Accounting for complex interactions between contextual variables and learners' individual differences in aptitudes and background requires building the means to connect and access learner data at large scales, across time, and in multiple contexts. This paper describes the ASU Learning@Scale (L@S) project to develop a digital learning network…

The Arizona English-Language Learner Assessment (AZELLA) is the backbone of Arizona's new English-language learner (ELL) policy in that it is used to assess students' English-language proficiency in order to place them into groups for English-language instruction and to determine when they have become proficient in English. This paper evaluates a…

This article is an analysis of the educational implications of the Supreme Court (USSC) decision in "Horne v. Flores" (2009). The USSC remanded the Arizona case to the lower court, requiring a rehearing of petitioners' request for relief from the court's oversight of AZ's "structured English immersion" (SEI) program mandated…

This paper describes a pilot project to train rural native American paraprofessional personnel to deliver routine speech-language services to children under the overall supervision of a certified professional. The program had three components: on-site visits, desk-top conferencing, and distance training. The program was implemented at one…

The language competency of members of the Pascua Yaqui Tribe encompasses, to varying degrees, the Yaqui language as well as community dialects of Spanish and English. This unique trilingual pattern has been functional for survival needs but has also been a barrier to educational achievement where competency in standard forms of Spanish and English…

A study compared graduation and licensure examination pass rates of Mexican American nursing students who spoke English as a second language and students who spoke English as a first language. Mexican American students were surveyed or interviewed concerning the effect on graduation and licensure examination pass rates of English as a second…

In Arizona, beginning teachers applying for certification must take the Arizona Teacher Proficiency Examination which tests professional knowledge, reading, mathematics, and grammar. The high failure rate on the grammar test has caused a great deal of concern; 40 percent of the examinees, and a higher percentage of minority groups, failed it in…

The inquiry illuminated the way in which specific schooling practices enhanced or negated effects by analyzing data on pupils in different placement groups having Spanish as their first language, with little if any English language proficiency at the time of entering school. If pupils were placed inappropriately low, the end-of-program scores…

During the 1989-90 school year, Descubriendo la Lectura, a Spanish-language adaptation of the English Reading Recovery project was implemented in a large urban school district in Arizona. The program is designed to identify first-grade students at risk of becoming poor readers and to provide a series of intense short-term learning experiences that…

Institutions of higher education in the western part of the United States have begun to respond to the challenges faced by teachers working with students from diverse cultural and ethnolinguistic backgrounds. To establish the extent to which institutions offer inservice courses related to multilingual settings, the METRO Center at the Southwest…

To determine perceptions of school board members, teachers, and principals in rural schools about the quality of their educational programs, the type of preparation they had received in preservice programs, and the inservice opportunities available to them, responses to questionnaires from 2,028 teachers, 119 principals, and 113 school board…

The Paraprofessional Program of the Institute for Human Development has proven to be an effective means of providing early intervention services in northern Arizona's sparsely populated, culturally diverse rural communities. The program model includes identification and comprehensive professional evaluation of young handicapped children and hiring…