A r c h i v e d  I n f o r m a t i o n

Model Strategies in Bilingual Education: Professional Development - 1995

Overview of Projects with Promising Practices

The pool of sites recommended by experts included many that build on sound research and produce excellent results. Because project and personnel resources often are concentrated in areas where the population of language minority students has been large for some time, such areas offered several options for study. To learn about both the projects and the contexts they create for each other, we visited clusters of projects in Southern California, Arizona, and Texas. In addition, site selections included a comprehensive districtwide project in Dade County, Florida, that affects thousands of teachers each year and a single school in Fresno, California, that concentrates on its own staff. Table 2 provides an overview of the sites, and Chapter 3 gives detailed portraits of each project. The design and focus of these projects indicated a shared vision of how public school teachers can best serve LEP students, bring them into full participation in mainstream civic activity, and preserve the resources provided by their families and close communities. Each project targeted a different segment of the professional development continuum, improving the instructional workforce by applying the principles derived from research and practice to its particular mission. Observations and interviews conducted during site visits and documentation collected by project staff members revealed how projects' policies and procedures reflect the influence of these principles and supported claims of projects' effectiveness.

Table 2
Sites Visited for Study of Promising Practices in Professional Development2

Program Name Type* Target Student Language Sponsoring Institutions Primary Funding Location
American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) & Southwest Memory Project PE & CE Native American languages University of Arizona (UA) College of Education and American Indian Studies Program UA; districts; tribes; Title VII; National Endowment for Humanities Arizona
Balderas Elementary School CE Spanish
Southeast Asian 		Fresno U.S.D. & California State University (CSU), Fresno Title I
Fresno USD 		Fresno, CA
Bilingual Educators' Career Advancement Program (BECA) PE & CE Spanish CSU, San Bernardino Title VII San Bernardino, CA
Cooperative Learning in Bilingual Settings (Spanish/English CIRC) CE Spanish University of Texas at El Paso & Johns Hopkins University (JHU) JHU Research Center & Title VII El Paso, TX
Teachers' Learning Community Center R, PE, & CE Spanish University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) TX Education Agency & Exxon Foundation El Paso, TX & Juarez, Mex.
Descubriendo La Lectura (DLL) (Spanish Reading Recovery) CE Spanish
Native American 		Title I, Tucson U.S.D. & UA College of Education Title I, TUSD & other districts Tucson, AZ
Educational Leadership in Bilingual Education (ELBE) PE & CE Spanish University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) Title VII
UTSA 		San Antonio, TX
ESOL Inservice Project CE 23 languages Dade County Public Schools District Miami, FL
Fontana Unified School District Career Ladder Program R & PE Spanish Fontana U.S.D. District & State EIA-LEP Programs Fontana, CA
Funds of Knowledge for Teaching CE Spanish
Native American 		UA Bureau of Applied Research in Anthropology; College of Education Kellogg Foundation Tucson, AZ
Latino Teacher Project (LTP) University of Southern California (USC) R & PE Spanish Los Angeles USD; USC; CSU, Dominguez Hills; & CSU, LA Ford Foundation Los Angeles, CA
Project Adelante R & PE Spanish Kean College of New Jersey NJ Department of Higher Education Union, NJ
Project INTERACT CE 20 languages Southeast Missouri State University Title VII Cape Girardeau, MO

* R = Recruitment; PE = Preservice Education; CE = Continuing Education

2This information accurate as of June 1994.
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