IES Blog

IES values and encourage collaborations between researchers and practitioners to ensure that research findings are relevant, accessible, feasible, and useful. In FY 2014, Dr. Karen Thompson was awarded a grant for The Oregon English Learner Alliance: A Partnership to Explore Factors Associated with Variation in Outcomes for Current and Former English Learners in Oregon to determine best practices to support academic achievement among current and former English learners. Dr. Thompson and her colleagues wrote a guest blog post describing the work that the partnership undertook to better understand and improve the performance of English learners in Oregon. In this blog, we interviewed Dr. Thompson—three years after the end of the grant—to get her perspectives on the partnership, outcomes of their work, and where things currently stand.

What was the purpose of your research and what led you to do this work?

When I came to Oregon from California in 2012, there was growing momentum in the state to better understand and meet the needs of the state’s multilingual student population, particularly students classified as English learners (ELs). The state had developed an ambitious EL strategic plan, which included a variety of goals and action steps, such as identifying model programs and sharing best practices. I noticed that Oregon did not have publicly available information about the state’s former EL students. In prior work, other researchers and I had demonstrated that analyzing data only about students currently classified as English learners without also analyzing data about former EL students can provide incomplete and misleading information. Therefore, for Oregon to realize its goals and truly understand which programs and practices were most effectively educating its multilingual students, the state needed to make changes to its data systems. This was the seed that led to the Oregon Department of Education/Oregon State University English Language Learner Partnership. Our first goal was to simply determine how many former EL students there were in the state. Then, once the state had created a flag to identify former EL students, we were able to conduct a wide range of analyses to better understand opportunities and outcomes for both current and former EL students in ways that have informed state reporting practices and policy decisions.

How does this research differ from other work in the field? Why do you think partnerships with practitioners were necessary to carry out the work?

When we began our partnership, collecting and analyzing information about both current and former EL students was not common. Happily, more and more researchers and education agencies have now adopted these approaches, and we think our partnership has helped play a role in this important and illuminating shift.  

It was crucial to conduct this work via partnerships between researchers and practitioners. Practitioner partners had deep knowledge of the state’s current data systems, along with knowledge about which reporting and analysis practices could shift to incorporate new information about current and former EL students. Research partners had the bandwidth to conduct additional analyses and to lead external dissemination efforts. Our regular partnership meetings enabled our work to evolve in response to new needs. 

What do you think was the most important outcome of your work and why?

I think the most important outcome of our work is that educators across Oregon now have information about both their current and former English learner students and can use this data to inform policy and practice decisions. Other analyses we conducted have also informed state actions. For example, our analysis of how long it takes Oregon EL students to develop English proficiency and exit EL services informed the state’s EL progress indicator under the Every Student Succeeds Act.

What are the future directions for this work?

Our IES-funded partnership led to funding from the Spencer Foundation to do further research about EL students with disabilities in Oregon, which has impacted practices in the state. In addition, I am excited to be one of the collaborators in the new IES-funded National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners (PI: Aída Walquí, WestEd). As part of the Center’s research, I am working with colleagues at the University of Oregon and the University of California, Los Angeles to analyze malleable factors impacting content-course access and achievement for secondary EL students. We are collaborating with four states in this work, and as in our ODE/OSU partnership, we will be analyzing data for both current and former EL students. At a policy level, colleagues and I are involved in conversations about how data collection and reporting at the federal level could also incorporate analysis of data for both current and former EL students, including ways this might inform future reauthorizations of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act.

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Dr. Karen Thompson is an Associate Professor at the College of Education at Oregon State University. Her research focuses on how curriculum and instruction, teacher education and policy interact to share the classroom experiences of K-12 multilingual students.

Written by Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), Program Officer for English Learner Program, National Center for Education Research.

Many English Learners (ELs) in secondary school settings are identified as long-term ELs—students who have been enrolled in U.S. schools for six or more years who have not made significant progress in English—and are at risk for dropping out of high school. These students face unique challenges and barriers in accessing education opportunities, which has resulted in persistent differences in academic outcomes between ELs and non-ELs, as well as negative consequences that reach far beyond school.  

About the Center

The IES-funded National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners has identified two specific challenges that ELs in secondary school face as they simultaneously develop English proficiency and subject-matter knowledge: 1) barriers to enrollment in challenging courses, and 2) scarcity of quality learning opportunities. The Center is taking a multi-pronged research approach to improve outcomes for ELs in secondary school settings by:

• Identifying and describing the systemic barriers that prevent secondary ELs from successfully accessing the general curriculum
• Developing and testing innovative curricular materials that strengthen the learning opportunities and experiences of both teachers and ELs as they engage in disciplinary practices

New Website Launched

The Center has launched a new website that provides information about their work and resources for researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and other education stakeholders to address current challenges and needs facing ELs in secondary school settings. Visit https://www.elrdcenter.wested.org/ for information ranging from how teachers and school and district leaders can support adolescent ELs in distance learning to modules that can be used for teacher preparation or professional development sessions to develop expertise in working with adolescent ELs.

