001all right so i'll call the curriculum an instruction meeting to order at 4 37 p.m and i'd like to welcome our guests who will be with us to talk about the esl um rsp that that was presented um so just want to thank the people who are on the selection committee that's diana carpio who's our esl liaison erica de palma who is our fed ad hoc committee chair um dinalda chumny who's our new curriculum chief dr case who is our was our interim curriculum chief so thanks to everyone for your hard work and and for your time and at this point sandy do you want to say anything or donald i'm sorry yes well i'd just like to introduce our guests okay and tell everybody that this is we are about to have uh uh
002two presentations tonight and the first one is from um uh one of the uh firms who has submitted an rfp a request proposal and um they were selected as one of the two uh outstanding proposals and we have invited them tonight to make a presentation to uh our esteemed board members and to answer a few questions so the person i am familiar with is kim peron who i know is the uh either the president the owner of school works and i'm going to turn it over to her if that's all right miss harris and uh allow her to introduce her colleagues and make her presentation so miss caron i think that uh if you can make your presentation we would like to be able to uh you know for 15 or 20 minutes we would
003like to have an opportunity to answer to ask you a few questions after that absolutely i'd be happy to and nice to meet you all i am kim perrone i'm the president and owner of schoolworks and i'm joined by two of my colleagues dr nancy claire who you can see in the brady bunch box she's our project specialist in terms of her supports and her expertise english language learners so she'll be speaking about that and i've known nancy for a really long time and then i've also got jennifer strock who's our director of business development on the line as well and jen has been the primary contact in terms of facilitating the setup of this meeting and made sure that we were um able to respond to the rfp in a timely manner and all
004of them so um that's the schoolworks team for tonight i would be delighted to share a powerpoint with you however i'm getting a message that says the host has disabled participant screen sharing okay so the host is listening and i hope i can certainly text him oh thank you roland is it possible to let them share yeah i'm working on that right thank you so much don't we love technology oh yes tonight's been a little bit of a challenge but we are we're working on it is it snowing where you are a small amount well i i know that you're probably a little bit um short on time and i want to make sure that uh we move expeditiously through this process so that you can also move on with your meeting so maybe what
005i'll do is just start by giving you a little introduction to schoolworks and uh nancy and myself and then um whenever we kind of wherever we pick up i'd be happy to screen share the slides that we've prepared for you today that makes sense so again my name is okay great my name is kim perron i'm the president and owner of schoolworks um i have a long history working with schoolworks i first started as a consultant and was actually further back than that a client of scorps but i've always admired schoolworks work and started as a consultant when it came time for me to pursue consulting as a career and um you know now 13 years later i actually own the company so i really believe in our mission which is to have a positive
006impact on student achievement and well-being and also support the development of the capacity of educators to enable that as well and i think i've known nancy for probably uh as long as i've been involved in score she was actually involved with sports as a consultant long before um i i became involved in the organization so she's got a long history not only with sports but also as an educator and nancy i don't know if you want to say a quick word about yourself i'm hearing from roland that you may you must be able to share your screen now okay great that's right i'll do that while nancy is saying hello hi everyone um i'm thrilled to be here thank you um i'm proudest i guess uh mostly as i started my career as a bilingual
007and esl teacher in living in puerto rico many many moons ago i've dedicated my professional life to the equitable and high quality education for english language learners so i'm just thrilled to be part of the schoolworks team and i'm i'm thrilled to be meeting all of you um so first of all we just want to say thank you for your commitment to focusing in on the equitable access of programs and opportunities for english language learners and really all of your students we think that the work you're doing is the commitment that you've demonstrated to that is really admirable and we're honored to be here talking to you a little bit about how we might be able to support you in those efforts um so what makes schoolworks a little bit different we're we are a
008certified woman-owned business and um we have the the that's kind of a nice um way to get involved with the diversity of it and you know really support diverse business owners at this point in time we're all about collecting evidence and being completely evidence-based all of the work that we do is based and the recommendations that we make are based on evidence that we collect as we get to know you and your schools in your particular district everyone who works for and with scores is a former educator including myself but i'm a former high school spanish teacher i've been a department head at a high school spanish department and um as have all of our managing directors and all of our consultants so we really understand the hard work that educators do every day working
009with teachers working with kids and working with their families and that really put that at the forefront of all of our work as well we've been doing evaluations and making program recommendations since 1998. so we have a long history of doing this work not just nancy and myself but the company as a whole and so what we really have tried to do over the years is build upon the knowledge and the expertise that we've accumulated in evaluating programs across the country over these um 23 years i guess now and really use that to your advantage and we're a trusted partner we are a an approved turnaround partner and multiple state departments of education including massachusetts alabama colorado indiana louisiana maryland minnesota ohio rhode island and tennessee just to name a few so we really are
010working nationally across the country and have demonstrated results in terms of improving student learning and achievement so that's a big part of what we do um just to give you a quick snapshot here are some of our clients from around the country so you can get a sense of who we work with we do tend to work with not only departments of education but city school districts we work with charter networks around the country individual schools who are engaged in continuous improvement work foundations who are investing in a number of initiatives such as good to great initiatives and those kinds of things as well as education providers themselves so um you know organizations that are delivering uh educational programs like the kit foundation we've worked with national heritage academies in the past and so on
