The Long Beach Unified School District has implemented a new website to better track the academic growth and progress of English Learner (EL) students across the district.
According to data presented at its Nov. 16 board meeting, of the 66,180 students in the district, 11,031 are currently EL students.
ELLevation, a platform designed specifically to help EL students and educators, was described by Office of Curriculum, Instruction and Professional Development (OCIPD) director Angelica Gonzalez as a “one-stop-shop for LBUSD’s English learner data and English Language Development instructional resources.”
The site was launched throughout LBUSD schools in June of 2022 with curriculum and instruction preparation and training among OCIPD staff. Training on how to use ELLevation and how to incorporate learning strategies was implemented at the middle school and TK-12 levels during October and September. Throughout November, the district plans to have counselors participate in ELLevation professional development.
“It really has become and grown into exactly where it needs to be, which is the shared responsibility across our sites, across our departments, across our district,” Gonzalez said in reference to the expansion of the multilingual learners office.
The site has a separate dashboard for data—providing overall/detailed language level information and student progress—including a bank of classroom activities to support teachers.
The platform has district and school-specific viewing options so individual schools can access the data that is most relevant to them. In school view, teachers can see the overall detailed language level information to track student progress and review assessment data.
The dashboard also identifies which students have met reclassification standards.
Reclassification refers to the process by which a student transitions from being an English learner to fluent English proficient status.
According to the assistant superintendent of OCIPD, Kristi Kahl, the district has been working on new reclassification criteria as well as a Khmer language program and professional development to meet the needs of multilingual learners.
“What we’re presenting today is a work in progress. We’re going to focus on the progress and we’re going to celebrate the progress, but understanding that we are not there yet,” Gonzalez said.
Some of the district’s other plans to uplift and support multilingual learners include:
- Planning daily support for EL students to access the content to understand “how language works.”
- Addressing foundational skill gaps through integrated and designated English Language Development.
- Guiding students to create and refine connections between concepts through question and analysis.
- Designing experiences that allow students to orally, visually and in writing, express their thinking to others.
- Communicating the belief that all students can achieve high levels of success with the necessary support.
“If these things happen in every single classroom, then we can say that we’re providing an equitable experience for every single student,” Gonzalez said.
Incorporating ELLevation in schools grew out of a need for more real-time student data, according to Kahl, as EL learners are one of the district’s disadvantaged groups.
According to the assistant superintendent of middle and K-8 schools, Christopher Lund, one of the main challenges of the English learner subgroup is that there are two broad categories—newcomers and long-term—of students with very specific and different needs.
Over 3,000 EL students are Long Term English learners, and nearly 2,000 are at risk of becoming Long Term English learners (rather than English proficient), according to data presented at the meeting.
Board member Juan Benitez expressed his concerns with what the data implies.
“I’m coming from a spirit of hope, but we’re having a conversation about why we still can’t get traction with one of our most vulnerable student subgroups,” Benitez said.
OCIPD will be presenting further data to the board at a later time.
“What we’re presenting today is a work in progress. We’re going to focus on the progress and we’re going to celebrate the progress, but understanding that we are not there yet,” Gonzalez said.
