On December 18, 2019, Oregon State University and the Oregon Department of Education hosted the ODE/OSU English Language Learner Partnership Research Symposium at the OSU Portland Center. Presenters shared a set of six policy briefs, all of which are available via the Symposium website. The policy briefs address the following topics:

• Better understanding outcomes for multilingual students
• Timeframes for students to attain English proficiency and exit EL services
• Access to core content for secondary ELs
• Newcomers in Oregon schools
• Exploring disproportionality in special education for ELs
• Family engagement for EL students with disabilities

To share findings with the widest audience possible, Partnership members will also present the policy briefs in two upcoming webinars:

• Webinar #1: Better Understanding Opportunities and Outcomes for Multilingual Students, Tues. Feb. 4, 12-1 PM
• Webinar #2: Meeting the Needs of All Multilingual Students: Research on Newcomers and ELs with Disabilities, Mon. Feb. 10, 12-1 PM

Register for the upcoming webinars here!

Research and practice partners from ODE and OSU presented on Supporting Exceptional English Learners at the 2019 State English Learners Alliance Conference in Eugene on March 13, hosted by the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators (COSA).

ODE-OSU Partners discussed several important factors in serving exceptional English learners, including: documenting students’ language proficiency and language-learning needs in IEPs; professional collaboration among content-area teachers, language acquisition specialists, and special education teachers; using multiple sources of assessment data; best instructional practices; and services for English learners with significant cognitive disabilities. The presentation ended with a discussion on barriers to professional collaboration, including fragmentation and the specialization trap as identified in the research of Sara Kangas (“A cycle of fragmentation in an inclusive age: The case of English learners with disabilities”, 2017).

The ODE/OSU English Language Learner Partnership enjoyed a strong showing at this year’s State English Learners Alliance Conference, hosted in Eugene by the Confederation of Oregon School Administrators (COSA).

During the event’s March 7 Pre-Conference, Dr. Soyoung Park, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, presented a draft of guidelines for exiting English learners with disabilities.  She has spearheaded this effort in collaboration with the Council of Chief State School Officers and through interviews with education leaders in 24 states. You can access her Power Point presentation here: Park_ExitingELSWD_PreConference_3.7.18.

Following Dr. Park’s presentation, Dr. Jamey Burho facilitated a panel among representatives from four Oregon School Districts- Beaverton, David Douglas, Medford, and Woodburn- to talk about their efforts to bring Special Education and ELL specialists together in support of English Learners with disabilities. Among the topics discussed were cross-specialization professional development for EL and Special Education teachers, establishing a common language among all personnel, and logistical challenges for scheduling in-person collaboration.

We are honored to be highlighted by the Spencer Foundation as a featured grantee. Spencer launched a new grant program to support research-practice partnerships in 2015, and the ODE/OSU ELL Partnership was one of seven partnerships funded as part of their first cohort.

At the American Educational Research Association’s annual meeting in 2017, we had the opportunity to join with other partnerships in this cohort to share lessons learned. Our contribution to this session focused on the affordances and constraints of research-practice partnerships at the state level.

As a featured grantee, we provide information on Spencer’s website about our partnership, related publications, and additional materials. We are excited about this opportunity to share our work and potentially spark ideas for those involved in launching or sustaining research-practice partnerships.

The New America Foundation recently released a report that highlights the work of the ODE/OSU ELL Partnership. This report describes how Oregon passed and implemented new legislation to identify and support districts who may not be effectively meeting the needs of their English learner students.

Partnership researchers Dr. Karen Thompson and Dr. Ilana Umansky both served on the state ELL Advisory Committee, which drafted the criteria for identifying districts and a framework to guide the technical assistance process. The criteria for identifying districts include multiple metrics using the Ever EL category, which includes both current and former English learners. For example, districts’ Ever EL graduation rates and Ever EL postsecondary enrollment rates are both factors considered in the identification process.

Understanding outcomes for the full group of students who entered school as ELs has been a central goal of our partnership, and the implementation of this legislation marks a milestone in the longstanding effort to improve accountability systems for English learners.

A recent webinar about including Ever English learner students in accountability and continuous improvement featured our partnership’s work in Oregon. Dr. Karen Thompson described how Oregon’s data system now includes a flag for both current and former English learners, enabling the state to report outcomes for both groups. Drawing on information shared in a recent IES blog post, Dr. Thompson showed how conventional reporting of graduation rates for EL and non-EL students masks information about graduation rates for former EL students, who are graduating at rates higher that students never classified as ELs. Dr. Michael Kieffer from New York University shared findings from a recent report about EL outcomes in New York City, indicating that, as in Oregon, graduation rates for the full Ever EL group are much higher than graduation rates for current ELs alone. Presenters discussed strategies for using longitudinal data about Ever ELs in state and district accountability and reporting systems. A recording of the webinar is available below.

On March 16, 2016, Dr. Martha Martinez from ODE and Dr. Karen Thompson from OSU served as panelists on webinar hosted by the National Center for Research on Policy and Practice to present findings from their study of IES-funded Researcher-Practitioner Partnerships.

Drawing on surveys and interviews of 106 individuals from 27 different partnerships, this report found overwhelming enthusiasm among both researchers and practitioners for collaborating in partnerships, with 100% of survey respondents either agreeing or strongly agreeing that they would participate in a partnership again.

Alongside Dr. Martinez and Dr. Thompson, leaders a different partnership between SRI and Clark County Public Schools in Las Vegas, Nevada, reflected on the successes and challenges of their collaborations.

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.

In a webinar hosted by the American Youth Policy Forum, Dr. Karen Thompson (Oregon State University) & Dr. Martha Martinez (Oregon Department of Education) shared work from the ODE/OSU ELL Partnership, and other initiatives the State is undertaking to improve outcomes for English learners in Oregon. The webinar focused on supporting positive outcomes for English learners and building professional capacity for teachers, with other presentations from the Internationals Network for Public Schools and Sanger Unified School District.

Additional webinar materials are available here.

Leaders from the Oregon Department of Education and Oregon State University recently presented findings from our research-practitioner partnership at the 2016 American Education Research Association Annual Meeting in Washington DC. We presented alongside other IES-funded researcher-practitioner partnerships focused on English learners, sharing a typology of questions that can be explored by partnerships. For our second presentation, we shared results from our analysis of English learner students in special education.