence to participate. A note of caution: overuse of prescribed sentence starters or stems can actually stifle talk, as students just fill in the blanks. Better yet, have students rehearse a few choice sentence stems and relevant vocabulary before they engage in academic discussion. The goal is for students to know how to access and use language supports when needed and independently ( Watch Talk Moves in Academic Discussion).

4. Accept imperfect language. When ELLs are engaged in academic discussion, privilege communication over precision of language. Overcorrection or too much attention to grammatically correct language can hinder ELLs language production and interrupt the flow of ideas. During a discussion, we want our ELLs to approximate correct and sophisticated language, not perfect it.

5. Expect and require extended responses. One of the biggest disservices to our ELLs is to accept one-word or abbreviated responses -- even worse is when we complete their sentences. Instead, provide wait time, encourage students to continue, and press students for evidence by asking, "Why?" or, "Can you give me an example?"

Resources

Ready to add this strategy to your class work? Here are some of my favorite resources on academic discussion:

PDF Download: Academic Discussion Continuum of Teacher Practice

PDF Download: A Distinction between Output and Interaction

Academic Language and Literacy: Be sure to check out the tools and resources page for discussion strategies and activities, as well as language supports for students.

Academic Language Development Network: Find resources and articles on academic language development and fostering student interactions.

The Inquiry Project: Focused on science instruction, you'll find "video cases" and a guide for using teacher "talk moves" to deepen classroom discussions.

Understanding Language: This is the site of the Stanford based Understanding Language initiative, which seeks to raise awareness of the critical role of language in the Common Core State Standards and Next Generation Science Standards. The site includes academic papers, exemplary lessons, and professional learning opportunities. Teaching Channel also has a six-part video series showcasing an exemplar unit focused on ELA instruction for middle school English Language Learners.
Nicole Knight is the Executive Director of the English Language Learner and Multilingual Achievement Office at Oakland Unified School District. She has served Oakland students as a teacher, teacher leader, and instructional leader at the site and district level. A National Board Certified Teacher in English as a New Language, Nicole has expertise in language and literacy development of English Language Learners, curriculum development, and professional development for teachers and principals. She is also the mother of two bicultural and bilingual children, both students at a dual language Oakland public school.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Why are Academic Discussions So Important for our ELLs?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
One of the many things I love about working for Oakland, California schools is serving a community rich in diversity of culture and language. At the same time, it is no easy task ensuring that our English Language Learners (ELLs) are meeting grade-level content standards while mastering a second language.

# data[].attributes.headline
ELL Student Resources to succeed in school (GE)

# data[].attributes.subject
ELL Student Resources to succeed in school (GE)

# data[].attributes.body
This article presents some of the basics of what an EL student is: the language proficiency levels, the specifics EL terms, population facts,  the characteristics and learning trends and needs of the EL students.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
ESL/ELL Resources to Succeed in School | Accredited Schools Online

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
English Language Learners (ELL) have a wealth of resources available to help them succeed in school. Find guidance for teachers, parents, and students here.

# data[].attributes.headline
National Clearinghouse for English Language Learners Website

# data[].attributes.subject
National Clearinghouse for English Language Learners Website

# data[].attributes.body
This website contains a database of more than 20,000 articles, videos, and support documents for helping families and educators of English Language Learners.  The site also offers an English Learner Toolkit for State and Local Education Agencies (SEAs and LEAs) produced by the National Center for English Language Acquisition (NCELA) under U.S. Department of Education.

The toolkit also includes information from outside organizations and links to other sources of information outside of the Department of Education.  NF

http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/

# data[].attributes.headline
Differentiating Instruction for ELL Learners

# data[].attributes.subject
Differentiating Instruction for ELL Learners

# data[].attributes.body
Three minute video from Education Week in which veteran ELL instructors provide a range of tips for building on student strengths and interests and differentiating instruction to increase learning.  - NF

http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/learning-the-language/2019/02/differentiating_instruction_for_ells.html

