 I'm Abby Lieberman, a senior policy analyst on New America's early and elementary education policy team. Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon or this morning, depending where you're joining from. For this conversation on what is needed to reimagine assessments in a way that builds stronger and more equitable assessments for dual language learners. We're excited to be partnering with MDRC on today's event and with New America's English learner team. For those of you who are not as familiar with New America, our organization strives to explain and uncover the implications, both the challenges and opportunities inherent in this time of tremendous change. In our education program we focus on equity for underserved students, while also taking a broad view. We examine learning environments and public education systems of all kinds, starting with our littlest ones and continuing up through adulthood. Today we're going to hear about why assessments matter. How equity in assessments matters and why we need to improve on the current assessment tools that are available, particularly for our dual language learners. Dual language learners make up more than one third of the birth through eight child population. And in some states like California, over 60% of the young child population. And unfortunately many pre-K assessments often fail to capture all that these children know and can do. So we're going to talk a little bit more about that. We're going to talk a little bit more about why we need to improve on the current assessment tools. So we're going to talk about why we need to improve on the current assessment tools and reliable data can give families, educators, researchers and policy makers the information they need about children's learning and development to make decisions that strengthen our early learning systems. This is especially important now as we work to understand the long-term impacts of the pandemic that our children continue to live through. You'll hear from researchers and practitioners about the current landscape of DLL assessment emerging practices and strategies to support the early educator workforce. Next slide please. So here's a brief overview of our agenda for today. First we'll hear from Megan McCormick of MDRC who will share about the assessment work they are doing with support from the Gates Foundation. After a few polling questions Megan will then introduce our panel of research experts which will be moderated by New America's Leslie Viegas. Leslie will turn it over to New America's Amaya Garcia who will facilitate a conversation with Lisa Luceno and will share her real world experience working with DLLs in DC. And then we'll pass it back to Megan for some whole group debriefing and final thoughts. Please feel free to share your thoughts in the chat and Q&A function throughout the event. And as you heard we are recording this event and we'll be sending out a recording within a few days to all who are registered to attend. We'll also be doing some general, some writing on the general discussion and themes elevated today. So without further ado please join me in welcoming Megan McCormick Senior Associate for Family Well-being and Children's Development at MDRC. Thanks so much Abby and thanks for including MDRC and this convening we're really excited to be partnering on this work and elevating these important perspectives to think to really reimagine and rethink how we are collecting important information on children's skills and development that can help strengthen instruction for them and support them as they move into elementary school and beyond. So I'm just going to give you a little couple of minutes overview of kind of the impetus behind why we're here. So the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has provided funding to MDRC, a human-centered design firm called Substantial as well as a host of other partners including the America Foundation to rethink how we're collecting data and using data and early learning systems as a tool to strengthen those systems and promote more equitable learning opportunities and outcomes for young children. And so specifically MDRC has brought together researchers, stakeholders, advocates, pre-K programs, educators, the kind of range of stakeholders who are thinking about these assessment issues to participate in a project called Measures for Early Success, supporting early learners and educators with innovative equitable assessments. Next slide please. This project really aims to kind of rethink and address the range of challenges that educators in the field are facing when they're using assessments to strengthen instruction. First, we know that collecting assessment data can be useful to educators. If we have better data we can really hone in on what are the key strengths that students have, what are their areas for growth, how can we kind of work with teachers to provide individualized supports to promote better learning outcomes. And we know that if we have data on all children, not just children in, you know, highly resource programs, not just children who are coming from high-income white families, but the full range of children that recognize their strengths and are culturally responsive to their family background and their experiences, we can support all kids to grow and thrive as we aim to do in these early learning systems. And at a policy level if we have better assessment data, we can really kind of use that information to identify where investments are really needed and in what domains of learning, with what types of professional development supports for teachers, and at what scale. However, right now the current landscape of assessments makes it challenging to really use good information to accomplish these goals. Next slide. For instance, we know that assessments really tend to capture like constrained kind of academic skills like the ABCs in one, two, three, and a really basic academic competencies that are thought of as key domains of school readiness and they fail to capture the broad range of skills that we know that need to succeed in pre-K and beyond. Assessment tools may not be predictive of children's development or future outcomes, and they may not align again with the kind of 21st century skills, problem-solving, strategic thinking that are really critical for kids' development in this current context. Assessments also may not provide useful information for educators and parents that are readily available to help drive instruction in the classroom. So sometimes there can be huge lags in getting assessment information. It can be difficult to really get unbiased information on kids' skills of the present moment. And everyone's kind of using different assessment systems, making it difficult to really kind of understand what the broad landscape looks like across different contexts. And at the same time, programs, pre-K programs, early learning programs are kind of faced with high costs and burden and collecting assessments and using them in a really comprehensive and impactful way. So given the range of challenges, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has invested a significant amount of funds in kind of reimagining assessment tools. They really elevate the perspectives of children from minoritized backgrounds, dual-language learners and children from families experiencing poverty in order to address the range of challenges in the fields and promote a new future where assessments can kind of achieve these lofty goals and really be used to drive and strengthen instruction at scale. Next slide. And so today in this convening, we're going to be hearing from experts in who are really thinking about dual-language learners specifically and are really thought leaders in this space about what we need to be