Kenji Hakuta
Stanford University
Palo Alto, California

English Language Learners and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act

Distinguished Lecture
Session 2201
Sunday, March 27
12:45–2:15 p.m.

NCLB took a step forward in federal policy for English language learners by bringing wider attention to both language and academic content needs through greater inclusion in standards-based instruction, assessment, and accountability. However, these policies contain significant shortcomings that must be addressed in the reauthorization and implementation of ESEA. This session will address important changes in identification, assessment, accountability, and instructional capacity, in the context of reauthorization and other policies that affect ELLs.

Jay Mathews
The Washington Post
Washington, D.C.

Where Education Has Been and Where it Is Going: What I Learned and Observed about Education

Distinguished Lecture
Session 1240
Saturday, March 26
1:00–2:30 p.m.

In a startlingly quick turnaround—less than a generation—we have gone from widespread despair over the likelihood of raising achievement of low-income children to the rise of a new cohort of teachers who have shown how it can be done and who are converting many more to their methods and their optimism. Mathews discusses the doubts he heard when he first reported the achievement of Jaime Escalante, 28 years ago, and contrasts them with the flood of support successful school networks like KIPP are getting (now dramatized in his new book, Work Hard, Be Nice.)