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States Get Support for English Language Learners

April 2007

Timothy Boals

More students than ever come to the classroom speaking a language other than English.

Some of them bring solid experience in academic subjects in another language and just need help translating that knowledge into English.

Other students bring little educational preparation. They come to the classroom years behind their peers academically. Some have a beginning knowledge of English, while other have none.

Nearly 20 percent of school children ages 5-17 speak a language other than English at home. Nearly 5 percent of school children ages 15-17 speak a language other than English at home and have difficulty speaking English. Within the next three years, more than 30 percent of all school age children will come from homes in which the primary language is not English. Source: American's Children in Brief: Key National Indicators of Well-Being, 2006; and BankStreet.edu

Instruction needs to be designed to help students grow in both academic content knowledge and English language skills. If these are not addressed together, in a way that matches individual student needs, then the student is not served.

This has always been the case, but increased pressure from the No Child Left Behind Act has put schools under the microscope. ELL students’ progress is now measured more closely than ever, and schools not meeting goals are sanctioned.

How can schools assess these students and place them properly? Plenty of vendors offer their own versions of assessment instruments. A few of them meet all NCLB requirements; many do not.

It’s natural for schools to feel isolated in this environment, and they’re looking for help. Some have joined a growing consortium that shares resources and expertise. The World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium wasn’t even around 10 years ago, but now it involves 14 States and the District of Columbia working to meet NCLB instructional and assessment requirements.

The Consortium began with three states. At that time Timothy Boals and colleagues made their home at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. They knew what the research had to say about instruction for ELLs, and they knew how to help teachers. But when NCLB was signed into law, no ELL assessments would meet all its requirements. The assessments could identify students needing ELL help but could not measure when such services could end. Nor could the assessments claim strong validity or reliability. Although the tests measured student’s conversational language skills they didn’t measure students’ levels of academic, or content, language.

Boals and colleagues sought and found the needed testing expertise at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) in Washington, D.C. Combining the two organizations’ knowledge bases – testing with curriculum and instruction – produced a powerful solution.

The Consortium is now housed at UW-Madison. It has grown from three states to 15 in part because WIDA serves state education departments as a buffer against chronic uncertainties like the ebb and flow in a given state’s personnel with expertise in ELL instruction and assessment. WIDA offers continuing expertise.

NCLB requires ELL standards and assessments to integrate vertically (up through grades) and horizontally (across disciplines). The WIDA English Language Proficiency Standards for English Language Learners (“the Standards”) provide teachers, for the first time, a grid that shows where students should be at each grade level and in each academic subject. Boals says, “In our professional development we don’t just hold up the test and say ‘Here it is.’ We show the power of standards to influence instruction.”

The Standards are content-based ESL strategies. In other words, they merge language skills and content skills. They’re built on best practices. They’re innovative in that they help teachers to think in terms of, “What are these students getting out of my math lesson that helps them not only with math skills, but also with the language of math?”

The Standards encompass five English language proficiency (ELP) standards and provide ELL educators with a curriculum and assessment planning tool for content area objectives: The proficiency-based strands allow educators to gauge where ELLS are and how to appropriately challenge them in reaching the next levels. The content goals are modified as needed to fit state and local standards.

In many districts, Boals says, you may have one ELL specialist. This teacher would see 35 students in four different schools. Each student may receive 20 minutes of instruction per visit. In districts using WIDA’s resources and standards, the ELL specialist has support and becomes more of a coordinator, helping teachers with the standards and leveraging WIDA’s resources.

WIDA’s Standards are posted online for viewing and download at http://wida.us

In Arrangement #1 the Standards are arranged by standard type, then by domain, then by grade level (in that specific order). In Arrangement #2 the Standards are arranged by either standard type, domain, or grade level. In this arrangement, each table in the combined framework includes the bullet points of the matching classroom and large-scale frameworks tables. The ELP Standards Wizard helps users locate particular ELP standards of interest.

Charlene Rivera, executive director of George Washington University’s Center for Equity and Excellence in Education, examined WIDA’s assessment known as ACCESS for ELL, which measures students’ annual gains (and meets NCLB assessment requirements). Rivera says it’s well done (Education Week, 21 July 2006). “You have to look at whether, in the end, people learn something about instruction—about language proficiency and the extent to which instruction is linked to it,” Ms. Rivera said of the test.

WIDA Director Timothy Boals emphasizes the Consortium's desire to engage in quality research on improving practice for ELLs, saying "This is a principal reason why the fit at WCER is good."

Note: WIDA is not the only ESL-focused program in the School of Education. The ESL program within the School’s Department of Curriculum and Instruction engages aspiring ESL teachers in the critical exploration of tools for teaching; theories (and the application of theories) of second language acquisition; ways in which schools, communities, and individuals construct specific language and literacy practices and the implications of those practices; and the interplay of discourses in situated social encounters.

More information is available on the WIDA Web site.