011and so forth we offer a range of services we call it a continuum that really starts on one end working around accountability and accountability systems with many of those state department of education providers that i mentioned and that really benefits us because we understand the high standards that schools and districts are held to across the country and then on the far right hand side of that spectrum we also provide a whole bunch of leadership and school developer support so what we like to do is say that we take what we've learned about policy and use that knowledge to inform the day-to-day work of school that we do in the schools that we partner with and similarly because we are engaged in working directly with school leaders and teachers across the country we also understand the
012hard work that and the challenges that uh schools face and we like to use that to inform our work um at the district level and uh with our state department of education partners when we're collaborating so we really do you know take the policy and practice and meld them together within that spectrum we also provide a range of quality reviews for both high stakes and diagnostic or continuous improvement processes as well as instructional supports and leadership supports um i think i mentioned at the start that measuring equitable access for diverse learners is a key part of what schoolworks does in all of our work um we actually have a set of criteria and indicators that embedded within our score quality criteria which is a framework for most of our work that is about whether or
013not schools promote strong cultures of diversity equity and inclusion and ensure that safe and supportive environment for all students so you can kind of take a look at some of the criterion that we look for when we engage with schools directly and we have a long history of doing specialized reviews such as the one that you are hoping to accomplish over the course of the next few years um just to name a few of the most recent engagements we're currently working with the massachusetts department of early education and care to help them understand the the preschool it's really the birth to third grade continuum and work with their private partners in provision of services to kids as well as the public providers as well to make sure that there's cohesion in their programming with a
014special attention to english language learners and special education students we're also working with the school district of philadelphia currently to do a special education program evaluation of a charter school that they oversee we recently partnered with the north adams public schools the north berkshire school union and adams cheshire regional school district to do a comprehensive review of early childhood programs and special education systems across those three districts because they do shares and services and they wanted to make sure that all their kids were getting equitable access as well and another example recent example is we did a district review of special education system and processes for pueblo city schools in colorado i want to talk a little bit about what you're hoping to accomplish and what we've proposed and then answer any questions that you
015might have about that and so you indicated in the rfp that you wanted to do a real-time quantitative qualitative review of the educational opportunities offered to english learners in your district and so how we would work with you to get that done at score because it's a way that we engage all of our partners we always assign a dedicated project manager to oversee all of the work and serve as the primary contact and project lead so you would have a person we identify on jake schmitz in our proposal who's a former school principal and is leading a number of our district-based initiatives in fact he's leading the um specialized review and for the school district of philadelphia currently just as one of many of his projects um and the way that we would work with
016you is first schedule a project kickoff where we would review our general approach make any adjustments if we needed to identify the stakeholders on both sides and start to schedule some initial tasks and then from there we'd build out a very detailed project plan for you that would be an excel based plan so that everybody knew at all steps along the way where we are in relation to project goals and planned activities so that we're making sure that we're accomplishing things in a timely manner and we would also be having periodic meetings between our two organizations just to make sure that we're communicating our progress to you if we need to problem solve around anything we can do that you can certainly provide us feedback so that we can make adjustments as necessary but really
017it's a way for us to live our one of our core values of collaboration and learning and making sure that we're working together so we know that in year one you're hoping to really review your english language learner programs and those instructional opportunities that you're offering within the schools so that you can determine your capacity development and technical assistance needs it aligns perfectly with the scores continuum of services where the quality review is kind of where we start most of our engagements um so here's just a quick overview of what we've proposed and i'm assuming i know that your team has read that proposal in in great detail so i won't go through this um but you know there the overview of the steps are really to make sure that we're collaborating around the development
018of a protocol and tools so that we can take what schoolworks has as a starting point customize it to specifically meet your needs and your priorities adopt your language etc etc and then we would work together in a calibration system just to provide a training make sure that everybody's on the same page um and ensure that there's a common understanding of those high quality practices that you're looking for then sports would engage in the program evaluation itself and i do have some slides on the detail of that but i'm going to hold those to the end in case you have questions about them i won't take the time to go through that right now but we would engage in the program evaluation which has multiple components and then subsequent to that work with you and
019your team or identified team um to begin a planning process where using the findings of that evaluation you all could start to plan what your next steps will be how you're going to prioritize those what resources you'll be able to devote to them who will be leading those efforts and start to establish some benchmarks around implementation that we can assist you in monitoring potentially in year two or you can self-monitor um so a little bit more detail on that planning process because i know it's really important you're already thinking about those next steps and what you're hoping to accomplish and how works engages in that planning process is we really take the time to analyze the current state which we do through the findings of the the review process we'll facilitate a process through which
020you all will prioritize your areas for growth because we know you know there are so many things that we could potentially work on but focus is really important and so we'll lead you through our process of picking the ones that you want to focus on first and then maybe establish some tiers of other priorities that you want to keep advancing we'll do a root cause analysis of some of the challenges and obstacles that you might be facing and then develop a strategy for addressing those obstacles and challenges and ultimately envision uh and identify your preferred state where will you be how will you know you know where will you be when you are successful and how will we know that you've gotten there um and all of that will come together in a comprehensive plan
