English Language Learners and the New Standards
Summative assessment policy and practice for English Learners with Robert Linquanti
Math in Common webinar #3 / January 31, 3:30 – 4:30
Summative assessment policy and practice
The final webinar in this series explores summative assessment policy and practice for English learners (ELs). In particular, it examines key issues and opportunities in defining ELs, and in assessing ELs’ linguistic and academic progress under new math standards and corresponding English language proficiency standards. It also highlights more nuanced approaches to EL assessment and accountability that send clearer signals to educators and that can support continuous improvement of policy and practice.
Robert Linquanti was a Project Director and Senior Researcher at WestEd. He helped states and school districts strengthen their assessment, evaluation, and accountability policies, practices, and systems for English learners (ELs).
His work included supporting states in implementing ESSA for ELs; helping state and local educators implement new content and English language proficiency (ELP) standards and assessments; and co-leading a U.S. Department of Education-sponsored multistate project exploring innovative assessment and accountability for recently-arrived ELs.
Linquanti serves on the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium EL Advisory Committee; CCSSO ELL Assessment Advisory Committee; Texas State Assessment Technical Advisory Committee; California ELP Assessment Technical Advisory Group; Stanford University’s Understanding Language initiative; and the national Working Group on ELL Policy.
Formative Assessment and English Learners with Margaret Heritage
Math in Common webinar #2 / January 5, 3:30 – 4:30 PM
Assessment to Inform Learning
Formative assessment describes a type of assessment where the focus is on informing learning, rather than measuring it or summing it up. This webinar will address the power of effective formative assessment in supporting English language learner students to achieve the language and learning expectations of college and career ready mathematics standards. In addition to highlighting specific practices of formative assessment that teachers implement in their classrooms, there will be a discussion of how principles of learning underlie and are implemented in formative assessment practices, and how student involvement is integral to effective assessment.
Margaret Heritage joined WestEd as Senior Scientist in October 2014 after 12 years as an Assistant Director at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards and Student Testing, UCLA. Heritage’s current work focuses primarily on formative assessment and innovative ways to support teachers’ classroom assessment practice.
Math in Common webinar series / hosted by WestEd
Webinar #1 with Aída Walqui / Thursday, December 1st, 2016 @ 3:30-4:30
This introductory webinar will focus on two main themes: the need for all educators to become increasingly more professional, and the mindset and practice shifts that professional educators need to undertake in order to prepare English Learners for productive and participatory life in the 21st century.
Beginning with a brief review of key concepts on professionalism, the presentation will then address conceptualizations of language and how languages are learned. The presenter will propose understandings of language as action and learning as simultaneously encompassing the development of conceptual, analytical, and language practices in a discipline.
After an introduction and unpacking of key concepts, a community discussion will be encouraged.
Aída Walqui is Director of Teacher Professional Development Program at WestEd, and along with Margaret Heritage and Robert Linquanti, an author of English Language Learners and the New Standards. Previously, Walqui taught in the Division of Education at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the School of Education at Stanford University, where she coordinated the Cross-Cultural, Linguistic, and Academic Development emphasis in the STEP program. She has also taught in other universities in Peru, Mexico, England, and the United States.
Walqui speaks and writes about teacher growth in school contexts characterized by cultural and linguistic diversity, and education for Spanish speakers and immigrant students in American schools.
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