Final Report of the National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning, Volume I. University of California Santa Cruz, June 1996 The Impact Statement on Practice and Knowledge
Educating All Our Students: Improving Education for Children from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Backgrounds Barry McLaughlin & Beverly McLeod

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Changing Perceptions and Discourse
• Changing Expectations
• Changing Schools
• Future Research Directions

Introduction: Meeting the Challenge

The linguistic and cultural diversity among students in American schools is greater now than at any time since the early decades of this century. If students were distributed evenly across the nations classrooms, every class of 30 students would include about 10 students from ethnic or racial minority groups. Of these 10, about 6 would be from language minority families (homes in which languages other than English are spoken); 2-4 of these students would have limited English proficiency (LEP), of whom 2 would be from immigrant families. Of the 6 language minority students in the class, 4 would speak Spanish as their native language, and 1 would speak an Asian language. The other language minority student would speak any one of more than a hundred languages.

Of the 30 students in this hypothetical class, 10 (including nearly all of the language minority students) would be poor. The neighborhoods where poor children live are likely to be beset with multiple problems--inadequate health, social, and cultural services; insufficient employment opportunities; crime, drugs, and gang activity. Their families are likely to suffer the emotional stresses associated with poverty, and parents are likely to worry about their children's safety in a dangerous environment and about their future with few positive prospects.

Children who come from cultural and linguistic minority backgrounds often founder in school. Many do not gain a solid grounding in English reading and writing or in mathematics and science by the time they enter high school. As young adults they are inadequately prepared for higher education or for all but unskilled employment.

Despite this dismal scenario, there is reason for optimism. Many schools are actively searching for ways to educate all their students--including those from linguistic and cultural minority backgrounds--to high standards. During the past five years, the National Center for Research on Cultural Diversity and Second Language Learning has been instrumental in advancing both theory and practice in this area, guiding teachers and fellow researchers into new ways of thinking as well as new ways of teaching.

Researchers at the Center have identified instructional strategies that are effective for educating students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. They have also studied reform efforts that have important lessons for the school, the teacher, and the classroom. This research has a direct bearing on how schools can be organized and how teachers can teach to meet the needs of all their students.


We know a great deal about how schools should be organized and instruction given to meet the needs of culturally and linguistically diverse students.

Through publications, conferences, institutes for teachers, and a video series demonstrating effective classroom practices, the Center has reached teachers and administrators and influenced instructional practices. The Center's unifying conceptual framework, the sociocultural perspective, has permeated the national educational discourse. That perspective is delineated in the book, Rousing Minds to Life, which was authored by Center researchers Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore, who have been honored with the prestigious Grawemeyer award for their work. The sociocultural perspective is also illustrated in the Center's videos, one of which recently won a top award from the 1995 National Educational Media Network in the area of Teaching and Education.

Our Center has taken the lead in reformulating the issues about the education of culturally and linguistically diverse students. In the 1980s the main concern of educators was whether children who were not fluent in English should be educated initially in their home language. Discussion centered around the psychological and cognitive consequences of native language vs. English language instruction. While the debate about the advantages and disadvantages of bilingual education continues to rage with no resolution in sight, the Center has contributed substantially to shifting the discourse from a concern with the pros and cons of bilingual education to a new focus on how to offer a comprehensive educational program of excellence to students from linguistic and cultural minority backgrounds.

Work in this field has had an impact on how people think and talk about the education of children from linguistic and cultural minority backgrounds. As teachers and administrators come to grips with the challenge of teaching students from a wide variety of backgrounds, they have begun to the rethink the basic assumptions and practices of schooling. Center researchers have contributed new theoretical and practical knowledge about:

• how children learn;
• how students from linguistic and cultural minority backgrounds can learn English and other subjects to a high level of achievement; and
• what these new understandings imply for the roles of students and teachers, and for the organization of schools.

Center research has identified barriers faced by these students and their schools, as well as promising approaches to overcoming these obstacles. And we have begun to tackle several thorny areas that still require much more work.