021that schoolworks will compile for you so that you can share with your stakeholders as well so in year two you'll go from there and i you said in the rfp that you really wanted to then examine individual pathways for kids from kindergarten through grade 12 including those opportunities for your english esl kids your bilingual students and your dual language program students and so we've included in here um secondary evaluation processes that we can use to do that to evaluate the kind of the pathways that you articulated these can also be used these reviews can also be used to monitor progress of implementation of your action plan that you may have identified in year one so that's an option as well and i'm going to pause there and because i've been talking for a really long
022time about you and i'm sure you have lots of questions and you probably want to hear from nancy as well so i'm going to pause there and open it up for questions from the group so so i'm going to ask our board members if they would like to ask any questions so we have a list of questions should we wing it or should we use the list of questions why don't we start with why don't we start with the the questions that we wanted to ask based on the reading of the proposal and then we can see where we go all right and or we can do this does anybody have any questions that are outside of um our questions for discussion well well why don't we start it should uh cherelle if it's okay
023why don't why don't we start with the questions that we have would that be online candy i just wanted to know if anyone had anything outside so i could understand our time frame so the first question that we have is how many uh members of your team will be devoted to this project and i believe you answered you you answer that um and how often will they be here in norwalk well let me just supplement what i shared earlier we'll have a primary project manager who as i mentioned i think was pre-identified as jake schmitz nancy will be a project specialist and working hand-in-hand with jake um based on her knowledge and her expertise that she brings to the team and then we've also identified varying team members for the structure of the review and
024actually i can just very quickly scroll down um to somebody where you can take a look for example in the year one program evaluation we identified four schoolworks team members for the review component during the planning process we typically have it would probably be led by jake or another team member who participated on the review potentially to do that so how many people um you know we try and um make sure that there's cohesion and that you have a consistent touch point and people who are working with you throughout the duration of the project but we're also flexible to make sure that if we need more people on site for example during the district calibration professionals have more facilitators available for you um and we would be there you know i we can work with
025you on that but you know uh as identified as touch points within the proposal for the reviews for the planning sessions um certainly we would be available by phone or zoom for all of the regular check-ins and progress monitoring and project management schoolworks is very flexible in terms of making sure that we can connect with you to answer any questions that you might have um would really be based on need well to add to that i mean sherelle could i just ask one quick question then dr claire who's the um the uh english language learner ex expert would she be available for all of the classroom observations and the student shadowings and the reviews of the schools sure absolutely i'd love it it's my favorite part of the work good i'm sorry cherelle does anybody
026else have a question or does it want to ask the next question or is it do you want me to move on diana are you there do you want to ask questions i'm here do you want to answer i'll ask i'll ask number two um how would you plan to go about evaluating and extending the dual language program and can you do me a favor can you bring this screen down so you could see each other [Music] how would we go about evaluating the dual language program yes in the same way the same basic process that we would go about evaluating any school we would first put a team together a qualified team together we would look at what we would look at the goals that you wanted us to evaluate we would create those
027together we would go in we would look at introduction we would do a document review we would look at instruction um and we would interview teachers parents and students that are involved in the program to get a sense of how successful the program is what what the strengths of the program are and what the areas that need to be strengthened um need to be so that's how we would go about it which is really okay i just wanted to follow on to say it's really exciting that you are that you have dual language programs because i'll just give you my bias here i think they're um a very positive way to to i think they're wonderful and i'm excited to be working in any dual language program okay and um just on a side note
028i know that it's not part of our questions but we did discuss it my curiosity is how would you handle evaluating um children um that are in the sped program that have fallen through or are in that program because of the language barrier how do you evaluate that well first i can can i speak first kim and then maybe you can add on whenever we're looking at students special education students and english language learners we have to be really careful that we're looking at is it is it because of a language proficiency problem or is it because there's something deeper going on so at first i we would want to look very carefully at what tools are you using to evaluate students what language are you using to evaluate students so we would look very
029carefully at that did you want to add anything to that um [Music] well i would just also add that you know the schoolworks quality criterion in particular our classroom observation form is backed by research that is looking at practices that are effective with both english language learners as well as special education students or students with any disability and so when we go in and we observe classroom instruction we're collecting data on whether or not those practices are in place so we're not necessarily evaluating the children in that regard what we're doing is looking at the instructional practices to look at the effectiveness of those and you know i don't know this is what the review process will help us reveal as we triangulate all sorts of evidence one of the things that we will look
030at is the effectiveness of instruction particularly given some of your the the models and the different pathways you have whether it's dual language whether it's the sciop program you know whatever your methodologies are are we seeing evidence of effective practices in those um classrooms as well okay i saw that erica has a follow-up question to that i did um so i just wanted to confirm that so when we think about the intersection of multi-language learners and special ed it's on both sides of the spectrum so there's an issue commonly with child find associated with multi-language learners and on the other side of the spectrum as they get older there's uh tends to be a disproportionate rate in which they're referred to special education because they were missed and child find right so the practices cover
