Center for Equity and Excellence in Education Program

Factors in the development of the Guiding Principles: The Existing Reality

* Growing, dispersing ELL populations.

* New IASA legislation which reorganized technical assistance

* Plenty of talk at or past each other, but little real dialogue.

* Much misinformation about how best to educate ELL.

* Good research that had not been integrated into the common knowledge base of mainstream educators.

* Policy imperative of Goals 2000 and IASA focusing on the achievement of all students.

Redesigned ESEA emphasizes

* High expectations for all children

* A schoolwide focus for improvement efforts

* Stronger partnerships among schools, parents, and communities

Guiding Principles Development:

* Develop a framework for productive dialogue, with the Guiding Principles articulating the vision.

* Define the target, the ideal toward which to strive, measure progress, then enhance the framework with tools, strategies, and examples.

* Establish a Steering Committee

* Conduct reviews for accuracy, clarity, precision, and comprehensiveness with experts in the field of Bilingual, ESL and mainstream education.

Uses of Guiding Principles:

* Planning and implementing programs

* Evaluating the effectiveness of the school improvement process.

* Planning effective staff development activities and programs.

Guiding Principles:

* Principle I: Limited English proficient students are held to the same high expectations of learning established for all students.

* Principle II: Limited English proficient students develop full receptive and productive proficiencies in English in the domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing, consistent with expectations for all students.

* Principle III: Limited English proficient students are taught challenging content to enable them to meet performance standards in all content areas, including reading and language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, the fine arts, health, and physical education, consistent with those for all students.

* Principle IV: Limited English proficient students receive instruction that builds on their previous education and cognitive abilities and that reflects their language proficiency levels.

* Principle V: Limited English proficient students are evaluated with appropriate and valid assessments that are aligned with state and local standards and that take into account language acquisition stages and cultural backgrounds of the students.