States' Ability to Evaluate ELL Programs Questioned
Obama's ESEA proposal asks states to gauge strategies' effectiveness.
In its blueprint for reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Obama administration proposes requiring states to implement an evaluation system on the effectiveness of programs for English-language learners. But educators, advocates, and researchers who work with those students have differing views about whether states are well set up to meet such a requirement.
The plan released last month also calls for states to standardize the criteria for identification of ELLs and for their readiness to leave special programs. That would be a big change for California, the state with about 40 percent of the nation’s English-learners. It now leaves it up to school districts to decide whether students are proficient enough to stop getting special help to learn the language.
How to tell whether programs for English-language learners work is a thorny issue that is at the center of...
This article is available to subscribers only.
To keep reading this article and more, subscribe now or purchase this article.
Subscribe to Education Week and Save
Get a full year and save up to 45%!
Viewed
Emailed
Recommended
Commented
- K-8 Principal
- EdVantages/Performance Academies, Detroit, MI
- Principals
- Prince George's County Public Schools, MD
- Elementary School Teacher
- Success Academy Charter Schools, New York, NY
- Principal
- Partnership for Los Angeles Schools, Los Angeles, CA
- 2 Positions -Associate Superintendent and Chief Academic Officer, and Director of Human of Resources
- Washington County Public Schools, Hagerstown, MD