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Changing Perceptions and Discourse

The New Vocabulary: Sociocultural Theory

How do children learn? While not denying the importance of the linguistic and psychological aspects of learning, sociocultural theory posits that learning is also a social and cultural process. Our Center's work derives its coherence from this guiding conceptual framework, which informs the work of all of our researchers. Early theories of learning focused on the individual learner and were influenced most directly by the field of psychology. Recent research in psychology emphasizes the social context of learning as well, such as the role of family, peer group, and community in the accomplishments of individual learners.

These developments are part of a shift away from a structural objectivism and toward a constructivism of meaning and thought. In contrast to the transmission model of knowledge that underlies traditional approaches to schooling, recent cognitive research indicates that children do not learn by passively taking in information exactly as it is transmitted by the teacher. Rather, learning is an active process whereby children create, or construct, an understanding that makes sense to them. The building blocks of this intellectual construction are not only what the teacher and textbook convey to children, but also what they already know and believe, and how this information is put together in the social context of the classroom.

From a sociocultural perspective, schooling is a socially constructed process where meaning is negotiated through interaction.

Learning is a social process in another way as well. In school, children become socialized into being "educated persons." For example, let us look at the task of learning how to read. From a cognitive perspective, a child learns the sounds of the alphabet and how to decipher written words, and then how to read and comprehend words strung together in a sentence. As the child becomes more skilled at decoding printed language and relating it to meaning, he or she becomes a more efficient reader.

From a sociocultural perspective however, learning to read looks quite different. It begins long before the child enters school, when his parents read to him at home. The child sees that reading is an important and enjoyable activity that adults do. Preschool children often "read" books themselves by imitating adults, turning the pages and telling the story. As children are taught in school that letters have associated sounds, they begin to be able to read the actual words on the page. But, if they are fortunate, they have already been socialized into becoming eager readers long before this point. In the same way, the sociocultural perspective allows us to see that "learning science" is not just learning the material in a textbook, but becoming socialized into thinking and working in a scientific manner, and acquiring the habits of mind of a scientist-- curiosity, organization, and persistence in pursuit of knowledge.

The sociocultural perspective focuses on the kind of "apprenticeship" learning that children naturally do as they mature into adult roles. Children are aided in this process by having the guidance of a "master," someone who is more skilled and who can assist the child in doing a particular task until he can do it competently on his own. For a high school science student, a master may be a teacher who helps students stretch their capability, or a professional scientist working with student interns. For a first grader learning to read, a master may be a second grader who can remember how she unlocked the code herself.

If learning is a social process, then it is also inevitably a cultural process. Culture and cognition are inextricably linked. Participation in cultural activities with the guidance of more skilled partners enables children to internalize the tools for thinking and for taking more mature approaches to problem solving that are appropriate in their culture. Individual development is mediated by interactions with people who are more skilled in the use of the culture's tools. The development of young children into skilled participants in society is accomplished through children's routine, and often tacit, guided participation in ongoing cultural activities as they observe and participate with others in culturally organized practices.

This perspective implies that school success for children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds should be viewed is a socially negotiated process involving interactions with persons, environments, resources and goals. When they enter school, children have to adjust to the school context behaviors and understandings that are unique to their culture. There are differences among cultures in the ways in which parents teach children at home, the ways in which parents expect children to behave, and the ways in which children and adults converse and interact. When teachers do not share their students cultural background, the teaching-learning process may be impeded by misunderstanding and frustration.

In order to design effective instruction, it is important to understand the cultural background of the child and the demands placed on the child in school. Thus much of our research takes the form of ethnographic and sociolinguistic studies of the social organization of home and school.

Children who are grounded in one cultural system at home and encounter another system at school face a special challenge. When differences in values and practices are handled with respect, children can benefit from learning new cultural systems while maintaining the "home" approach. But unfortunately, children often internalize the status differences between cultures that are communicated by caregivers and teachers. If their home culture and language are devalued and potential links between the cultures not emphasized, children lose the strength and coherence of a truly bicultural identity.