really elevating in this conversation to accomplish that broad range of goals. And we hope to hear from all of you to get your perspectives, because this is really an opportunity to hear from the range of folks on the ground doing this work from different perspectives about what you think is important when we're reimagining these assessments so we can use that information in this broader project in an impactful way. I'm just going to leave you with one quote that we got from a teacher. And we asked her about why assessments can be useful and what the key challenges she was facing in using these assessments. And she really kind of put the nail in the head when she said when she knows more about what her students know, the more effective she can be. But again, right now, she may not be able to capture that information with the assessment tools that are really available. And so we look forward to hearing your perspectives and thoughts on this work as we engage in a broader conversation with our panelists. Next slide please. So before we actually get into the panel, we wanted to just kind of set the scene and do a couple of polling questions to engage participants here a little bit about where folks are coming from, and what kind of what you're trying to do as we dive into this conversation. So folks could go to the website www.menti.com. And when you get to that website, please enter the code to 778-0641. I'll give folks a minute to get in there. So some folks are already starting so if you could just answer the poll, who in the room so what what's your background where you coming from today with us. So we have a good percent percentage of researchers that looks like. I'm a researcher as well so good to see that. But it does look like we have a diverse diverse group of folks coming to this event today. About 20% practitioners so educators in the fields. A number of advocates. Policy makers. Give folks another minute. Yeah, this is great. This is great to see so for our panelists and have a fairly diverse group of folks coming together. And so maybe we'll switch to our next question. We're going to do a word cloud here and we'd love to get your perspective on you have to think of a word that comes to mind when you hear pre K assessments for multi lingual learners. What's what's kind of coming to mind there. Complex doesn't seem to be changing in the middle so it is definitely complex. De prioritized but needed. Challenging I'm seeing as a kind of emerging word. Inclusive responsive equity. I'm kind of adding adding some additional words on the end that milestones accuracy data but challenging complex equity and important are really emerging as core themes there. One maybe one more minute for folks to add any additional thoughts. By us which we'll talk about in our discussion today. Thank you so much. This is great. So you see I also see the word important emerging as well. Thanks. Perfect. Thanks so much. Next slide. Okay, thanks that was really helpful for just setting the stage and getting us all thinking a little bit more about the core themes that we're going to dive into in our discussion today. I actually am going to introduce our panelists right now, and then I'm going to hand it over. And this panel is going to be moderated by Leslie viagas senior policy analyst for pre K to 12 education at numerica foundation will hand it over to Leslie to moderate this discussion. Today we'll be hearing from Sandra Barueco professor of psychology at the Catholic University of America, Linda Espinosa, professor emeritus at the University of Missouri Columbia, and Lisa Lopez a professor of educational psychology at the University of South Florida College of Education, so we're really lucky to have these real leaders in the fields and permanent thinkers on this topic to hear their thoughts, so hand it over to Leslie thanks so much. Thanks Megan. Thanks for the introduction and a big thank you to our panelists for being here today and sharing your time and expertise with us. So I'm just going to dive right in and the first question I have is for Dr Linda Espinosa. I'm a long time champion of DLLs and a leading voice in the fields on how to ensure that these students are well supported in early education and care programs. Can you tell us about the current landscape of ECE assessments and EC assessments for dual language learners here on mute. Thank you. And thank you for inviting me to be a part of this. So based on my own research and the work that I do across the state across the country in different states I would say that the ECE field and state and federal government generally recognize the need to improve assessments for DLLs so that they are accurate, valid and fair for DLLs and this is progress. This isn't always a discussion that we had with states and with communities. There are very few communities or states that have developed systematic procedures or instruments that truly captured the linguistic cognitive and social competencies of dual language learners. Although I would say there are pockets of innovation and progress and we'll see one today. And there are several states are very actively working on this issue. Nevertheless, I would say that the current landscape is full of potholes and barriers to the equitable assessment of DLLs, thus presenting a huge opportunity for us within this initiative to move the needle forward. I want to talk very briefly about three examples. One, the assessment for the identification of dual language learners. Two, kindergarten readiness assessments and three, observational assessments of child progress. And I know Sandra's done a lot of work on standardized child assessment so I'll leave that topic to her. So when considering the validity of assessments for dual language learners. We have to start with what what is being assessed for what purpose and who is conducting the assessment. The what of assessment is usually determined by state early learning standards or goals. And these goals are designed specifically for pre K and kindergarten entry. The learning goals are divided into separate domains. So teachers know what to teach and what to assess. And then the process for assessment sets the methods, the technical standards, and the use of the data that is collected. For our first purpose identifying who is a DLL and who is not a DLL. We have very few states that use a common procedure so programs basically are left on their own to decide how they will identify dual language learners. And similarly with have standard procedures for instance California has just passed a state law that requires all state funded programs to use a standard method for identifying who is who is not a dual language learner. And this method is based primarily on a very detailed family interview that we've been using in California for quite a while. The state of Illinois also has a standard procedure and a required process that administers a standardized language assessment the pre IPT and for both states. Once the DLLs are identified then programming options are recommended or in some cases required. The, the formative assessments for instance observational assessments which are designed to measure progress toward educationally significant goals. These are the types of assessments that teacher collect data in an ongoing fashion throughout the day and what are considered more authentic environments. These assessments are the items on the assessments are indicators should reflect a developmental trajectory that is based on empirical evidence that is appropriate for dual language learners and reflects the progress they are making toward achieving that educational goal. Okay, so my first issue around observational assessments systems that we're currently using is the language goals as the basis for the learning