For more information about IES’s investment in improving opportunities and achievement for English learners in secondary school settings, please see here.

Written by Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), Program Officer for English Learners Program, National Center for Education Research.

Many programs across the Federal government, such as the ED/IES Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and the IES Research Grants programs, fund projects to develop and evaluate new forms of education technology and interventions that can be implemented to support instruction and learning at schools and for remote learning. More than 150 of these technologies were demoed in January 2020 at the ED Games Expo, a showcase for learning games and technologies developed with support from IES and more than 30 other Federal programs.

Since the global outbreak of COVID19 and the closure of schools across the United States and the world, a group of government-supported developers and researchers responded to provide resources to educators, students, and families to facilitate remote learning. More than 50 developers and researchers offered 88 learning games and technologies at no cost through the end of the school year for use in distance learning settings with internet access (see this blog for the list). In addition, many of the developers and researchers provided technical assistance directly to individual teachers to support implementation at a distance, and many created new materials and worked to refine and adapt their products to optimize usability and feasibility for fully remote use. More than a million students and thousands of educators used these learning technologies during the spring.

In April and May 2020, more than 70 developers and researchers partnered to produce and participate in a series of free day-long virtual events, which were called “unconferences.” The events featured presentations on innovative models and approaches to teaching and learning remotely and provided an in-depth look at the learning games and technologies created by the presenters. More than 25,000 educators attended these virtual events in real-time, hundreds asked questions and made comments through chats during the events, and many thousands more have accessed these videos after the events. See this blog for the list of archived videos.

A New Resource: Guides to Education Technologies that are Ready Now

As schools begin re-opening for the new school year, a group of 70 developers and researchers have collaborated to produce a new series of Guides to Education Technologies. The guides present information on government-supported education technology products that are ready now for in-class and remote learning. All the resources are web-based and can be used on either computers, tablets, or personal devices. The resources in the guides include a mix of no-cost products as well as ones that are fee-based.  

With awards from government programs, all of the resources were developed through an iterative process with feedback from teachers and students, and most were evaluated through small pilot studies to measure the promise of the technologies to support improvements in student learning and relevant educational outcomes. All the products were used and demonstrated to be feasible for use in remote settings in the spring after the onset of the pandemic.

The guides present resources appropriate for young children through postsecondary students in education and special education, for English learners, and for teachers in education and special education across a wide range of educational topics. Many of the technologies personalize learning by adjusting content to students as they go and present information to educators to inform instruction.

The Guides focus on the following areas and can be accessed below:

• Early Learning
• Mathematics
• Science and Engineering
• Social Studies
• Special Education

Stay tuned to the Inside IES Blog for more information and resources about the response to the COVID-19 in education.

Edward Metz (Edward.Metz@ed.gov) is a research scientist and the program manager for the Small Business Innovation Research Program at the US Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences.

In 2020, as part of a wider IES investment in resources around cost, IES funded the Cost Analysis in Practice (CAP) Project, a 3-year initiative to support researchers and practitioners who are planning or conducting a cost analysis of educational programs and practices. The CAP Project Help Desk provides free on-demand tools, guidance, and technical assistance, such as support with a cost analysis plan for a grant proposal. After inquiries are submitted to the Help Desk, a member of the CAP Project Team reaches out within two business days. Below is a list of resources that you can access to get more information about cost analysis.

STAGES FOR CONDUCTING A COST ANALYSIS

CAP Project Resources

Cost Analysis Standards and Guidelines 1.0: Practical guidelines for designing and executing cost analyses of educational programs.

IES 2021 RFAs Cost Analysis Requirements: Chart summarizing the CAP Project’s interpretation of the IES 2021 RFAs cost analysis requirements.

Cost Analysis Plan Checklist: Checklist for comprehensive cost analysis plans of educational programs and interventions.

Introduction to Cost Analysis: Video (17 mins).

General Cost Analysis Resources

The Critical Importance of Costs for Education Decisions: Background on cost analysis methods and applications.

Cost Analysis: A Starter Kit: An introduction to cost analysis concepts and steps.

CostOut®: Free IES-funded software to facilitate calculation of costs once you have your ingredients list, includes database of prices.