A number of our projects are explicitly directed at bridging the differences between home and school cultures. Common to each of these endeavors is a concern with how children learn in home and school, and how the disparities between these two experiences can be reconciled. With the belief that cultures possess "funds of knowledge" that teachers can access to make academic material more relevant to students, Luis Moll, Norma Gonzalez, and their colleagues have assisted Arizona teachers in making the connection between home and school.

Teachers are beginning to view learning as a social process, influenced by culture. Understanding the different expectations that children from different cultural backgrounds may bring with them to school can help teachers devise effective instructional approaches for all students.

Currently the sociocultural perspective permeates theoretical discourse.

Today, the sociocultural perspective on how children learn permeates the field of education. The success of Rousing Minds to Life and the scholarship of other researchers have brought this perspective to educators nationwide. The idea that children bring a great deal with them to the learning experience, that what they bring may differ depending on their cultural and linguistic background, that children learn by selectively paying attention to information and using it to construct knowledge, and that they do all of this in a social context, has led educators to new expectations about the capabilities of students, and new ways of designing and delivering curriculum.

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Changing Expectations

The Shift from Remedial Education to High Standards for All

The Center has been in a fortunate position to influence policy concerning the education of children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. After a year as co-director of the Center, Eugene Garcia moved to Washington to head the Office of Bilingual Education and Minority Languages Affairs. As a result, the Center's orientation has had a large impact on public policy.

Center research has been influential in affecting the wording of the Title VII section of the current IASA legislation. We believe that Center work contributed to the notion that "all children can learn," that language minority and limited English proficient children should be held to the same high standards as other children, and that the performance of these children should be assessed in an appropriate manner.

The danger is that children with limited proficiency in English will be left out of the standards movement.

These students have two major tasks in school--learning English and mastering other academic subjects. But our research has shown that in too many cases children from families whose home language is not English are not exposed to the same content as other children. They are also "outside of accountability," in that they are not tested because of their limited English. As a result, schools often fail to monitor the educational progress of language minority students. We see the promotion of high standards for all children as an indication that there is concern at the federal level that the standards movement include children with limited proficiency in English.

Learning English

Many schools try to get students to learn English as quickly as possible in special classes so that they can join their peers in regular academic classes. But, given what we now understand about language learning, this may not be the most effective approach to helping students become proficient in English. Along with other research in bilingualism and second language acquisition, the work of the Center has been instrumental in gaining new insights into how children learn a second language. We now know that it takes many years for children to develop academic competence in a second language, that mere exposure to the second language over many years does not guarantee fluency, that a solid foundation of native language literacy aids children in learning English and other subjects, and that children learn a second language easiest while engaged in meaningful communication about relevant topics.

One way that students can learn English while learning other subjects at a high level of achievement is by learning language and content together in a bilingual school. The Center is at the forefront of the "developmental" bilingual movement, which is based on the premise that it is a good thing to be bilingual, and that all American students should have the opportunity to learn a second language. Children who speak a language different from English at home should be encouraged to retain that language, and other children should have the opportunity to learn a language under conditions that will assure its acquisition--namely, through immersion in that language. Our work on two-way bilingual programs, in particular, has gained widespread attention. These programs are growing in popularity and we are frequently asked to discuss the advantages of these programs with school and district personnel.

Meeting the Challenge in Two Languages

Currently, 169 schools in 18 states have two-way bilingual programs, attended by English-speaking students and Spanish, Cantonese, Korean, Russian, Japanese, Portuguese, French, or Navajo-speaking students. Both groups of students study together in the same classroom. Schools divide the two languages of instruction in different ways. For example, in one elementary school studied by Donna Christian and colleagues, instructional time is approximately 50 percent in English and 50 percent in Spanish throughout the grades. In some classes, a bilingual teacher teaches the same class all day, using English for half the day and Spanish for the other half. Other classes work with two different teachers, one who teaches in Spanish and one who teaches in English, and the students change teachers and language of instruction at mid-day. The choice of language of instruction for different academic subjects varies from grade to grade. Social studies is taught in Spanish in grades 1 to 3, but in English in grades 4 and 5, for example. By 5th grade, all students were fully competent in both English and Spanish. Overall, students at two-way bilingual schools also perform as well as other students in academic achievement in the content areas such as mathematics, science, history, etc.

