Language program evaluation has the potential for positive program impact by providing an opportunity for program stakeholders to reflect on their goals, examine their outcomes, and determine ways to move forward to maximize a program's effectiveness. However, many stakeholders are either unaware of the affordances of program evaluation or unable…

As language programs are endangered in K-16 contexts due to low enrollments, and for budgetary reasons, it is more important than ever to find enduring ways to help promote the study of languages and to make studying languages enjoyable for everyone. For sustainable language education, we need to focus on and promote the true purpose of…

A translanguaging lens in educational research focuses on social, cultural, and power dynamics of language and multilingualism in practice. It also represents a potentially transformative pedagogical practice that centers the languaging practice, power, and agency of multilingual learners to transgress classroom language borders. However,…

As language classrooms become increasingly diverse, educators face a daily challenge of navigating linguistic, cultural, and learning differences among students from different cultures and backgrounds. The diverse language environment, which many educators perceive to be challenging to manage, also presents valuable opportunities for implementing…

Teacher preparation programs throughout the United States have begun to include issues of second language teaching and learning in their curriculum in an effort to better prepare their teacher candidates to meet the needs of the increasingly linguistically and culturally diverse student population in K-12 schools. In this article, we argue for the…

Emergent bilingual students in the U.S. often attend English-medium schools where their bi- and multi-lingual language resources are ignored and dismissed. This article draws on a social literacies perspective to explore how a second-grade teacher and her multilingual students re-framed one English-medium classroom to welcome and include…

In the US K-12 public school settings, each state's annual English language proficiency (ELP) assessment, as part of an educational accountability system, has tremendous impact on English learner (EL) students' academic paths and success. It is thus critical to establish a robust validation framework and empirical evidence to ensure that states'…

As the vision in "A Framework for K-12 Science Education" and the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) takes hold in schools and classrooms, there is an urgent need for teacher professional development (PD) programs that align with NGSS-designed curriculum materials and address the unique strengths and needs of diverse student…

This paper focuses on the concept of intersectionality, which has been used to account for multiple forms of identity and inequality. It argues that intersectionality is a powerful theoretical lens that could be used in analyzing language teachers' identities and their various contexts. It is also deeply connected to an orientation and…

This research employs a language ideologies framework to examine the language practices and beliefs of bilingual first grade students in an ESL classroom, in which the teacher valued and encouraged Spanish and translingual talk and writing. Using ethnographic methods of data collection and analysis, the findings pointed to the influence of both…

This article explores the development of a guidance document titled the "Framework for Equitable Instruction" (Framework), which aims to support multilingual students' content-area learning and language development. The Framework was developed by WIDA, a national consortium of states, as part of its system of language standards,…

This report describes the impact of the 2021 AISD multilingual summer school program on incoming kindergarten and 1st-grade emergent bilingual students' (N = 933) fall academic performance. Relative to matched comparison groups, students who attended summer school were significantly more likely to score on-track on TX-KEA in kindergarten. While…

The article examines the importance of bridging the gap between America's collective cultural heritage and its citizens who speak a language other than English, and how this can be fostered and encouraged through foreign language and immersion programs, international education, and study abroad. Effectively addressing this disparity in order to…

Articles in this issue examine (1) the primary sources of variability in reading and language achievement among Spanish-speaking English learners (ELs) in the United States, (2) the extent to which poor performance at the end of grade 2 is identifiable in developmental trajectories beginning in kindergarten, (3) the relations among core reading…

Previous research on bilingual mathematics education has proposed that as children "language mathematics" they use multiple sources of meaning. In this paper, we focus on lexical inventions--bilingual children's made up words that are not formally defined or used but follow the phonology and morphology of a language--as a source of…