Sultan Turkan

Including Students With Disabilities and English Learners in Measures of Educator Effectiveness

The purpose of this essay is to provide an overview of the challenges of accounting for students with disabilities (SWDs) and English learners (ELs) in the evaluation of mainstream teachers. We focus on the two prominent indicators of teaching quality—classroom observations and value-added scores. We begin by describing each indicator and outlining the specific challenges related to the inclusion of SWDs and ELs in mainstream teacher evaluation. We then suggest recommendations for states and districts to ensure that teacher evaluation systems adequately and fairly account for these students. Finally, we provide researchers with a set of recommendations for improving the evidence base surrounding the validity of teacher evaluation measures with regard to SWDs and ELs.

Complexities and Issues to Consider in the Evaluation of Content Teachers of English Language Learners.

The current interest in evaluating teachers and teacher education programs provides an opportunity to consider the education of diverse learners in K-12 schools in the United States. We address teaching English language learners (ELLs), a rapidly growing population. Challenges lie in holding content teachers of ELLs accountable as they are not adequately prepared to teach ELLs. In this article, we outline complexities surrounding the definition of the quality of teaching content to ELLs, provide an overview of existing teacher evaluation instruments, and discuss the difficulties in using ELL test scores to estimate the teacher contributions to academic growth of ELLs.

Helping English Language Learners Access the Language and Content of Science Through the Integration of Culturally and Linguistically Valid Assessment Practices

The chapter aims to inform about considerations that science teachers and teacher educators should take to use culturally and linguistically valid classroom assessment practices to help English language learners (ELLs) learn both science and the language of science. We describe the notion of equitable science assessments for ELLs and describe the characteristics of linguistically valid assessment practices and explain what it means to integrate culturally valid assessment practices into instruction. We also propose a three-step approach to developing culturally and linguistically valid assessment practices. We present an assessment task to illustrate the three steps on an 8th grade science standard. Finally, we discuss implications for teacher education programs and highlight critical areas these programs need to focus on to prepare science teachers to develop assessments that provide ELLs an opportunity to access the science content and use language to demonstrate their science knowledge.