But most students from homes where languages other than English are spoken do not attend bilingual schools. How can the majority of students be assisted in learning English to a high level of competence? One Center research project that studied exemplary schools for such students across the country suggests that the key is a comprehensive and multifaceted language development program.

Language development programs in the exemplary schools were flexibly constructed to accommodate students with varying levels of fluency and, where appropriate, students from different language backgrounds. Rather than using a single model for all students with limited English proficiency, teachers adjusted curriculum, instruction, and the use of primary language to meet the varying needs of students.

Although all the schools considered the attainment of English proficiency to be a paramount goal, they did not approach this task through a single path. Schools used a combination of approaches to teaching English, including English as a Second Language, or ESL, classes (in which students are taught to understand, speak, read, and write English), and sheltered instruction (in which mathematics or history, for example, are taught in English using special techniques to aid students comprehension).

The exemplary schools sought to build on--rather than replace--their students native languages. All of the schools used students primary languages--either as a means of developing literacy skills, as a tool for delivering content, or both. Content area instruction was integrated into bilingual and sheltered programs for students with limited proficiency in English and used as a means of providing a context for oral and written language production in English. The key to program flexibility was having qualified and trained staff. In most classrooms with students who were not fluent in English, teachers were trained in language acquisition theory and practice. In all cases where instruction occurred in the students primary language, and in many cases of sheltered instruction delivered in English, teachers were fluent in the home language of their students. To promote interaction between students with limited proficiency in English and English-only students, teachers team taught and employed a wide range of grouping strategies.

Finally, the transition from sheltered or primary language classes to mainstream classes was gradual, carefully planned, and supported with activities such as after-school tutoring to ensure students success at mastering complex content in English. Even though these exemplary schools were not bilingual schools, they were like bilingual schools in integrating language-learning with content-learning opportunities to foster students natural, meaningful communication in English. A fourth grade class at one of the exemplary schools in Texas illustrates several of these features.

Flexibility and Meaningful Communication--In Two Languages

During independent reading time, the teacher circulates among the students, asking several a brief question about their books--Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Beauty and the Beast, The Babysitter Club, Sweet Valley High, Aladdin, etc. While the class is reading, two students work on a computer to create material for the class newsletter. One student is at a different computer answering a series of questions about Charlotte's Web. Then the teacher sits with a group of students who are reading James and the Giant Peach in Spanish; the rest of the class has read the same book in English. The teacher discusses the story in Spanish with the small group of students, all recent immigrants. Later the entire class assembles to perform a portion of the book in a Reader's Theater. Each student plays the role of a character from the book, enacting a scene by reading with emotion in English. In her subsequent discussion of the book with the whole class, the teacher asks some of the same questions in English that she had previously directed toward the small group in Spanish. Students participate in the discussion using English or Spanish. For homework, the teacher explains in English and Spanish, students are to write a letter from James to his aunts, trying to persuade them to treat him better. She reminds the class that they have been working on persuasive writing.

The exemplary schools that we observed demonstrate the principles of optimal language acquisition that researchers in this field have discovered. Children learn a language best--whether their first or second--by using it to communicate rather than by studying it in isolation. When encouraged to use language for meaningful purposes, students not only gradually and naturally become competent in English but also have the opportunity to develop mature literacy.

The work of Center researchers on "instructional conversation" illustrates the distinction between acquiring a second language and becoming truly literate in that language. Developed by Roland Tharp and Ronald Gallimore, instructional conversation is an approach in which a teacher guides students toward discovering a deeper understanding of material through a discussion that incorporates students ideas and backgrounds. The teacher and students become conversation partners, and the whole group participates in constructing a personally meaningful and relevant intellectual creation. In one of the Center projects, Claude Goldenberg traced the development of this approach at a low-income, largely Hispanic elementary school in Los Angeles:

Congruent with the sociocultural notion of constructivism, instructional conversation helps students create meaning in the social context of the classroom. Together, the class comes to a deeper and more multifaceted understanding of the text and its themes than if students had read and thought about the text individually.