DecisionMaker®: Free software to facilitate evidence-based decision- making using a cost-utility framework.

Cost-Effectiveness Analysis of Early Reading Programs: A Demonstration With Recommendations for Future Research: Open access journal article.

*More resources available here.

The content for this blog has been adapted from the Cost Analysis in Practice Project informational flyer (CAP Project, 2020) provided by the CAP Project Team. To contact the CAP Help Desk for assistance, please go to https://capproject.org/. You can also find them on Twitter @The_CAP_Project.

IES supports Research and Development Centers (R&D Centers) to conduct focused, scientific research on key education issues that face our nation. One of the most pressing issues currently is a need for a large-scale, coordinated research effort to improve opportunities and achievement for English Learners (ELs) in secondary school settings. These students face numerous barriers and challenges in accessing education opportunities, as they simultaneously develop English language proficiency and subject-matter knowledge. This has resulted in large, persistent differences in academic achievement outcomes, for example, between ELs and non-ELs on the 2017 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) in reading and math. These differences have consequences for how prepared (or unprepared) students will be to access opportunities in the workforce and postsecondary education.

The National Center for Education Research (NCER), within IES, is funding two national R&D centers on the topic of “Improving Opportunities and Achievements for English Learners in Secondary School Settings” to contribute to the solution of this complex education problem. These R&D centers aim to identify systemic—including policies, rules, and processes—and instructional influences that affect ELs’ access to the general curriculum and its relation to their outcomes. The centers will carry out complementary projects and engage in research, development, evaluation, and national leadership activities. These activities will facilitate meaningful EL participation in the general curriculum and generate insights about levers that have the potential to improve access and education outcomes for ELs in secondary school settings.

Each of the centers is conducting two lines of research, in which they will:

• Identify and describe the policies and system-level practices that are associated with secondary ELs’ access to the general curriculum and their relation to education outcomes
• Identify approaches to improving secondary ELs’ access to and ability to learn from instruction in general education courses where English is the language of instruction.

The R&D Centers

Transdisciplinary Approaches to Improving Opportunities and Outcomes for English Learners: Using Engagement, Team-Based Learning, and Formative Assessment to Develop Content and Language Proficiency is headed by Dr. David Francis at the University of Houston. This center will undertake a five-year, focused program of research aimed at identifying and removing barriers related to school-level practices influenced by policies that constrain course-taking, as well as developing and testing interventions that leverage transdisciplinary approaches to improve instruction for ELs in grades 6 and 9 science and social studies. These approaches include—

• Foregrounding content to build language through content instruction
• Using activities that are engaging and meaningful to students while involving students in the practices of the discipline
• Organizing learning in heterogeneous teams (Team-Based Learning) to promote collaboration, discussion, and social motivation
• Integrating formative assessment to improve teachers’ and students’ understanding of students’ development.

The center will also engage in a systematic program of outreach and dissemination at national, state, regional, and local levels, to help connect research findings to policy and practice.

The National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners is headed by Aída Walqui at WestEd. The center’s five-year program of research focuses on understanding policies and systems-level practices that are associated with ELs’ access to the general curriculum and how curriculum resources can strengthen the learning opportunities and experiences of both teachers and ELs as they engage in disciplinary practices. The center will—

• Examine course-taking patterns across multiple states and explore how content-area course access is related to student outcomes
• Describe models for co-teaching across the country and its implementation in diverse settings
• Iteratively design and develop curricular materials in English language arts (ELA) and a math summer bridge course for grade 8 students to help teachers shift their pedagogical practices.

In addition, the center will engage in national leadership, capacity-building, and outreach activities to connect research findings to policy and practice and offer policymakers and practitioners compelling and actionable information.

Through the Education Research and Development Center Program, NCER’s goal is for the two centers to collectively and individually create innovative solutions, contribute to knowledge and theory, and provide reliable information about how to improve educational opportunities and achievement for ELs in secondary school settings. The body of research conducted by the two centers will identify and address the policies and system-level practices across the US that act as barriers to accessing rigorous courses. Their work will also inform instruction in four critical content areas of secondary instruction—science, social studies, ELA, and math—in several states, including Texas, Massachusetts, New York, and California.

For more information about IES’s support on the topic of English Learners, please see the program page; for current funding opportunities for research and training more generally, please see here. Stay tuned for updates on Twitter (@IESResearch) and Facebook as IES continues to support research to improve educational outcomes for English Learners.

Written by Helyn Kim (Helyn.Kim@ed.gov), Program Officer for English Learners at the National Center for Education Research.