031that spectrum yeah so as part of the document review you know that's what nancy was referring to we would really look at your um your policies and practices and fidelity of implementation around child find procedures what tools you're using whether or not they were appropriate for those particular kids we'd supplement that with interviews with staff members we do surveys as well we talked about surveys i believe in the um proposal and then those are really the identification procedures right and then you have to look at what's actually going on in the classroom and this and the effectiveness of the services that are being provided to kids so we would be looking at that as well as part of the document review we'd also obviously be looking at students copies of samples of students ieps of
032course we wouldn't be able to look at every iep in the district but we'd randomly pull samples and take a look at those whether or not the goals were appropriate they you know included um you know goals to ensure that english language learners and their need their specific needs were being met so it would be quite comprehensive in that regard did that answer your question erica yes i said thank you i wanted to just add a key piece of that is also understanding teachers understanding of the process how well do teachers understand the identification process and then once students are identified how well the teachers understand uh what it means to have a student who is both a language learner and a special education student so a part of the processes are interviews yes we
033go into classrooms yes we do the document review but then we have an interview process where we talk to the the staff who are actually implementing um implementing instruction for special education students so can i can can i ask if you've ever had experience in um you know building out a or working with a school system to build out a dual language program you know from a core program to a district-wide model boy i've been involved in i've been doing this for about 30 30 years so i have worked with a number of dual language programs i'm on the board of a school right now in mexico that has a dual language component so am i there on the day to day of building the program no but am i but i'm i've been involved
034and i'm uh i i'm gonna just i'll put it out again i'm gonna put my bias out i am a proponent of dual language i think when they i think they're challenging and i think a lot has to do with your staffing whether you have sufficient numbers of qualified bilingual teachers i know that's that's a big challenge i think the curriculum is a challenge i think there's lots of challenges but i think the benefits to students um who who who become uh fully bilingual is is really important [Music] thank you thank you does anyone else have your house are you there i am i'm here do you have any questions i don't thank you for asking i thought the materials were comprehensive and the presentation was as well and um my question is are we
035voting tonight or is there a selection committee that's yeah so we're just we're just hearing the presentations excellent thank you yeah and then we'll pass we'll take it to the full board um i do have a question can you tell me like what your assessment snapshots look like and how do you track the progress the trend lines of progress yeah i can talk a little bit about that yeah so the um the varying assessments have different levels of deliverables and i think i can i can send you the slide deck that we prepare they kind of summarize for you but the district level review for example is like a 12 to 15 page report that will have narrative findings supplemented by a description of the evidence that we used to come to those findings and
036the evidence will include document review we always report on trends we don't report on outliers so document review uh stakeholder focus groups and interviews um the results from the surveys which are quantitative in nature and of course the classroom observation data which is quantitative in nature because this is a multi-year engagement and we will have the opportunity to revisit some of your schools um and collect data you know we'll collect baseline data then we'll collect data in the future there will be that opportunity to do a comparison um and so um you know when we when we do that for some of our clients sometimes we put together like summary documents or will some sometimes we call them trend reports where we can actually track progress over multiple years almost like an annual report or
037summary that it's great for you it kind of shows you the return on investment it also helps you identify like what's working and what might not be working maybe you want to adjust plans slightly or you know invest more resources or make some strategic decisions about how you're going to move forward in a particular area that's one way in which we track progress another area is um when we work with schools and develop action plans from a process like this we actually have the goals as i mentioned during the presentation you will set some goals and some benchmarks as part of that process um your project manager again we proposed jake would work with you to kind of provide some friendly accountability and gather data from you as part of the regular check-ins around whether
038or not you're able to make progress on those goals so there's some informal tracking that happens as well and we usually leave it up to our clients as to how they want to document that for some of our clients there's like a running google doc where they would do that and other clients have more um formalized trackers you know that might have like excel spreadsheets and you know they'll automatically populate with red yellow green um uh you know coloring coding just to say kind of where you are in relation to where you want to be so we really leave that up to our clients to say what's going to work best for you and your situation um but those are all options and part of the services that we provide as project managers but if
039i could just ask maybe hopefully the last question because we were going to have to move on talk to can you just talk to us for a minute about uh english language learners and about what your company really believes that they need what your company really believes the programs for uh english language learners should look like and um you know how you would support our district in trying to you know um create any uh create the best programs possible do you want to take the first go around with that and see on the next to begin with first of all english language learners are they're not one monolithic group they're they come in all shapes and sizes with all kinds of backgrounds and challenges however every single english language learner as in as well as
040all children uh deserve a right to a high quality education so that's the first step i think depending on i think it there are a number of programs and strategies that we know a lot about what works and there are a number of programs and strategies that do work well with english language learners we know that so how one would design and work with a district would depend very very much on the profile of the english language learners the constraints that you may have with staffing the materials and the appetite for um the commitment the the district commitment um i know that we we know that english language learners need opportunities to learn language and to learn content we know that's a longitudinal process and the development of academic language is over time so once