Learning Academic Content

How can students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds learn other academic subjects to a high standard of achievement, particularly if they are not yet fluent in English? A survey in California conducted by the Center revealed that few schools offer a full course of academic study to students with limited English proficiency. The problem is particularly acute at the secondary level, where many such students take only ESL and elective classes. In many cases, the courses available do not allow them to accumulate enough credits to graduate from high school. Even if they are able to graduate, they are frequently lacking courses essential for college admission, such as laboratory science.

Several Center researchers have been investigating solutions to this problem--creating a curriculum in science, mathematics, or social studies that is challenging, engaging, and meaningful, and that is also accessible to students without a proficient command of academic English. One solution is to offer such a curriculum in the students native language.

New approaches to learning science stress the social construction process.

This kind of approach to teaching science, in which students are encouraged to investigate problems that pique their curiosity, not only engages their interest. It also socializes them into becoming scientists. These general principles of mathematics and science teaching apply to all children. We believe in the importance of hands-on inquiry-based science instruction, and on the role of exploration, dialogue, and discourse in promoting understanding. We recognize that learners come to the science classroom with preconceived notions. Long before they enter the classroom, children attempt to make sense of the natural world. Many of the naive scientific conceptions held by children arise from interaction with parents and family members.

Our efforts attempt to take advantage of children's innate curiosity to promote communities of scientific practice. The teacher's role is to facilitate the active learning of children by building on that curiosity and directing it into scientific exploration. Science instruction is organized as a socially embedded activity in which students pose their own questions, do research to explore their questions, and collect, analyze, and interpret data. This approach to the social construction of knowledge is consistent with the underlying sociocultural approach to learning that is the basic framework for the Center's research.

It should be noted that the focus in such an approach is on major scientific ideas and concepts and on learning to think scientifically, rather than on learning specialized vocabulary in isolation or memorizing facts and procedures. This is especially important for the children in our studies, many of whom are in the process of acquiring English as a second language. In many cases, these children will be learning to think as scientists through their first language. We believe that it is important for instruction to focus on essential key concepts and ideas and to link them with scientific terminology, rather than starting with abstract vocabulary that will only be mystifying and frustrating to students not yet proficient in English.

Successful instruction in mathematics involves a problem-solving approach to real-life questions.

A similar perspective guides our work in the area of mathematics. As with science, all children should be expected to develop mathematical thinking. One of the major premises of current mathematics reform efforts is that students learn best when they are intellectually challenged so that they are motivated to fill in mathematical gaps when necessary. The role of the teacher, as in science education, is to act as a facilitator, providing stimulating problems and an environment to motivate mathematical learning. Research suggests that when students are challenged by real-life problems they become more motivated to develop their mathematical abilities.

In line with sociocultural theory, our research indicates that successful mathematics instruction requires that teachers and students become a community of learners, in which students play a prominent role in defining and constructing their knowledge. This is one of the developments in the research by Moll, Gonzalez, and their associates with Latino students and their teachers in Arizona. Students in one of their classes invent games that involve mathematical concepts as they become a "mathematics community."

As is true of the student's knowledge of science, family resources are an important ingredient in the student's developing mathematical knowledge. Henderson and Landesman found that Latino parents of middle school students in their sample had high aspirations for their children and recognized that mathematics is an important access route to professional careers. However, these parents had little specific knowledge of the courses their children needed to take in high school to pursue these avenues.

If American schools are to meet the challenge of increasing numbers of culturally and linguistically diverse students, teachers need to develop new strategies of instruction that engage students and motivate them to learn. For these children in particular the strategies need to focus on active learning and fundamental concepts, rather than on new terminology. In line with current thinking on reform in mathematics and science instruction, teachers and students need to redefine their roles and work together in creating a community of learners. Because many culturally and linguistically diverse children come from families where parents value education but lack instrumental knowledge about how to succeed academically, these children and their parents need special attention.

