As part of its work to support regional comprehensive centers, SRI leads the Multilingual Learner (ML) Work Group, which brings together staff from federally funded comprehensive centers who work with states around issues to support multilingual learners.
Reclassification from English learner to English proficient is a crucial outcome for English learner (EL) students’ academic progress because it can open the door to more rigorous courses and lead to stronger academic outcomes.
When I arrived in the United States, I was not quite eight, and did not know how to even say “hello” in English. All I knew was that education was my opportunity to live a better life, and that I had to learn English to access it.
SRI Education is leading an external evaluation of bilingual professional development developed by faculty from Santa Clara University and San Jose State University. The National Professional Development Program of the Office of English Language Acquisition has funded this 5-year project to develop bilingual professional development for in-service teachers, pre-service teachers, and student caregivers. The project … Continue reading Bilingual/Biliterate Instruction for Bilingual Youth (BBILY) Evaluation
Resource: Schools supporting multilingual learners
We spoke with teachers and administrators in three New England districts with large numbers of multilingual learners about how the pandemic influenced student learning and teaching practice last year.
The Adapting and Innovating Project examined the experiences of students, teachers and administrators across New England districts during the 2020-2021 school year to better understand how they responded to COVID. The work included an Innovation Profile of the Maria Muniz Academy, the only dual language high school in Boston, as well as a blog summarizing … Continue reading Think Forward New England: New England’s Education Systems Navigate COVID-19 and Map a New Way Forward
For the last two years, a team of educators from the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) has collaborated with REL Northeast & Islands researchers on a project designed to ensure equitable access to high-quality instruction for USVI English learners. The team—composed of two administrators from the Virgin Islands Department of Education (VIDE), two district English as … Continue reading REL Northeast & Islands Virgin Islands English Learner Project
From 2017 to 2020, REL Northeast & Islands staff worked with state and local partners in the region to learn about the policies and practices they use to identify disabilities among English learners and to provide resources to implement key policies and practices at the district, school, and classroom levels. » Learn more Project Leaders: … Continue reading REL Northeast & Islands Identifying Disabilities among English Learners
This blog describes a two-year project in collaboration with the Virgin Islands Department of Education to ensure that all educators have access to best practices for English learners. View Resource Citation: Parker, C.E. (2021). Virgin Islands Project Supports All Educators in Instructing English Learners. Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands. Retrieved from https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/edlabs/regions/northeast/Blog/Post/35 Related Project: … Continue reading Virgin Islands Project Supports All Educators in Instructing English Learners
Many teachers struggle with recognizing when their English learner students have disabilities. This video describes REL Northeast & Islands’ work with Connecticut to support educators in improving instruction for English learners. View Resource Citation: Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast & Islands (May 24, 2021). Identifying Learning Disabilities Among English Learners. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sZVDnSIsCZw&t=2s Related Project: REL Northeast … Continue reading Identifying Learning Disabilities Among English Learners
This report describes data collected in school year 2016–17 to learn about the use of digital learning resources in instructing EL students through a nationally representative survey of districts that enrolled EL students and a teacher survey that included mainstream teachers of EL students and EL specialists, and inlcudes six case studies to provide illustrative … Continue reading Supporting English Learners through Technology: What Districts and Teachers Say about Digital Learning Resources for English Learners Volume I: Final Report
Understanding Language is a resource tool from Stanford University, created as a PD tool for teachers with ELLs. One of the things teachers who complete the courses report is courses have prompted them to incorportate formative assessments with a language lens and involve students in process. View Resource Citation: Rutherford-Quach, S., Kuo, A. C., & … Continue reading Understanding their Language: Online Professional Development for teachers of ELLs
Research on teachers integrating Language proficiency standards with content standards so lessons were rich and still accessible to English learners. View Resource Citation: Patel, D., Wei, X., Laguarda, K., Stites, R., Cheever, H., & Goetz, R. (2018). Evaluation of education connections: Supporting teachers with standards-based instruction for English learners in mainstream classrooms. SRI Education. Related Project: … Continue reading Evaluation of education connections: Supporting teachers with standards-based instruction for English learners in mainstream classrooms
Project: Educator Toolkit: Using Educational Technology — 21st Century Supports for English Learners
The educator and developer’s toolkit are based on insights from the findings of the National Study of English Learners and Digital Learning Resources conducted by the U.S. Department of Education, Policy and Program Studies Service, on behalf of the Office of English Language Acquisition and the Office of Educational Technology. The Educator Toolkit aims to … Continue reading Educator Toolkit: Using Educational Technology — 21st Century Supports for English Learners
Project: Evaluation of Education Connections
The Center for Applied Linguistics developed an online site, Education Connections, to train and support teachers in integrating English language proficiency standards with content standards to deliver lessons that are both content rich and accessible to English learners. SRI provided external evaluation of the intervention. Although the evaluation found that EdConx had no effect on … Continue reading Evaluation of Education Connections