Dr. Martha Martinez from ODE and Dr. Karen Thompson from OSU presented on a panel about reacher-practitioner partnerships at the IES Principal Investigator meeting in Washington D.C. on December 16, 2016. Dr. Martinez and Dr. Thompson discussed the ODE/OSU ELL partnership’s ways of working together, including structures they have developed to support collaboration. They also discussed the evolution of the partnership’s research questions, demonstrating how the creation of a flag to identify students ever classified as English learners (Ever ELs) has enabled them to pursue a variety of additional questions, including analyzing graduation rates and special education disproportionality for Ever ELs.

As part of their presentation, Dr. Martinez and Dr. Thompson shared the figure below, created by partnership member Dr. Ilana Umansky. In this figure, white circles represent students currently classified as English learners while orange circles represent students formerly classified as ELs who have attained English proficiency and exited EL services. At early grade levels, most students in the Ever EL group are currently classified as ELs. However, because most students who enter school as ELs do attain English proficiency, at higher grade levels most students in the Ever EL group are former ELs. Because state and district data systems typically have not flagged former ELs after the short-term monitoring period required under federal law, reporting systems have not been capturing information about outcomes for this large group of students. A key focus of the ODE/OSU ELL partnership has been making changes to state reporting systems in order to provide information about outcomes for the full group of students who enter school as ELs.

Materials for the session can be downloaded here.