Developing high quality curricula in other academic areas and making them accessible to students with limited English proficiency is just as important, and just as challenging. Immigrant students in particular are at a disadvantage in literature, history, and social studies courses that assume a great deal of background knowledge about American historical figures, events, and eras. Deborah Short tackled this challenge by collaborating with teachers and research colleagues to create curricular units for middle school American history and world studies courses organized around the themes "Protest and the American Revolution" and "Conflicts in World Cultures." A thematic approach to history offers several benefits to students with limited background knowledge. Focusing on a topic in depth, over an extended period of time, and from multiple perspectives, gives these students an opportunity to acquire the needed background knowledge. Another benefit is that the lessons in these curricular units were designed to integrate and develop language, content knowledge, and higher-order thinking skills, fostering the natural use of language for meaningful communication. In addition, the universal themes underlying these units encouraged students to draw upon their own cultural history of conflict, war, and civil unrest in their homelands.

American History--Universal Themes

In a lesson about symbols and propaganda in a wartime setting, students in a sixth-seventh grade sheltered social studies class drew and presented flags from their home countries. They described the symbols on the flags to their classmates, explaining their historical significance if known. The class discussed the importance of symbolism for rallying people to a cause and students shared other examples besides flags. Students continued the lesson with a listening activity that led them to draw the first flag of the United States. Next the students divided into small groups to design a flag for one of a variety of groups they had read about in the colonial period: Slaves, free Blacks, Daughters of Liberty, Patriots, Tories, Native Americans who sided with the British, and so forth. Students used their negotiating and interpretation skills as they created a group flag, painted it, and explained their symbols and color choices to the class. One group designed a flag for the Daughters of Liberty with a red circle slashed by a diagonal red line. Inside the circle were depicted a tea cup, a shirt, and a document with an imprinted tax stamp, to represent items that the Daughters of Liberty boycotted (tea, cloth, and the stamp tax).

If students who lack proficiency in English are placed in remedial mathematics and science classes or excluded from social studies and history classes, as is often the case, schools are effectively using these subjects as a filter that denies students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds the opportunity to work toward the same high standards as other students. Our research indicates that these students are capable of high levels of achievement in mathematics, science, and other academic subjects, when instruction is framed in a way to stimulate their learning.

Instructional Approaches

Working in cooperative groups, students can come to complex understandings.

One of the most promising instructional approaches to stimulating learning is cooperative learning. A teacher assigns small groups of students, often with different talents and needs, to work together on a project. Such an arrangement has benefits for a wide range of students, as documented by many studies. Students who need help on a task can often learn most easily from a peer who has mastered the task, and the "masters" benefit cognitively and emotionally from organizing and explaining what they know. In discussing and defending their ideas with each other, students come to a more complex understanding than if they had worked on a problem alone. The classroom arrangement of cooperative learning mirrors and reinforces the social constructivist process by which children learn.

Cooperative learning has particular benefits for students who are learning a second language. Accomplishing a cooperative task successfully requires students to engage in meaningful communication about the task at hand, which is the optimal context for language learning. In this arrangement, students with less English facility can be grouped with those who are more fluent. A cooperative learning situation also requires students to negotiate roles using linguistic and social strategies, just as adults do in the workplace.

John Gumperz, Jenny Cook-Gumperz and their colleagues have analyzed such group interactions in the classroom. They have concluded that switching languages is one of the sociolinguistic devices that children use to signal that they want to rally the group to work collectively. It is an indicator of group dynamic process rather than, as might be assumed, a lack of vocabulary or facility in English. Analyses like this can begin to give teachers a window into their students learning process, as well as a way of assessing and assisting them.

Cooperative learning and the other approaches and programs for language minority students that the Center has been involved with hold promise not just for language minority students. Developmental bilingual programs not only enable speakers of other languages to learn English, but give native English speakers the assets of bilingualism and cross-cultural skills. The success of the scientific sense-making program for Haitian students resulted in parents of English-speaking students clamoring for the school to adopt the same approach for all science classes. The program has since been instituted in other schools in the Cambridge, Massachusetts area. The focus of all of the Center's curriculum development and instructional improvement programs on meaningful communication, thematic and integrated curricula, problem-solving approaches, and instructional conversation provide a rich intellectual feast for all students, language minority and majority alike.

