English Learners Q&A

How English-Learner Standards Can Help Teachers Help Students

By Ileana Najarro — January 24, 2025 3 min read
Fifth graders work on their math problems in a bilingual classroom at Sandoval Elementary School in Chicago on Dec. 3, 2019.
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

Jenni Torres has taken the helm as the new executive director of WIDA, the consortium that oversees English-language proficiency tests used by 41 states for English learners.

Before this role, she served as chief academic officer at Waterford.org, a national nonprofit focused on early learning and kindergarten readiness.

Torres comes to WIDA at a time when English learners’ English-language proficiency scores remain below pre-pandemic levels, and uncertainty about the federal government’s commitment to multilingual education during President Donald Trump’s second term.

Just a few weeks into the new role, Torres spoke with EdWeek to share her vision for WIDA’s future, and what educators can expect from the organization moving forward.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

What are your priorities for WIDA for this year?

Continuing to work alongside multilingual learners, their families, and the educators [who] serve them, ensuring that we can really provide best-in-class, multilingual instruction with effective and measured outcomes. I hope that I can really help us to continue to be responsive to states, to educators, and to the youth that we serve, and help us to design the best products and services and offerings that can meet their needs, and also to find out ways to innovate.

How does WIDA hope to address the need to raise proficiency scores?

Jenni Torres

There [are] lots of amazing experts at WIDA [who] are focused on these details, but from a high-level perspective, the 2020 English-language development standards from WIDA pushed forward the understanding of how teachers can use those standards to be able to help multilingual learners understand language around all kinds of different content areas. And so WIDA is looking to expand and provide support to teachers beyond just those who are focused on traditional [English learner] coursework and expanding that to content areas. For example, working even more directly with science content area or math content area teachers, so that we can embed these best practices and these evidence-based standards across how students experience instruction in the classroom, no matter what classroom they’re in and no matter what part of the day they’re learning.

One of the things that we want to figure out is, how do we best serve educators? Educators are busy. They have a lot going on all day, and they have a lot of different needs in their classrooms. So how can we best [offer] them these effective practices, these research-based ways of working with multilingual learners in a way that’s effective for them.

Are there concerns over how English learners will be prioritized under the new federal administration?

We’re all watching and learning together what the federal level approach will be, but as an organization, we are really led by what our states want. We will be thinking about what each individual state wants from us and asks for.

How will WIDA continue to invest in professional development?

I know that the team is in the process of taking feedback that they’ve received from teachers at the [WIDA annual] conference, as well as in some other formats, to really build out that plan of what that can look like, and again, figuring out what state partners want and need. I’ve recently heard from some content teachers who’ve taken some of WIDA’s professional learning and found it super helpful to them, and they thought it was very helpful to understand the language of math or the language of science and how that impacts what they can provide to multilingual learners in their classroom every day. So we’re hoping to expand upon that, but I don’t have specifics yet, as the team is still building out the plan and the process.

Editor’s note: Tim Boals, the last executive director of WIDA, remains with the organization as a senior principal investigator and hopes to organize a convening of researchers and educators on big ideas related to multilingual learners.

Related Tags:

Events

School & District Management Webinar Fostering Productive Relationships Between Principals and Teachers
Strong principal-teacher relationships = happier teachers & thriving schools. Join our webinar for practical strategies.
Jobs Virtual Career Fair for Teachers and K-12 Staff
Find teaching jobs and K-12 education jubs at the EdWeek Top School Jobs virtual career fair.
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Webinar
Promoting Integrity and AI Readiness in High Schools
Learn how to update school academic integrity guidelines and prepare students for the age of AI.
Content provided by Turnitin

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
View Jobs
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
View Jobs
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
View Jobs
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.
View Jobs

Read Next

English Learners Trump Has Made English the Official Language. What That Means for Schools
Experts spoke with Education Week about the potential challenges and opportunities an official U.S. language creates.
6 min read
An illustration of a speech bubble on a blue background. The American Flag takes up the entire inside of the speech bubble.
iStock/Getty
English Learners How Schools Can Expand Dual-Language Immersion Programs
Bipartisan state and local demand for dual-language immersion programs continues to grow.
4 min read
042523 Cardona Bilingual 3 EdDe BS
One of the last projects U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona oversaw was the publication of playbooks on how to establish and sustain dual-language immersion programs across the country.
Courtesy of U.S. Department of Education
English Learners Q&A What’s Ahead for the 5.3 Million English Learners in Our Schools?
If English learners do well, the whole nation will, says the outgoing director of the federal office of English language acquisition.
6 min read
Photograph of a Hispanic elementary school girl writing at her desk in a classroom setting
E+
English Learners Which Students Are Earning the Seal of Biliteracy, in Charts
A growing number of students are graduating high school with a seal of biliteracy recognizing their multilingualism.
2 min read
Karen language students work on a presentation highlighting historical figures during a Karen for Karen speakers class at Washington Tech Magnet School in St. Paul, Minn., on May 22, 2024.
Karen language students work on a presentation highlighting historical figures during a Karen for Karen-speakers class at Washington Tech Magnet School in St. Paul, Minn., on May 22, 2024. The St. Paul district has boosted seal of biliteracy participation by creating courses and assessments for less commonly spoken languages.
Kaylee Domzalski/Education Week