041an english language learner always an english language learner so we know that the curriculum we need to have they need to have access to standards and the curriculum um so they need a comprehensive program of academic content across their their k-12 experience we know we have to provide high-quality instruction and materials in both languages we know that that english language learners need valid and fair assessments and then we also know that english language learners need a school-wide commitment and a district-wide commitment to ensure that ells get the academic content that they need um and the and the first language support so um we do we we are going to tailor make our work with you if you were a district that had a number of very high quality bilingual teachers i would advise let's go
042do a language all the way but depending on the resources that you have would depend on the different program models that you that we would we would advise and that we would help support um so that's my two cents and i wonder i wanted to say one other thing though um when i learned about the possibility of this work i went on to your website and you've got some really good foundational things on the website i looked at you know your eop standards and the linguistic supports i saw there that there's examples from stanford university and they have they stanford knows what they're doing and they have great models i know you're looks like you're using color in colorado which is um a great resource um you're using go-to strategies from the center for applied
043linguistics and they know what they're doing as well i notice that you're combining i think you are i mean these are documents i mean we'll find out what's really work when we when we come to the schools we'll find out what's really going on but that you're combining rti or the srbi with english language learners so you have a lot of great i was looking at your website i was getting excited because there's lots there's lots to work with okay well we thank you so much thank you very very much for taking time to meet with us today and presenting so thank you thank you very much we really appreciate your time thank you everybody well we're not through we have another presentation so roland are you there yes ma'am i'm just working on getting
044the uh ladies out of the uh what do you call it the waiting room and putting the other people in just give me a moment here sandy do you want to take any debrief comments from anyone just no not at this time we're going to move right on because we're running very much over time i just wanted to alert the chair that a few members have a meeting at 5 30 as well if you wanted to take care of the minute minutes we could do that now or we could just table them for the next meeting um it's rolling ready yes ma'am i'm about ready barbara are you okay if we if we um table to the next meeting absolutely okay thank you thank you let these other two people in yes please okay the
045next company that we're going to hear from everyone is called is west egg and we're going to hear hello hi we're going to hear from aida walking hi aida welcome hello everybody good job you're representing are you do you have any you have somebody else with you tonight or you this is my colleague leslie hamburger and she will be joining us for a while because unfortunately she has another meeting to go to yeah aida they have aida again we indicated that yours was one of two proposals that was uh reviewed and uh everybody was very interested to hear from you and from west ed so please the floor is yours thank you very much for giving us this opportunity to expand a little bit from the proposal i know proposals are disembodied texts and i
046wish we could send videos instead where we explain and elaborate etc but that's not the case so we are very thankful that you have guided us today to uh amplify so i'll try to speak for about 10 or 12 minutes and then the best thing is that you actually ask your questions because you know as you read it i'm sure you frame questions in your mind it was very exciting for us to see your request for proposals because it said a wonderful tone about being able to really understand what is going on currently with english learners in the district put placed in front of a national landscape that really replicates the dismal failures that our students suffer but the beauty of your proposal was that it also had tremendous hope and expectations and we liked
047the commissioners cardona's words of course that it is extremely important to value students languages and to nourish them as students develop english and of course he may just be our next secretary of education so we are keeping fingers crossed because we do think that it is absolutely necessary to turn the education of english learners at the moment and we think that in a district such as norwalk it is perfectly possible to do that you have the right people at the helm and i am sure you have wonderful teachers who feel themselves frustrated that their english learners are not succeeding as they should in order to help them succeed a number of ideas need to change for example the notion that english learners as they learn english they abandon their native languages quite the opposite we
048are living in an increasingly people don't say this anymore but we used to talk about the flat world right where exchanges everywhere people spoke more than just one language in fact the united states is the only advanced country where multilingualism is not the norm and so in order to collaborate this new world where texts are increasingly more complex we need to be able to develop all kinds of other linguistic skills we also used to think that language was constructed in the head of the learner so teachers talked and students absorbed and then one day miraculously they opened their mouths and perfect productions would come out well we know now that in fact language is socially constructed that it depends on the opportunities students receive to engage in activity that language develops but furthermore it is
049not only language that develops so we don't teach language separated from conceptual and from analytic practices which are the operations that we put these understandings through so for example if i invite a 9 an 8th grader to learn about the french revolution and i want to explain what a revolution is i am teaching conceptual understandings what is a revolution i am also inviting them to learn analytic practices to compare and contrast to be able to identify what are the features of a revolution and at the same time they are developing the language so there is a simultaneous and integrated inseparable development of the three now we know this from theory but unfortunately in most places students are still taught language as if language existed separate from curricular development so for example sheltered instruction and scio