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Changing Schools

What do the research on learning, and the promising approaches to designing and delivering high quality curriculum to students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds, imply for the organization of schools? Sociocultural theory would predict, and our research has convinced us, that new perceptions of and expectations for students must be embedded in a supportive social context that includes the entire school. Center projects have shed light on the question of how schools can be organized to foster the achievement to high levels of all their students.

One Center project has investigated what happens when the assumptions of a deeply entrenched system of student assignment--tracking--are challenged. Typically, once they reach secondary school, many children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are placed in remedial, general, or vocational tracks and never get the opportunity to try academically challenging courses. But that is beginning to change in some schools.

Our study of exemplary schools has also given us an opportunity to see how schools have transformed into practice the kinds of ideas that the Center has been advocating. This study suggests several ways in which schoolwide features can have a tremendous impact on students. The exemplary schools all developed, often by means of an extended process, a schoolwide vision of what quality schooling should be like for all their students, including their students with limited proficiency in English.

The schools expected that all their students could learn to high standards. The attainment of fluency in oral and written English was assumed to be fundamental and achievable. These schools embraced the culture and language of students, welcoming parents and community members into the school in innovative ways. The schools we observed demonstrated a commitment to educating all their students to high standards while at the same time displaying respect for their students economic circumstances and cultural background. Many of the schools provided health or social services on campus or directed students to such services in the community. They sponsored English and other classes for parents. They welcomed parent involvement in the classroom and on school committees. They hired teachers and other school personnel from the same cultural background as their students. They grouped students and teachers together in smaller units. They experimented with the daily and weekly class schedules and the use of instructional time. All of these innovations were efforts at the level of the whole school to create an optimal learning environment for their students.

Some schools capitalize on their students cultural background and interests in designing their curriculum. At a Spanish-English bilingual school in Chicago, the schoolwide theme--the Americas--is integrated across disciplines and built around topics that reflect the history, culture, and traditions of students. Grade level teachers work together to develop their curriculum around the schoolwide theme.

Although this school's curriculum was designed locally for their particular students, other exemplary schools have reached out to collaborate with external curriculum development organizations, particularly in science. Some of the most impressive science curricula that Center researchers observed in exemplary schools were the fruit of just such a dynamic partnership. In several cases, the curriculum was not originally developed for students with limited English proficiency, but teachers were able to adapt the curriculum and their instruction to use it with students with a wide range of facility in English.

The exemplary sites we observed at both the elementary and middle school levels restructured their schools into smaller school organizations such as "families" that heightened the connections among students, between teachers and students, and among teachers. Smaller organizational units also made it easier for newcomer immigrant students to be brought into the flow of instruction and the culture of the school. In some cases, the schools had a small group of students stay with the same teacher over four or five years. This continuity enabled students to become skilled at cooperative learning, be highly responsible in their learning tasks, and build self-esteem. It also enabled teachers to build their understanding of each student as well as to develop their capacity to apply new instructional approaches in practice.

Exemplary schools made innovative uses of time.

Another key element concerned the schools inventive use of time. Exemplary schools protected students time for learning by making daily adjustments to lesson plans and curriculum. Some exemplary schools allocated blocks of class time appropriate to the pedagogic needs of different subject matters or themes. Science projects, for example, could occupy a double period in middle schools. Several schools structured or extended the school day and year to accommodate teacher planning, collaboration, and professional development, and to provide extra support for LEP students transition to English as well as for the incorporation of newcomers into the LEP program. Some schools kept the same teacher and students together for several years, or used cooperative learning arrangements consistently; these structures allowed more efficient use of teacher time because students became skilled at working together without a lot of direction. In short, these creative uses of time provided flexibility to tailor the educational program to the students strengths and needs.