trajectory. Most systems acknowledge the importance of DLLs home language, both as the foundation for emergent bilingualism and is critical for all future academic success in English. In fact, in the nascent the 2017 nascent report the National Academies of science engineering and medicine prevent promoting the educational success of children and youth learning English comprehensive report that covered birth to ages 21. A major finding in the birth to five section is that the best preparation for kindergarten success for DLLs is a strong language skills basis home language skills combined with a systematic exposure to English and the development of English language skills. So the recommendation and the recognition, I would say in this country right now is that children need both. They need strong home language skills. They need acquisition of English at kindergarten entry. Clearly, clearly, I think the research evidence has supported this as an educational goal. I would also say that almost all states and districts and parents and the general public understand the advantages, the cognitive language cultural economic advantages of bilingualism and becoming bi-literate. And right now I think there are probably more than 30 states that have a high school seal of bi-literacy, which recognizes and promotes the social and economic and civic advantages of bi-literacy at the end of high school. So as in general as a society, as a, as an educational field, we recognize the benefits. Now back to teachers ongoing assessment of children's progress toward important educational goals. Across the country, we clearly state the importance of DLLs home language and English. But in most programs, we only assess a DLL's child's progress in English language development. With some exceptions, and those are mostly in Spanish, but rarely do we actually have teachers systematically access progress in both languages. And in assessment circles, we like to say, if you don't assess something, you're probably not going to teach it. It is impossible to be a good teacher if you don't have good assessment data, similar to what your teacher said earlier. So in if our observational assessment systems primarily address English language development, then instructional planning will focus on English instruction, and often at the expense of the child's home language. So the who conducts the assessment? Who are they trained and do they understand the unique features of dual language development that are unique and distinct from the developmental trajectories of monolingual English language children. So do teachers know what to look for as indicators of progress in both languages? And the wide variability that is still normal based on several factors on from the dual language learner child's background such as when were they first exposed to English, what is the quantity and quality of exposure to English that they've had, as well as what is the state of their, the strength of their home language skills. The formative or observational assessment, which is essential to measuring progress toward these educational goals holds promise but will need better instruments, improve training and methods for interpreting assessment data and applying that data to instructional decision decision making that is tailored to individual progress of dual language learners. Now the kindergarten entry assessments are kindergarten readiness assessments. So I have many of the same issues with kindergarten readiness assessments. But they are required, they first were required in 2011 with the race to the top, early learning challenge grants. But most states now require kindergarten readiness assessments across all domains of their early learning standards. Very few and I worked on several national consortia on this issue and several states on this issue, very few require kindergarten readiness assessments and anything other than English. So very few really have linguistically appropriate kindergarten readiness assessments. Logically, in some states, the results are broadly disseminated, publicly disseminated so that the state can have a profile of the entering kindergarteners level of school readiness across all the domains. If you read these profiles across different states, it is heartbreaking to realize that DLLs are almost always at the bottom 20% and language and literacy and cognitive skills. In some states, DLLs also cluster at the bottom and social skills and physical skills for some unknown reason. In some public messages, we are saying that DLLs with some English skills, unknown but possibly strong home language skills are less competent than their native English speaking peers, and this conclusion then drives the deficit perception that DLLs are somehow less than monolinguals because their English language skills lag behind their native English speakers. When in fact, I would argue the exact opposite is more likely to be true. We have California data and other national data that strong home language and English language skills on average, children who have these skills on average outperform monolingual English language speakers by the end of elementary grade have higher academic scores throughout their high school performance are more likely to graduate from high school, enroll in college and have better long term life success. We know that balanced bilinguals enjoy certain cognitive advantages throughout their lifespan. We acknowledge the economic and social advantage of bilingualism yet we continue to center our assessment practices around our English only perspective with attention to children's growth in Spanish in some programs we do pay attention to Spanish as well when the instrumentation but rarely on a statewide level, and we almost never asked programs to give us a language profile and more than one language at kindergarten entry. So we don't really have language profiles and more than one language for instance in two. So I recommend that we develop assessment methods that fairly and accurately assess emergent bilinguals across both their language and language. That's nothing new. And perhaps at one day, we will set a goal of emergent bilingualism for all children and and assess all children's accomplishments in more than one language at kindergarten entry, based on their language in two languages. And that way we will recognize the talents and potentials of DLLs that kindergarten entry, and we will also expand the linguistic cultural social and cognitive potential of all children in the United States. Until we do that, we are not truly implementing an equitable assessment system for dual language learners. Thank you. Thank you for that response Linda I really we really appreciate it and I think you touched on a lot of key points that we're going to get into with not only this panel but also the next moderated conversation so thank you for setting that really, really detailed landscape of the steps that we need to take moving forward. The next question that I have is for Dr Lisa Lopez. You are you have been engaged in research in that identifying and developing curricula and assessments to help better support DLLs. And I just wanted to ask you what are some of the issues that you are hoping to address in your work. And what are the essential elements of assessments for DLLs I think that's one of the big questions that a lot of us here have. Thank you to New America and MDRC for inviting me to be part of this panel. The goal of my research is to meet the all children where they're at, understand what foundational knowledge they're bringing into the classroom, and to continue to build off of that foundation. It seems pretty basic, but until very recently and maybe not even yet. We have, we've been having challenges with understanding DLLs and meeting them where they're