050which are two common ways of looking at the education of english learners look at language as if it was a sequence of structures and forms that need to be taught in a specific sequence and so for two or three years students learn certain complexity grammatical complexity of language but in between they cannot learn sophisticated conceptual understandings and so they lag behind i mean the united states right now a third more than a third of all english learners are in high school and of that third more than two-thirds have been english learners since they enter school in kindergarten or first grade that is terrible that you have students who have been english learners for seven eight nine ten years why is that because we docify the language and so texts are lowered and written in this
051unappealing and challenging language because comprehensible input as psyop proposes needs to be offered to students that is language that is just a little bit beyond their level of proficiency we believe that we need to engage students in ambitious learning and learning that is not just exciting but learning that is well supported and so one of the things that we do is we build the expertise of teachers and of educators to recognize what is quality learning with english learners and if we go that way the quality learning is equally good for all other students so we have specialized in the quality teaching for english learners program which i direct and leslie co-directs has existed now for 20 years 20 years ago we were the outliers theoretically because we talked about this simultaneous development of concept analysis
052and language today we're not the outliers theoretically but we're still the outliers in terms of practice because we still don't see large numbers of schools that can do it and we hope you can do it so our proposal following your request contemplates first an evaluation of an assessment and taking the temperature of the kinds of services that english learners are offered but we are using that process as a way of building a vision for the colleagues from the district so initially we will choose or jointly colleagues will be chosen from leadership positions to understand and develop a clear vision of what is quality learning with english learners at different levels and the then and we have developed in our work lots of video exemplars so it will not just be talk but we will articulate
053the principles that should guide quality instruction and we have developed a number of protocols to be able to gauge that presence of quality or not through the protocols so um initially as i said leaders will develop that vision but immediately after we are proposing that teachers join in because while there is an analysis of data that already exists there will be visits to classrooms some of them will be done exclusively or we are proposing that we we do them exclusively ourselves but there will be many that will be together with these mixed teams of leaders teachers and one of us so we will have several groups simultaneously this in class visiting classes with a clear vision of what is quality and with protocols observing for 10 minutes and then coming out and writing down was
054observed and this is done so as to a gauge the quality the caliber of education students are receiving but at the same time it will help us plus the use of other instruments to understand where teachers are in their expertise to carry out quality education because we need to understand where they are placed to be able to with them ambitiously to run and develop their expertise so that they increase the quality of their engagement leslie before you go do you want to jump in and say something because otherwise you'll appear to be mute uh no i just wanted to to thank the the group for this opportunity and to say that the collaborative approach that we propose is really central in not only identifying what is present but in developing sort of the the the
055motivation the capacity and the will of the system as a whole to move forward in making changes for multilingual learners and english learners yes and so let me pick up on that motivation and excitement factor um we act in prolific ways in other words we look at teachers and students not for who they are right now although we understand where they are positioned but for whom they can be and all of our work is premised in that attitude and as leslie said participants and we have done work in new york city in arlington in many places we wrote about that in the proposal you know people are teachers get so excited about it that we capture the energy and the enthusiasm plus the knowledge that we build to turn around and to change the nature
056of schools so um that is the plan a collaborative evaluation a determination and an understanding of the trajectories that students follow in the district what courses do they take where for example could we accelerate where can we remove barriers because uh you may you read also in the proposal that we received a few months ago a big grant from the institute of educational sciences part of the department of education to run a research and development a national research and development center to improve education for english learners in secondary schools and one of the studies one of four really substantive studies looks nationwide at the trajectories that students follow in terms of coursework in order to find where interruptions of patterns need to occur and we built on recent knowledge that has come out in the
057last three and three years that for example mainstreaming students declaring that they lead the english learners category even before they are ready by tests but they are ready in the eyes of teachers and they will need support but as long as that support is is offered students do far better those students who are mainstreamed a little bit earlier than they should according to grades in fact end up surpassing their native speaking peers in terms of academic achievement while students who are retaining the category language and become that awful term long-term english learners and so we need to think that the kinds of opportunities students are offered the challenge tied to the support determining whether they successfully become bilingual or not we also do work in spanish in fact leslie and i are both native speakers
058of spanish and so we also run programs in spanish and we work with teachers in helping them also refine their spanish in order to carry out ambitious teaching with the students they have in front of them but perhaps i should stop here because i'm never thoughtful about time to see the kinds of questions that you have and then you know leslie and i can respond gracias foreign gracias um how many members of your team will be devoted to this project and how often will they be in norwalk right well i better let leslie answer this question but apologies i was unmoved yeah so so a few things we have a team that is um planned to work on the project that includes um is six individuals uh with different levels of expertise um i could
059show a slide but i don't wanna i think i'd rather um see your faces uh and the thinking is that we have experts in secondary schools in primary grades in um in spanish dual language in instruction multilingual instruction um experts in the discipline so we have a math expert a a language arts expert somebody uh with more specific experience in newcomers so a really wide population of like a really wide team to really address kind of all of the interests and needs that we might need what we might have in norwalk and with regards to time i'm thinking about is um that the work is divided into sort of in phases as you saw in the proposal and different team members come in for different phases on site we are planning um sort of an