Teachers played a key role in the exemplary schools we studied. Teachers were treated as professionals, encouraged to learn from each other, and given time to develop programs. At one school, teachers assisted the school's external curriculum partner in developing and refining assessments of the material. At another, teachers had control of the school's professional development budget, and decided as a group what kind of training they needed. Teachers at several schools planned the school schedule around their joint planning time. What our study of exemplary schools has taught us is that creating an environment where language minority students thrive intellectually must be a schoolwide, comprehensive effort, one that involves administrators, teachers, students, and parents as a community of learners.

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Future Research Directions

There is a great deal that we now know about educating children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. The work of our Center and others working with these children has led to a basic understanding about how all children learn, and how language and culture may influence learning. We know what kinds of curricular and instructional approaches can capitalize on the way children learn and on the knowledge and expectations they bring to school. We know what kinds of learning situations facilitate learning a second language and engage students actively in other academic subjects. Through our study of exemplary schools, we have begun to identify schools that are putting this knowledge into practice. But there are still several important pieces of the puzzle that require much more investigation.

Teacher Professional Development

For example, we understand very little about the process of changing educational practice. The Center project that is tracing change among teacher Wanda Fuller and her colleagues suggests that teachers, like students, come to new understandings and incorporate new knowledge into behavior as a result of a socially mediated learning process. While we are busy figuring out how to create an engaging environment in which students can learn and grow, we need to know much more about how to create the same kinds of intellectually stimulating opportunities for teachers to grow as professionals.

The Center researcher who worked with Wanda Fuller and her fellow teachers discovered that a didactic approach to training them to conduct instructional conversations would not work; teachers had to learn how to do instructional conversations by themselves becoming engaged in that practice. By examining changes in perception, and perhaps in future teaching practice, among this group of teachers, this project offers a rare look at the micro-processes of change, which we will have to understand a great deal more about if we want to have a widespread impact on the schooling of children from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds.

Assessment

We also do not yet know how to assess student learning in new ways. Although we have identified many promising approaches to instruction that are consistent with what we know about how children learn and about the cultural and linguistic influences on learning, the development of appropriate assessments of learning has lagged far behind. In short, researchers do not know how to measure reliably how much children are learning except through the use of standardized tests. Such tests have their own well known problems when administered to minority populations or to students not fluent in English. In addition, they may not measure the different kinds of learning that education reformers are now advocating.

It remains to be seen whether new approaches to assessment, such as various forms of performance assessment including portfolio assessment, will meet the needs of students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Portfolios can help teachers examine effort, improvement over time, and developmental processes, as well as helping them meet the accountability demands usually achieved by more formal testing. However, it is not clear whether these methods can be used for high stakes testing--such as is done for grade promotion or graduation. Nor do we understand how to map portfolio assessment onto standards or benchmarks developed at the school, district, state, or national levels.

Current reform efforts in mathematics and science have produced assessment procedures that are much more cognitively demanding; they require students to rely less on memorized information and to engage more in problem solving. However, such tests are much more demanding linguistically as well, especially for students with less than perfect mastery of English. There is a need for research that looks at how reforms of this sort impact students with limited English proficiency.

Changing Schools

It is one thing to know what schools need to do and another to say how they can do it. We need to study more systematically what resources are required to support an exemplary teaching environment and which strategies for change are most effective. In general, we need information to help formulate the resource standards and practice standards necessary to enable language minority students to meet the same high performance standards as other students.

Schools are inherently difficult to change. The various reform efforts in American schools over the past several decades have not had a great effect on the way that children are taught. Center investigators have learned firsthand the difficulties of changing schools. It is quite clear that a "reformed curriculum" does not constitute a sufficient condition to promote major improvement in achievement or significant realignment in instructional practice. Reform needs to be systemic--affecting all aspects of school life, from students and their families to administrators to teachers and aides.

We need more research on how systemic reform succeeds in schools that serve students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. Center researchers have stressed the importance of local agents in reform, but the work with exemplary programs indicates, in addition, the critical role that external partners play in innovation and change. There is much more to be learned about how systemic reform occurs, is fostered, and has a lasting impact on schools.

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