at and knowing what it is that they can learn how they learn the skills that they're bringing into the classroom, very similar to what Linda was talking about, because we don't have the right resources to do that. And so we've been doing a poor job with DLL children in terms of just comparing them to our their bilingual peers, comparing them to white middle class, monolingual children, instead of really looking at our dual language learners and taking it, an asset-based approach to their development. So the recent work that I've been most involved with is really focused on better understanding the young DLL population and the heterogeneity within this group. So often we lump DLLs into one group, so you have your DLLs that are performing at the bottom 20%, but there's so much heterogeneity among this group, right? And so we also here as Linda pointed out that DLLs are at risk due to low achievement in schools. So she alluded to that, that's really due to the inequitable nature of the assessments. I know your work cloud is that equity was a big one. So what we've been finding in our samples of DLL children, and I'm primarily with Head Start children, is that their language, literacy, math, cognitive skills are actually on par for them to be successful in schools. So they're really, if you're looking at the whole child, they're not really at risk. They're being made at risk, right, by the school environments that they're entering into in kindergarten. So that's where assessment and curriculum really come in. We need to make sure that assessments are accounting for all the skills the children are capable of, regardless of which language they're in, including every language that they're in. We need to measure these skills the children have across all their languages. We don't not only need to measure their language, literacy, math skills, we need to do a better job of measuring their more domain general skills as well. Because those are showing to be much more predictive of children's abilities to be successful their resiliency their motivation, their approaches to learning their metacognitive skills. Those are the underlying skills that we know DLL children are really good at. They have really strong metacognitive and metalinguistic skills. And so we need to really account for those as we're looking forward and what children can do using less traditional and more authentic assessment practices such as dynamic assessments or narratives can also help teachers to understand students language skills as well as their ability to learn these new skills. So it's, it's partly what they can what they're coming in with, but the underlying skills that they have those more domain general skills that will really help them to be successful in school. We need to do a better job of determining what the goal of the assessment is when we're determining what type of assessment should be administered. Linda spoke a lot about the state level assessment. So what's the goal of the state level assessments right. And so what, how can we create new assessments that are more equitable and that characterize children's abilities that can be administered at a state level. And those standardized assessments are sometimes a little bit more challenging to really capture the whole child with the heterogeneity of the population with the heterogeneity of our dual language learners, with having dual language learners that speak over 400 languages in some states, it's really, it's a challenge right to be able to capture everything that child knows. And so we need to really think outside the box. So we're thinking about state level assessments, and how we do this in a way that really captures what our dual language or children are capable of doing, which we know is a lot. Linda also talked about formative assessments, and I think those are those are key right we want to see how children are developing how children are learning, not only in in English but also how they're using that first link those first language skills to help them be successful in the classroom and we know from research that first language skills to transfer this to English and so we can see how how are these children using all of their resources and everything. All of their skills to be able to be successful in the classroom. In order to do that we need better professional development for teachers. We really can't have a one size fits all approach to education. We need to teach teachers and I'm a teacher educator we need to teach teachers how to adapt instruction to better serve our population of children in the classrooms. That's where the curriculum comes in we really need to reevaluate how we're teaching children in this country, it's not working for the majority of the children who are enrolled in our schools. We need more bilingual programs like Linda was talking about white middle to upper class children are not the norms within our classrooms anymore we need to adapt our curriculum to the different experiences that children are bringing with them into the classroom. We need to capitalize on children's background knowledge, their personal experiences as well as their cultural experiences and I think that's really where the curriculum piece comes in. So we really need those formative assessments that measure what children know what they're capable of learning, and we need adaptable child centered curricula that really capitalize on children's experiences. These need to be long term professional development relationships with teachers, coaching on how to work with dual language learners there's a lot of strategies out there. That we know our best practices for working with dual language learners, but they're not being embedded in the classroom. And so we need, we really need to reevaluate how we're teaching our children, and how we're using assessments to really guide that instruction. We make sure we're capturing all the child's abilities in these assessments and not just whether they know their letters or whether they can match rhyming words. It really goes beyond that. And I think we do have a long way to go and so I'm really excited that this project is taking place because we could definitely make a debt in this area. Thank you so much for that answer Lisa, and I hope that we get to come back to the super diversity of the DLL population and how we can tailor these assessments to to that as well. The next question that I have is for Dr Sandra Barueco, your work is focused on improving the assessment of bilingual children with attention to early identification and related early interventions. What are the current gaps in early intervention services offered to bilingual immigrant and migrant children, and how can these gaps be addressed. Thank you so much. I appreciate this opportunity to engage with with all of you out in the audience and with those on the panel and these great questions. I want to start off with one word that I think has been, I don't know if explicitly said but I think it's coming up, which is that there are a lot of assumptions. I think there are assumptions about the capability of dual language learning children about the assumptions of what we should be examining and thinking about when we're meeting a child who is from a dual language background and what we should be assessing Lisa and Linda both discussed the need for a comprehensive and early intervention. Some of the questions that are rising are sometimes, you know, focused on how is this like child developing in their language skills hard to developing across language within each of the languages. But sometimes it's outside of that outside in terms of the motor skills or the other cognitive skills or other elements and socio emotional. So there are a lot of assumptions that are brought to the table and early