Description:
How do school communities create environments that fully prepare both English learners and dual-language learners for colleges and careers? This valuable book profiles six high-performing high schools that had a singular focus on improving the educational outcomes of English learners. The authors use these case studies to identify a comprehensive set of design elements and shared values that were key factors in yielding extraordinary results. These include a school-wide language development framework that integrates content, analytical practices, and language learning; a broad and dynamic view of assessment practices; intensive social-emotional support for students and their families; and mission-driven staff and leadership that maximize learning opportunities across classrooms. The practices employed in these schools are not only essential for English learners' success but, as the performance data shows, they also benefit all students.
Book Features:
- Provides practical, actionable ideas that schools across the country can adapt to help their own EL students.
- Shows how schools incorporated a language development framework as part of their daily improvement work of teaching and learning.
- Identifies the key school design features and values that enable diverse students, families, and staff to succeed.
- Examines how everyone in the school community works together to accelerate learning opportunities for adolescent English learners.
Review Quotes:
"In sum, Preparing English Learners for College and Career offers hope that educators, school leaders, and policy makers can and will keep these lessons in mind as they propose the next wave of school reform and reorganization. Rather than advertising the latest remedy or the most recent intervention, Santos and colleagues provide an infrastructure upon which each community can overlay the resources and materials at hand to make the most effective program possible. Educators, leaders, and EL advocates in any community can come together over the lessons laid out in these pages, consider their unique context, and identify core areas on which to build to their strengths in order to create their own responsive infrastructure."
-- "Teachers College Record"