States

Hakuta: Common Standards Are ‘Silent’ on Some ELL Issues

By Mary Ann Zehr — March 12, 2010 1 min read
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For the common standards to work for English-language learners, states will have to supplement them with English-language-proficiency standards aligned with them and provide professional development and materials geared toward helping ELLs attain them, says Kenji Hakuta, an education professor at Stanford University.

He writes in comments that he submitted to the California Department of Education, and also sent to me in an e-mail, that while the common standards document released this week includes an introductory statement on how to apply the standards to ELLs, it is “silent” on how such students will equitably attain them or how long that would take them.

I’ve heard murmurs from a couple of people in the field about how ELLs’ educational needs aren’t getting enough attention in the writing of the standards.

Hakuta, one of the most recognized names in the field of ELLs, was not on the committee to write the standards. But he is on the validation committee.

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