intervention and screening. And I think we need to kind of break that open and people have been pushing that box for us across the nation but that's an important element. And the other is that, let's say that this, there's an assumption that work with dual language assessments are not providing what is needed in the field yet, but there has been a lot of progress in the last 1020 years. And so yes, we can accurately and wonderfully work with assessment with dual language learners as well as the systems that support them. How do we do it, and I think that's also been coming up how do we do that well, and how can we also move away from the assumption that this is, let's say a niche area, when the percentage of dual language learners in this country is extremely high. And so, you know, represented in many states across the whole country and it's really a need that is for the nation, and every single system and provider needs to be adequately prepared, as Lisa was saying, to provide this, the assessments and the early interventions that are needed in order to support this population to this best except possible and further their success. So I think it's really kind of shaking forward our assumptions about the procedures and policies that we have in place and then who is doing it and who is it for. And it's really about, as Linda was talking about before, something that we can think about for all children, whether it's a goal for all children to learn multiple languages but also for us to be able to meet every single child where they're at, like Lisa was saying, and appropriately assess them while I believe we have many of the tools in place. And it's really about breaking down this assumption that only this is for some individuals and by some individuals and an early childhood or in service provision, every single service provider every educator, every single person that's working in policy with young children needs to have the supports and training in order to provide full comprehensive assessments of children that are developing with multiple languages in their environment because that's one aspect of who they are in what we're doing with them, it's an important one. And unfortunately, we've systematized barriers at lots of different layers. And so I think, like I said before, it's really about kind of shaking some of these systems forward. And when we come to the goals of this project, which I'm truly thrilled about. Absolutely thrilled about before number four and number five which is really focusing on putting into place some systematic adoption of dual language assessments across the whole board, as well as making it easier to collect because there are a lot of people truly that are, let's say, want to do a good job and from my experience, nationally and, you know, more locally as well when I work with individuals, whether it's in hospitals and early childhood settings. They want to there's a great want to do it but sometimes there's so many barriers in terms of making it easy to collect. So that's where we get into some of these difficulties of mis-assessment or misuse of measures and misinterpretation which I've surely seen. And what does that cause? Let's step back and think about a child. It causes a misdiagnosis or a missed opportunity. And I believe that everyone that joined this webinar today and many others that could not would, you know, step back and not want that to happen. So that we can then what do we go from here, right? We want to engage with the different systems like we're doing and make sure that everyone has the supports from the child level to the parent level to the teacher level all the way up in order to provide the supports that are necessary. Thank you for that. And I think we are a little bit behind on time. And so I'm in, I'm going to turn to one of the audience questions instead of focusing on some of the questions we had planned if that's okay with the panel. We have had a lot to come in while you were all speaking. So I'm just going to go ahead and grab one that's kind of timely. Which has to do with kind with remote learning and where we are now trying to get back to in-person education and assessment. So what did we learn from the lack of access to in-person assessment of DLLs and how did the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated restrictions impact the progress on the development of assessments for these students. And any, I can start with somebody or you can chime in. Sandra, we will start with you since you just started. She just stopped talking. Sure, I'm happy to. Well, you know, I think we can all have a sense of some of the repercussions of the limitations of engaging in assessment, which we know there are many things that were on the plate for both the parents as well as for the teaching and as well as practitioners, but there's a backlog in terms of accurate assessment for language learners as well as other young children throughout this nation. And, you know, now is the time where we're seeing an influx in clinics and influx in need. Again, those missed opportunities, but then, you know, needing to come to the table. On the training side, we also see the same elements as some of the training experiences were not able to be had for practitioners themselves. So it's not only, let's say, a strong need for dual language learning children to identify where they're functioning right now, what has been the walk that they walked what are their needs that are happening next. And but also addressing some of the limitations that have happened because of the interruptions and training opportunities and so it's important to be aware of those aspects that have been at the table. I can jump in and add also, and I think I think we need to go beyond just those academic skills when it comes to Kobe 19. We know that our dual language learning population where one of the ones that was most affected with the families being first responders, and essential personnel. And so we really need to make sure we're looking at mental health. And for these children, they may have experienced that's in their family due to coven 19 a lot more trauma. And so we really need to put at the forefront, mental health assessments, understanding social emotional needs of these children, and that of those skills that we often look at, when we're looking at like kindergarten readiness, for example. So I think we really need to prioritize looking at these children, more from a mental health perspective as well. And I would add is as these children spent more time at home. We've seen that maybe their use of their home language has increased, whereas your English language may have decreased because they were not in the classroom. And so we really need to reiterate that fact that we really need to understand what the child knows as the whole child and so all of their skills. All of their abilities, regardless of what language they're learning in because they were probably engaging with their family more in their home languages and so although their English skills may have decreased. We really want to make sure that we're seeing where the child is coming back in with what skills they have across their languages. I would also say that, even though I think we've had huge disrupt disruptions in our service system, and in the implementation of good practices. One state the state that I work the most in California has a dress has been addressing the need for improved observational assessment systems improved early learning goals for dual language learners and is right now in the process of revising their observational system the desired results developmental profile or, or what is required for teachers to us children in an ongoing measure to more accurately reflect the development of dual language learners so the