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Two New Projects Join WCER

January 9, 2006

Schools across the nation face tremendous challenges as they seek to raise student achievement and reduce persistent performance gaps in core academic areas. To address these challenges in Illinois and Wisconsin, WCER and Learning Point Associates (LPA) will cooperate on a newly funded Great Lakes West Regional Comprehensive Center. The Center will support the state education agencies, districts, schools, and other stakeholders as they strive to close achievement gaps and help all children reach high academic standards. GLW will be the "field agent" of the U.S. Department of Education in Illinois and Wisconsin. Its mission is, first, to provide technical assistance to the states as they implement NCLB and, second, to build the capacity of states to aid districts and schools needing assistance to place highly qualified teachers in all classrooms and to implement instruction based on scientific evidence.

WCER also adds to its family of projects the World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium, dedicated to the design and implementation of high standards and equitable educational opportunities for English language learners. Established through a federal grant, the WIDA Consortium consists of eleven partner states which account for nearly 350,000 English language learners in kindergarten through grade 12 in approximately 2,500 school districts. The Consortium has developed English language proficiency standards and is currently in the second year of implementing an English language proficiency test for English language learners (ELLs). Its standards have been used as the foundation for a new national model that will be available at the Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) web site. TESOL is the international ESL teachers' organization. An alternate academic assessment for ELLs is planned for 2008.