English Language Learner KnowledgeBase for Administrators & Teachers

OCR Exit Criteria

The OCR September 27, 1991, memorandum includes a section devoted to exit criteria for ELL students. That portion of the memorandum is provided as a specific guidance on exit criteria.

Tools and Resources for Monitoring and Exiting ELLs from EL Programs and Services

As students become proficient in English, and their need of support begins to decline, they pass through three stages. Each stage involves decreased support with regular monitoring. This process provides a safety net of sorts to ensure that if the student should begin to struggle due to language, it is caught quickly and appropriate support is reinstated.

What Legal Obligations Do Schools Have to ELLs?

This NCELA (National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition) website offers an answer to the question of, "What legal obligations do schools have to ELLs?" This resource defines the legal obligations schools have to ELLs.

The following guidelines have been outlined for school districts to ensure that their programs are serving ELLs effectively. Districts should:

• identify students as potential ELLs;
• assess student's need for ELL services;
• develop a program which, in the view of experts in the field, has a reasonable chance for success;
• ensure that necessary staff, curricular materials, and facilities are in place and used properly;
• develop appropriate evaluation standards, including program exit criteria, for measuring the progress of students; and
• assess the success of the program and modify it where needed.

RTI for English Language Learners: Appropirately Using Screening and Progress Monitoring Tools to Improve Instructional Outcomes

This link to a March 2011 National Center on response to Intervention brief provides a framework for using Response to Intervention (RTI) with students who are English Language Learners (ELL) from Hispanic backgrounds.

RTI for English Language Learners: Appropriate Screening, Progress Monitoring, and Instructional Planning

In this webinar, Dr. Julie Esparza Brown, Dr. Amanda Sanford, and Erin Lolich focus on improving educational outcomes for English Language Learners (ELLs) through culturally and linguistically responsive implementation of an RTI framework in the area of elementary reading. Specifically, it discusses critical considerations to appropriately utilize screening and progress monitoring data with ELL students to improve reading outcomes by addressing the factors that influence ELL students' academic success. The webinar includes recommendations for the appropriate selection and use of screening and progress monitoring data based on students' unique backgrounds and needs and uses a case study to illustrate these recommendations with a first grade ELL student.  Slides