state is investing in revising these early learning and the infrastructure that will support teachers and understanding the development and how to support the development of children who have more than one language, as well as how to assess it so I think that there is work going on. But there's no question that the disruption and services has set us back enormously in terms of implementation of best practice. Great thank you so much for for answering that question and I wish that we can keep going and answering the rest of the questions but we have to pass it on to my colleague now but I will just say that there are some. I've been collecting some questions on the side and we'll try to provide answers to those but there's also some in the chat so any of the panelists have a second we'll try to curate them and provide answers to the to the ones in the chat as well. We just want to make sure that people who have been engaging do get some kind of response back so we'll try to do that in the background as well. And now I will pass it on to my colleague Amaya Garcia and Lisa Luciano, who was a founding member and a senior director of early childhood strategy at Brea Public Charter School in Washington DC. She has an extensive experience in early childhood education and has performed various roles as a preschool teacher as a trainer, a coach and an administrator and we're really lucky to have her here today. And Amaya Garcia on our team is a deputy director of pre K-12 education at New America where she focuses on English learner education and grow your own programs. So I will pass it on to Amaya now. Thanks to all the panelists for being here today. I'm excited to be joined by Lisa Luciano who whose work at Brea I really admire. Lisa, if you don't mind just starting off by telling us a little bit about Brea and the students and families that you serve. Sure. Thank you so much. I'm grateful to be a part of this panel on this project. So, yes, Brea is a two generation charter school at four different campuses across Washington DC, where both adults and their young children can learn how to grow their career. Brea partners with Mary Center which is a community health center and with this partnership there is a truly integrated model with three pillars of health care social services and education as the social change model to improve family well being. And it's really important to strengthen families through culturally responsive new generation education. The adults receive English classes from basic levels to advanced levels with digital literacy and child development woven into the curriculum, and it's really comprised of learning English with full digital literacy integration so adult students can also earn high school diplomas and there are two workforce programs that result in professional credentials either a medical assistant or a child development associate, ie the CDA program. In the adult program students learn about child development and strategies to support their children, the curriculum is quite practical and relevant to students wives. The model also includes young children from zero to five who attend the comprehensive early childhood program and all of the children at Brea are dual language learners who come from very different language backgrounds but primarily from Spanish language backgrounds, approximately 80%. Sometimes more. And each year we serve around 250 young children and around 700 adults. Some key features of the program include things like a very explicit focus on valuing the cultural and linguistic background of each family and on home language maintenance and development. This is really woven into the adult education program in addition to the early childhood program that's really I think what enables it's it's success. It's it's comprised of parents who bring children to Brea and also parents who have children in various other schools across the District of Columbia. It's a bilingual inclusion model with mixed age, three and four year old classrooms. Early childhood programs also quite relevant to the daily lives of children and really just builds on their backgrounds and experiences. It's Reggio inspired uses project based learning. And this is let's see we're going into our third year of having developed an outdoor learning program, which was partially a response to coven and also really based upon the benefits for overall development. And, you know, we were able to offer in person instruction we're one of the only schools to be able to offer in person instruction during during the pandemic and really saw the needs for that, that multi sensory full body learning and how helpful this was as a trauma to practice and and also for for DLLs and really for all children so there's an MTSS program which really includes social emotional development as the foundational aspect. And it's really important that we leverage the pre existing linguistic knowledge that children bring, while systematically and explicitly fostering English language development as well. So I'm really excited about other characteristics of the program such as the anti bias and equity work, the community schools model. And, but I feel like I'm talking a bit too much so I might want to do an opportunity to ask me more questions. Thanks Lisa. But that's part of what makes for you so special as all the different initiatives that you do have. I'm going to ask you about how you sort of translate the vision and everything you just told us into like assessing the DLLs that you have in your program what does that look like. And what are some of sort of the successes with that approach or some of the challenges that have been based. Sure. Thank you. Yes. So we like all public schools in DC we utilize a home language survey at the beginning of the year and we use the same one that all the public schools use however in addition we developed our own family questionnaire that can capture some additional information about children's language backgrounds and exposures. And we find that it's important for us to do that in person with families to the extent possible, obviously during coven we were doing a lot of this virtually. But that enables us to just get a different different and I think better information than just sending it home. To administer of course the developmental screener in the beginning of the year and an English language assessment in the beginning of the year as well as a Spanish language assessment although during coven we did have to take a bit of a temporary hiatus from the Spanish language assessment because we were minimizing assessments for a time. And then we use all an ongoing observational assessment all year round which really enables us to capture important information about all the areas of development and learning and share that information with families at regular intervals in ways that feel practical and relevant to them. Of course testing for eligibility for special education would involve additional assessments that I haven't mentioned. And we try to take an asset based approach and find that we are able to capture skills in their home languages at home languages, however, it definitely is more challenging with lower incidence languages. So it's definitely easier for us to do that in Spanish because we have more staff who are bilingual in Spanish and English. And while we do have some staff who are bilingual in French, I'm Haric Arabic to Godina and other languages, it requires more effort and we must ensure we have to really ensure that we use all resources available to capture students skills. And I'll say again, but definitely the two generation model and the trusting and close relationships that we're able to build with families helps us to more accurately understand and document information about children's