060extended period of time of about six days through in on site for data collection activities and then there are other activities that are could be more more more distal like sort of ongoing meetings um and also um follow-ups to that data collection to really work on developing um a report and and and educating sort of our expanded team and our core team um of norwolf um partners in the findings and the recommendations that are would be coming out of the of the work thank you dr case do you want to take the next question i just want to make sure we're asking the same questions of each just for equity absolutely so you know we we're very interested and of course i know that you have new language a very extensive experience with your language
061but how would you have you had experience in building out a dual language program you know we have a core program that is we're interested in possibly building out um what would that look like or what is your experience in doing that well we have not had experience in strengthening and developing dual programs and what is really essential first of all is that teachers understand the kinds of assets that students bring to bear in schools and that they understand that the road ahead where the work lies between where students are and where students need to be is their responsibility to craft and enact um i one of the issues one of the largest issues with dual language programs is that they are presented as equalizers because students who are language minoritized that is those who
062do not speak english as a native language and students who are language majority who speak english as a second language coexist in the same classroom and develop both language and content in both languages however in most of the examples studied by researchers the inequities that exist socially and economically outside of school are replicated in the classroom unwillingly so for example teachers who are teaching in spanish lower their spanish a bit in consideration for native speakers of english but that low spanish does not help the native speakers of spanish develop their spanish they need higher levels of spanish for us the answer is give high levels to everybody but amplify the supports offered diversify the kinds of tasks that students engage in so in for example a multi-level group then students help each other and as
063we well know students tend to learn best from each other so we think that it is very important to be mindful that entering native speakers of english and native speakers of spanish are not at the same social level and so with that awareness in mind one needs to construct equal challenge equal levels of equal no but equitable levels of support for students because treating everybody equally is benefiting some and condemning others right so we want everything we want everybody will meet the same goals but we will offer different types of support so that they all get there so that is the biggest issue in dual language research and one that a few programs are beginning to combat positively so the same ideas that we propose for learning english for multilingual students apply in dual immersion
064in other words we value the resources students have we understand that we teach simultaneously concepts analyses and language we do not teach just language but we teach disciplinary or subject matter content and we do not teach language as if it was the curriculum as if as if it developed in linear ways language develops in complex spiraling ways we learn to suggest one way today we learn to suggest in different ways next week and we expand our ways of suggesting as we move through life there's no you you learn to suggest that's it now you learn to do something else right so this linearity doesn't make any sense but unfortunately it's prevalent in most educational offerings for students who are learning english as an additional language okay thank you sorry i was going to add a
065point before i have to run off and i think in the in your thinking about expanding or growing your programs for um for dual language the considerations of of of staff capacity that we are very focused on are central but also thinking about sort of the the structural components of what you have to have in place in order to to to carry out that that kind of instruction that aida is talking about are our key and and we are definitely in the capacity to support schools and in the district in thinking about the conditions that need to be set for for that kind of of quality learning to happen thank you thank you um erica and diana do you want to ask your your questions so i think those were very important about this this
066fed and the the um ell combination diana i think is muted diana your music i was going to say erica can take that one because it was a combination of both so our question was about the internship do you want to present sure um our question was about the intersection of multi-language learners and special education and uh there's two ends of the spectrum so there is um an issue with child find as it relates to multi-language learners and then a disproportionate referral rate when they're older to special education so can you just speak to your experience with educating staff on solving for both problems yes well there is an immense disproportionality nationwide in the identification of special education students in fact the united states has more than 500 the number of students identified as special
067ed that the country that is the closest to them so you know if you go to europe teachers are horrified by the presence of special ed students and in fact it has been suggested ray mcdermott once wrote that once the category exists and unfortunately there are economic incentives for the category then more students are identified so there are these very non-intended impacts of policies so first is let's have our eyes wide open and let us really understand if every student in special ed belongs in specialty but more importantly to the point that you're asking will the approach that we have succeed with english with students who are identified as special ed we are not specialists in special ed but everywhere we work people say but this is fabulous for special ed students right leslie they
068say this works perfectly come on and they try it and it does work because we believe in cutting through to the core of key ideas making ideas rigorous and interconnecting them and then amplifying the opportunities by coming in through different ways of understanding grappling with issues and eventually apprenticing into those practices that we are teaching students so i think that to sum up i think that our approach would work for most special education students now there are students at one end of the continuum that are severely affected and with those students we honestly do not are not experts at saying what to do we have worked with them at times i remember in portland for example in elementary schools but there are cases that are really severe and those we don't know much about thank
069you thank you very much i think erica did you i think erica combined the questions oh yes uh yes she i did yeah you did yes i'm both covered okay so i'm gonna take the next one um erica did you have a follow-up nope that was it i just wanted i was just cross-referencing to make sure i covered the entire question of diana's question diana are you satisfied yes i'm good thank you you're welcome so can you tell us um what do your assessment snapshots look like and how do you track the trend lines of progress um we think that standardized assessment plays a role in the education of children and that role belongs with leadership it's a reduced role we think that the most important role of assessment belongs with a teacher that is
