Award Period: 2020-07-01 - 2025-06-30

Description

English Learners (ELs) in secondary schools face two types of challenges: barriers to accessing rigorous courses and a scarcity of quality learning opportunities in school that prepare them for life, careers, and civic participation. To understand policies and systems-level practices that are related to the school experiences of ELs in secondary schools, the National Research and Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners (the center) will carry out two lines of inquiry: a study of course-taking patterns and a study on co-teaching as instructional model for ELs. Center researchers will also iteratively design, develop, and refine educative curricular materials in English Language Arts (ELA) and a summer bridge course in mathematics. These materials will be annotated to build awareness in teachers of the purposes of pedagogical arrangements, their structure and implementation, and what to do when students need more or less support. The center will test the finished curriculum materials, intended to deepen and accelerate ELs’ disciplinary learning simultaneously, in two delayed intervention randomized controlled trials.