development and skills. During the pandemic we saw that, you know, when every when all the schools closed, we were really able to in that spring of 2020 I think the relationships helped us to transition to virtual learning quickly, more quickly than than we would have been able to had we not had those relationships within our model. And then the following year when we were starting a new school year, it was more challenging, of course, because we didn't know each other we didn't know all the families. But, and then things such as I would say, you know, home visits were always a really key strategy for us, and we were limited in home visits, for example, although virtual visits and technology did did enable some of that of that spring of data just wasn't the same. So I'm going to actually pull a question from the chat here that I think that you'll be able to answer and that is about how you sort of build the skills and knowledge in your teacher workforce to understand how to best use and apply the assessment, you know, findings and data that they get for your students. Okay, thank you that's a really important question and I think I was going to sort of address some of that later on as well but it's it's good to start with that now. I mean, teachers tend to work here because they want to work with dual language learners and we have a very explicit focus and guidance on on how to work with dual language learners. One thing we did, like seven years ago was to really do as much of a thorough literature review as we could in terms of what were the research based practices for DLL, and then really bring teachers into the fold and have them contribute to these as well and create our own library of best practices and we continue to use that and use other bodies of knowledge as well to have regular collaboration between teachers and the PD that we do. I mentioned that we're at four different campuses so we try to operate sort of a small school model at each campus and it can be challenging for teachers to we don't want teachers to be siloed and so as much as possible. We really encourage collaboration across sites and sharing of best practices and have the teachers also our master teachers who've been here for a long time, and are very well versed in the DLL strategies, including some of the PD themselves so that it's not just the director of PD doing it all but it's quite collaborative, and we need to use technology so we use video a lot to share with each other when we can find those strategies in action those research based strategies will use video to capture that and use that in our PD. So that's one, one thing that we've done but yeah through through coaching of course, in addition to the sessions that we do coaching is a primary vehicle for disseminating and sharing the best practices for DLLs. Does that get at that question. I'm kind of related to that I also wanted to, you know, flag that Bria has some of the highest assessment ratings of classroom quality in the city. And can you talk a little bit more about how that's my work because I know a lot of the work that you've done has focused on on class which is the tool that's used, making sure that you know the your classrooms are really tailored to meet the needs of the DLLs. So I guess I alluded to that a little bit when I said that yours back we embarked on this project in in DC early childhood classroom quality is measured in public schools, using the class and the tool is, you know, widely used and validated in multilingual spaces so I think the fact that it's based on teacher child interactions is key, right because it's not just looking at the number of bilingual books that we have in the classroom but it's focusing on the interactions which is also what we focus on interactions also I mentioned all of our children are DLLs so our program is very geared towards DLLs and towards high quality interactions with DLL so you know it can match with what we do. And also, I think the teachers bring a pretty high level of awareness about dual language strategies that can be used. And so the project that we did where we curated our own videos, and then use them and we continue to collect more because, you know, once you do something it becomes out of date and then we became we've evolved a lot and developed like an outdoor learning program and we're regio inspired and we do a lot of work with project zero so things can quickly become out of date so right now it's sort of a matter of collecting more and in our new COVID context but really that helped us to unpack the dimensions of the class with an explicit focus on dual language practices and what the research was saying about how to support the dual language learners within each dimension and I can't emphasize enough how foundational our work with families is I know that the class doesn't necessarily look at family child interactions but everything we do involves families. We bring families into the classroom. And so that's another it's a triad right it's the it's the teacher the child and the family and so those interactions are really paramount to how we how we work with dual language learners and so we included our family interactions in our in our own interior in our internal project as well. But I think that the fact that teachers were actively involved in creating their own types of evidence and their own examples was really key to us being able to own this tool and use it in a way that really supported dual language learners. And then my last question for you is, what is the top thing that you would want researchers or assessment developers to focus on as they work on improving assessments for children that come from a list of lead diverse films. Yes, thank you well um, this may sound basic but I mean I definitely want to focus on just helping educators to be able to have more tool that their disposal to be able to collect this high quality and reliable data for teachers themselves that align with and also improves instruction. I'd also like to focus I would like the focus to be on the training methodology and dissemination because I think it's really important for us to ensure access, considering the importance of training and technical assistance, not being overly technical. And that was another reason why we embarked on that project because we really wanted to make, we really wanted to connect teachers directly with research and not have and not have that be at all inaccessible. So I wanted to, you know, a focus at the school and community level. I also recognize though that it's not entirely fair for me to direct my wishes just at researchers right I think I want to focus on the entire system truly and so taking a systems wide view to ensure that we can, you know, perhaps there are other levers that could be pulled to direct resources towards these challenges that have been listed not only by me now but by all of our amazing the amazing researchers on this panel. We know that we lack linguistic resources in the field writ large and so I think you know I'm talking about therapists teachers administrators trainers so we really need to consider the entire system. And we know that these things will benefit all children so I'd really like for these issues to not be relegated as side issues and for us to recognize that focusing on linguistic diversity truly benefits all children and all teachers. And these, this is who we this is our population of the entire United States and assessment is really only as good as what you can do with the assessments as good as what you can do with the information that it gives you. So in addition to being psychometrically sound. I really want to think about what's happening with the end users and how that data that gets generated can inform our decision making to ultimately benefit children