# data[].attributes.headline
ELL Success in AP English Language and Composition

# data[].attributes.subject
ELL Success in AP English Language and Composition

# data[].attributes.body
https://www.nwp.org/cs/public/print/resource/2336

An article about helping teachers provides support to ELL students in AP English Literature and Composition.  The College Board has a strong policy of open enrollment to increase equity and access to all students.  The College Board’s Equity policy is, “The College Board strongly encourages educators to make equitable access a guiding principle for their AP programs by giving all willing and academically prepared students the opportunity to participate in AP. We encourage the elimination of barriers that restrict access to AP for students from ethnic, racial and socioeconomic groups that have been traditionally underserved. Schools should make every effort to ensure their AP classes reflect the diversity of their student population. The College Board also believes that all students should have access to academically challenging course work before they enroll in AP classes, which can prepare them for AP success. It is only through a commitment to equitable preparation and access that true equity and excellence can be achieved.”
-NF

# data[].attributes.body
Website, which is accessible in both English and Spanish, that has a range of resources for teachers, administrators, librarians, and families as well as links to more articles and videos.   The site has researched based information regarding ELL and is funded by public broadcasting, the American Federation of Teachers, and the National Education Association.  - NF

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A bilingual site for educators and families of English language learners

# data[].attributes.headline
College Board Accommodations on SAT Exams

# data[].attributes.subject
College Board Accommodations on SAT Exams

# data[].attributes.body
Education Week article announcing greater accommodations for ELL students taking SAT Exams including directions in the native language and access to word-to-word dictionaries.
-NF
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/high_school_and_beyond/2016/12/college_board_accommodations_for_students_with_disabilities_ells.html

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
By guest blogger Madeline Will
The College Board announced on Thursday that it would make it easier for students with disabilities to request test accommodations, and that it would provide, for the first time, testing supports to some English-language learners who take the SAT.

The College Board and its competitor, ACT Inc., have increasingly faced criticism-and questions from the U.S. Department of Justice-for testing practices that put students with disabilities at a disadvantage compared to students without disabilities.

Earlier this year, the department's civil rights division began to look into the testing organizations' practices after hearing persistent complaints that they reject many requests for accommodations that are routinely provided by schools, such as extra time or frequent breaks. Students who are used to testing accommodations at school typically have to take the exams without them and risk a compromised performance, or, in some states, they can take the tests with their usual accommodations without getting a certified "college-reportable" score.

This has posed challenges for students with disabilities, particularly those in the states that require high school students to take either the SAT or the ACT.

Now, the College Board has announced, starting on January 1, most students who use testing accommodations at their school through an Individualized Education Program (IEP) or 504 Plan will have those same accommodations automatically approved for taking the SAT, the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, the PSAT 10, SAT Subject Tests, and Advanced Placement exams.

School testing accommodation coordinators must now answer just two questions affirmatively to have most students' requests be approved-"Is the requested accommodation(s) in the student's plan?" and "Has the student used the accommodation(s) for school testing?" This change is expected to reduce the approval time for accommodation requests.

In a statement, David Coleman, the president and CEO of the College Board, said educators, students, and families have been asking for a simpler request process.

"The school staff knows their students best, and we want to cut down on the time and paperwork needed to submit a testing accommodations request," he said.

Also starting January 1, English-learners who take a state-funded SAT during the school day will receive test instructions in their native language (including Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, and a limited number of other languages initially) and will have access to an approved word-to-word bilingual glossary. In the fall, ELL students taking a state-funded SAT during the school day can also receive more time on the exam (up to time-and-a-half) and will be able to take the test in a room with fewer distractions.

Only a handful of states fund the SAT during the school day: Connecticut, Colorado, Delaware, Idaho, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island, plus the District of Columbia. The College Board expects to expand its ELL-testing supports to students taking the SAT in all states soon.

"We are excited that Colorado's first statewide SAT administration will mark the first time that English-language learners who use these testing supports on the state's college entrance exam will receive college-reportable scores," said Joyce Zurkowski, the executive director of assessment at the state's education department, in a statement.

This change comes just a few weeks after ACT Inc. announced it would start providing the same accommodations for English-learners in the fall of 2017.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
College Board to Offer More Accommodations for Students With Disabilities, ELLs

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
By guest blogger Madeline Will The College Board announced on Thursday that it would make it easier for students with disabilities to request test accommodations, and that it would provide, for the first time, testing supports to some English-language learners who take the SAT.

