Improving Methods of Aligning Instruction to Standards and Assessments for English Language Learners and Analyzing the Relationship of Alignment to Student Achievement, Iowa/10 State Consortium, the Council of Chief State School Officers, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, EdCount, LLC, and WestEd, Inc.

With Iowa serving as the lead state, a consortium of 10 states – Florida, Idaho, Iowa, Maine, Minnesota, Ohio, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and partner organizations has been awarded a grant from U.S. Department of Education to conduct a unique project integrating research, development, collaboration, and technical assistance to improve the quality and validity of state assessments designed to assess the knowledge and skills of English language learners (ELL). The proposal stemmed from states’ recognition of the need for additional resources and information for improving assessments and standards that apply to English language learners as identified in the CCSSO state collaborative project on ELL issues.

The following key questions help form the goals for the study design with states, and the project assistance to participating states and school districts:

1. To what extent do English language learners have opportunity to learn the subject content specified in state academic standards and assessed on state assessments?
2. What is the relationship of academic English language development standards and assessments to state academic standards?
3. What instructional practices and strategies are used to teach academic English language skills across different subject areas or courses?
4. What is the relationship between alignment of instruction to standards and improved academic achievement of English language learner students? \

The project was developed from the research, development, and experience of CCSSO and the project partners with the Surveys of Enacted Curriculum (SEC) model and tools which have been applied in more than 20 states for alignment studies and analyses of instructional alignment in several academic subjects. In this study, the SEC instruments will be adapted and extended for use in analyzing alignment issues for ELL instruction, assessments, and standards. Each participating state will receive technical assistance in data collection, analysis, professional development with use of the data.

Project 2-year Schedule
State Schedules
Video Intro to SEC ELL

SEC ELL Instruments

• Science Teacher Survey
• SEC ELD ESL Teacher Survey 
• Math Teacher Survey
• ELAR Teacher Survey
• Social Studies Teacher Survey
• SEC ELD ESL Program Survey
   

SEC ELL Language and Content Coding procedures

• Language Coding SEC ELL analysis
• Content Coding SEC ELL analysis
• Completed Content and Language Analysis of Standards, Assessments