and families. And I think studying you know how people are using assessment data to make decisions and examining all of our roles in advocating and building social political and educational paradigms that support DLLs now would be. That's a lot of wishes but those are some of my most important wishes. Thanks so much Lisa. And I actually want to open up that question to the other panelists as well. The question of the, what you would want researchers or assessment developers to focus on, or to improve assessments for DLLs. Anyone else wants to weigh in. Can you repeat the question sorry. Yep, no problem. What is the top thing that you would want, you know, researchers or assessment developers to focus on as they work on improving assessments for DLLs. You know my big thing right now is to change the perception among many educators that when dual language learners are assessed and the results indicate that they don't have strong English skills that they are somehow deficient. I would love to change the perception to if young children entering kindergarteners don't have proficiency in more than one language, they are somehow deficient that because DLLs. Obviously, a language other than English has their home language and we hope that's been strengthened in their early care and education environment. And they are acquiring English, they have some level of skills in more than one language, and that should be the goal of all children so my goal right now is to change this perception, because we have limitations on our tools we have limitations on our standards of collecting data on children's competencies dual language learners competencies, and until we revitalize and revise and improve that system which is going to take time. We must shift the perception of everybody about the strengths and competencies and potential of dual language learners and this is a huge task, but I think if we agree that that's a common message we can do it. Another thing that I would say that I always believed in our assessment practices was that for for all early childhood children for all young children, and especially for dual language learners, when we do administer standardized tests, or we conduct observational assessments or we do whatever types of assessments we do. Our conclusion should be what I call tentative hypotheses. So our tools and methods are limited and prone to air, particularly for dual language learners. In our minds, we accept that these are hypotheses that we are then obligated to continue to collect more data over time, variety of data recognizing all these factors about dual language development. So we can continually revise instruction that addresses the strengths of each child, but but to have hard and fast conclusions based on limited or flawed data is not going to serve any child well made my two big points. Thank you Linda, does any other Lisa have me a quick comment. I can talk. So I have a project right yes right now we're we're really diving deep into the allow children preschool children's abilities and I think the big pieces that I was talking about before is that heterogeneity. And so understanding that there are different learner profiles for these children and take really taking into account. What is it they know across their languages. And so we found that children we have some the allows for English dominant and we have some the allows for Spanish dominant and we have some that are doing really well in both languages and some that are still really emerging across their languages and so we really need to under I keep going back to really to figure out that each individual child and that doesn't work very well with standardized assessments. I really need to figure out what they're able to do there are some people in the chat up and talking about trans languishing. What are they able to do across their different languages, letting children respond in different in whatever language that they feel comfortable. There's so many different best practices for work for assessing the language learners that sometimes gets swept under the rug but it's really important to to to understand that there's going to be a lot of different profiles of learners. There's a lot of different language learners because they have a lot going on across their different languages. And so they're learning across their different languages and even if they're showing up as an English dominant child, their oral language skills are probably still stronger in your home language. And so don't always just believe the score on the paper but really get a sense of what what is this child capable of doing and how do we best meet their needs based on their individual profile. I completely agree. I mean one of the words that came up in that word map was complex. You can also switch it up in a positive way and think about the richness the richness of language the richness of the human beings and a little human beings that they are and the richness of even our systems that we're discussing. The first thing that came to mind when you asked the question was in one area that I think we really could be pushing even more on is for these assessments that work across languages and how to also train up the the practitioners and the teachers in terms of how to do how to how to use those measures because people are doing it and using them that way, but they're not necessarily created in that fashion, because it's meeting the child where they are they might be in translingually they might be using multiple languages but again that comprehensive perspective on the child in order to be able to assess them fully and Linda brought this point up some areas of this country or some systems. The full child is not being assessed across their languages and using those modalities and so we're missing many important opportunities in order to be able to meet the needs of those children well so for me it's really about creating the assessments that we have in translinguages which is actually a lot more difficult than you can imagine it's a lot easier to assess within one language and across for different reasons. But that's a great growth opportunity and it can be done it has been done but just a lot more needs to be done there, and that will, I think have cascading effects for both policies and procedures for the nation. Thank you. I'm just going to pass it to Megan so she can wrap wrap us up. Thank you all. Thank you everybody. I think, okay I'm in video. I just wanted to take the opportunity to thank everybody for attending to think our amazing panel to the new America for doing all of the organizational work with this webinar together. There's a slide with some contact information about the measures for early success project. I don't know if we can put it up, but I would encourage folks to reach out to follow. We've been doing news on Twitter, New America and on Twitter we're kind of constantly putting up new dissemination pieces that highlight the importance of early assessments, elevating the perspectives of practitioners from different perspectives, and aiming to really hear from these stakeholders about how to strengthen assessments at scale. If you have any questions specifically about the measures for early success project, you can contact my colleague Sharon long at Sharon long at mdrc.org. Otherwise you can access all of our information on our various email. Thank you so much for joining us on Twitter and LinkedIn pages that are listed here. So thank you so much this was great and I'm really glad that we got to hear so many interesting ideas and like a lot of a lot of information for us to take back to the team at the Gates Foundation to really think hard about how we want to make these investments meaningful for multiple winners. Thank you so much. Have a great day.