# data[].attributes.headline
Schools Often Fail to Educate, Support English-Language Learners

# data[].attributes.subject
Schools Often Fail to Educate, Support English-Language Learners

# data[].attributes.body
One of the biggest issues that this article brings to light is the need for better prepared teachers with ELL endorsements, especially the need for the government to make this more attractive as the need for teachers is growing. The article also brings awareness of how their study demonstrated that educating caregivers of the benefits of being bilingual is important and that the notion that students must eliminate their first language in order to gain English fluency is false.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Schools across the United States often provide substandard instruction and social-emotional support to the nation's English-language learners-and fail to properly train the educators who teach them, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine finds.

Noting that limited English proficiency remains a substantial barrier to academic success for millions of children in K-12 schools, the study explores how under-resourced schools and under-prepared educators can hinder efforts to help those students learn and master English.

The committee behind the report-consisting of a who's who of experts on language acquisition and educators-also explored the struggles of specific populations of English-learners such as those with disabilities, who are less likely than their native English-speaking peers to be referred to early intervention and special education programs. The report examined the challenges for long-term English-learners-those who are not considered proficient after being educated for seven or more years in U.S. schools.

One theme remains consistent throughout the wide-ranging, 460-page report: The nation's schools must devote more resources and research to educating students who aren't native English speakers.

"Because literacy lies at the center of success in educational systems, educating dual language learners and English learners effectively is a national challenge with consequences both for individuals and for society," said Ruby Takanishi, a senior research fellow at New America in Washington who is the chairwoman of the committee that conducted the study and wrote the report.

"Despite their linguistic, cognitive, and social potential, many of them are struggling to meet the requirements for academic success in American schools, a challenge that jeopardizes their prospects in postsecondary education and the workforce with consequences for their health and well-being."

Education Week's 2016 special report, Teaching America's English-Language Learners, explores how well the educators are seving ELLs, who account for more than 9 percent of enrollment in public K-12 schools.

The committee behind the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report stressed the importance of schooling the parents and childcare providers of dual-language learners-children up to age 5 who are not yet enrolled in K-12 schools-to help the nation's youngest English-learners begin school with a firm foundation in the language. The study dispels the notion that students must discard their first language to learn another.

"Being fluent in two or more languages is a natural human attribute; the majority of the world's population is bilingual or multilingual," the authors write.

The work wasn't restricted to what educators and researchers would consider more traditional English-learner populations. The study also examined language revitalization efforts in American Indian and Alaskan Native communities, finding evidence that such programs can yield positive benefits for students.

The committee detailed a research agenda that identified knowledge gaps about dual-language learners and English-language learners, including comparing student achievement and outcomes in states-such as New York and Texas-that embrace bilingual education against places like Arizona and Massachusetts that have English-only policies.

The researchers also argued that more work needs to be done to understand how to address the social-emotional needs of the diverse range of English-learners, including refugees, migrant children, unaccompanied minors, and undocumented children, who face outside factors and stress while trying to learn a new language.

The group also calls on the federal government, namely the departments of education and health and human services, to expand outreach to English-learner parents in states with burgeoning ELL populations such as Georgia, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania, that may not be prepared to meet the needs of ELL students.

Here's a link to the full report.
Kevin Pineda, pictured at age 18, credits a course designed to help struggling ELL students become proficient in English, and for putting him on track to earn his diploma at Fairfax High School in Los Angeles. For Further Reading on This Topic: Teaching English-Language Learners: What Does the Research Tell Us? English-Language Learner Statistics Building ELLs' Early Literacy is Crucial Home-School Connections Help ELL and Their Parents Quality Learning Materials Are Scarce for English-Language Learners For Stalled ELL Students, Graduation Is Often an Elusive Goal (Emile Wamsteker for Education Week)

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Schools Often Fail to Educate, Support English-Language Learners

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Schools across the United States often provide substandard instruction and social-emotional support to the nation's English-language learners-and fail to properly train the educators who teach them, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine finds.

# data[].attributes.headline
Potential Solutions to Overcome EL Challenges

# data[].attributes.subject
Potential Solutions to Overcome EL Challenges

# data[].attributes.body
Two of the biggest challenges EL teachers encounter is the understaffing of these positions and the extra duties that take away time for teaching. This article suggests ways to restructure school culture to best meet the demands of our EL teachers and students.
-R

# data[].attributes.body
This article touches on strategies teachers can easily incorporate within their lessons to help students develop academic language. In this quote, readers get a glimpse of the main idea behind the importance of developing academic language: "Without systematic language development, many students never gain the academic literacy skills needed to succeed in mainstream classes, to meet content standards, and to pass standardized assessments."

-R