070continuously observing students and understanding how they are growing in order to offer them opportunities to accelerate their development in other words we believe very strongly informative assessment assessment of learning our students are learning for learning to inform what to do next and in fact in the materials that we would use with you if we get to work with you in capacity building the materials embed a number of instances that enable teachers to see what students can do furthermore we believe very strongly that assessment is something that students need to do they need to understand where they are at the moment they need to understand where they're headed what is the vision and they need to understand what to do in order to get there and so that they become increasingly in control their own learning
071they develop agency they develop voice i once taught for six years in a high school in salinas and i was always surprised that students would come and say miss walkie how am i doing in your class and i thought why don't they why don't they know so i put a lot of emphasis in helping them understand this is what is expected this month and this is the way in which we can all get there and then for students to keep a portfolio of their own work and today and with everything we have learned through the horrible pandemic we can have students record themselves videotape themselves doing something and videotape themselves a month later and then compare and say how far are you still from where you should go and what are you going to do
072about it right so assessment is not just the province of teachers assessment needs to be long with learners as well one final thing i want to say uh was that the board of wested met last thursday and friday distantly as well and they invited me to do a presentation on our news center but that enabled me to hear roberto rodriguez who has been a really important person in washington dc advising when i first met him he was a baby he was working with ted kennedy in the in his education committee but now he is working with the biden administration and what he said is that and i know mr cardoso totally agrees with that that the new educational plan will diminish the importance of standardized testing and will increase the importance of teachers learning to
073see why how students are grappling with things in order to invite them at the next step to do something that will propel their development and i know that sounds very difficult right now but that's exactly what we do for example when we are well we're all women here when we are mothers right if you have a baby that is learning to walk then you hold him initially but if the child is ready to take his first step we know he'll fall but we applaud and the child takes a tumbling step and then we continue encouraging him until one day he walks but if when the child took a step we would say oh stop it you're not doing things right don't walk until you walk perfectly which is what we tell our students that would
074be absurd it would really totally close the opportunities to learn so we need to develop that eye in teachers which is an eye that they have as human beings in other circumstances but unfortunately we have not cultivated enough in the class i hope that answers your question i think i got too excited about the example i enjoyed the enthusiasm okay dr case did you have a follow-up no actually i didn't i didn't have a follow-up well let me say this we you know we have we we didn't ask this before but it did come up about the the challenge of uh teacher recruitment you know and uh we do have we do have a challenge i know it's a national challenge uh recruiting by you know certified bilingual teachers um any thoughts you can't solve
075the problems with any thoughts no but i think that i mean i have a few thoughts and once again they are in alignment with what roberto rodriguez did say on thursday that you know the pool needs to be expanded and it needs to be expanded by including um teachers who you know speak other languages the languages of their stability and teachers and people who can become teachers so there's going to be a pipeline of a different nature in the future in the meantime we run very exciting equally exciting as the ones in english professional development sessions in spanish where everything is done in spanish and the teachers just like their students can negotiate ideas in english if they want to but the encouragement is at all moments to develop their spanish so we think that
076if we have teachers who are not fully bilingual at the moment there's no reason why they shouldn't be comfortably bilingual a while it's once again that future oriented pedagogy we believe in their futures and their capacity and will support them so that they get there thank you thank you so much and i'll turn it over to shirelle well i just want to thank you for your enthusiasm and for taking the time to present to us today thank you so much thank you and have a wonderful evening i don't know if anyone else wants to meet people and especially to meet a lovely child although we never finally said hello a future bilingual in the in the united states right currently bilingual friends oh terribly okay so multilingual that's right yes yes thank you so much
077thank you bye good night thank you and i hope sometime in the future bye bye bye thank you so much bye so all right on time okay yeah eight on time no no okay roland can we make sure she's how are you have she has she left the meeting roland yes ma'am i was just checking okay where did erica go um oh she may be i don't know well i don't know i i don't see her maybe she she got knocked off somehow yeah she might have thought the meeting was over well we do have plans um and shirelle to uh meet tomorrow is that correct and um you know to review and to debrief so i think that will be uh an exciting conversation yes this is going to be a tough choice i
078know highly informative yeah yeah yeah it's you know did you want to say something no no she just said tough choice i was going in it is i mean uh two different companies with two different points of view and uh tomorrow as i said we'll have an opportunity to uh you know to really have enough to really have a discussion so erica says she's in the waiting room oh is she okay roland can we admit her roland has taken over thankfully there she is roland are you available for future meetings that's all we wanted down here i'm usually at every meeting unless it's on a wednesday oh that's great as long as i get the invite okay well you're invited to all of our meetings so erica we were talking about that it's a tough
079choice but tomorrow we'll have an opportunity to discuss right we're meeting i believe at five o'clock that was the agreement and um if there i i i will ask uh lucy to send out the uh link again in the morning just to make sure that we all have what we need okay okay sounds good for tomorrow okay support tomorrow so if everyone's okay um anyone want to make a motion to adjourn me diana do i have a second a second erica thank you thank you everyone adjourn the meeting at 5 55 and then we'll see you tomorrow at five o'clock sounds good thank you good night bye-bye thank you too thank you