“Our Emergent Bilingual learners deserve their instruction to be informed by linguistic growth data alongside academic data.”
Dr. Patricia Dawson
Director of ESL and Bilingual Programs, Coppell ISD
Providing a Holistic View of Emergent Bilingual Learners with LAS Links
From monitoring mid-year progress to informing instructional supports, measuring dual language proficiency, and evaluating district-wide trends, LAS Links allows teachers and district leaders to have a complete picture of their Emergent Bilingual (EB) and Dual Language (DL) learners.
In this success story, Dr. Patricia Dawson, Director of ESL and Bilingual Programs at Coppell ISD in Coppell, Texas, shares the many ways her district uses LAS Links to support campus and district-wide planning for their large EB student population.
How is LAS Links used in your organization?
We use LAS Links to monitor the mid-year progress of our long-term EBs. As a progress monitoring tool, LAS Links provides the district and our campuses with data that support RTI (response to intervention) and MTSS (multi-tiered system of support). In addition, we use LAS Links Español for all our DL learners at the end of the year to report Spanish proficiency to parents and educators, and for program evaluation. LAS Links Español also supports DL transfer placement to ensure dual language proficiency for our developmental programs.
What Emergent Bilingual challenges do you have in your district/schools?
We have a large population of students, across grade levels, who are new to the country and are at the beginning stages of adding English to their language repertoire. We want to make certain that we are providing the right level of services to each individual.
Why did your district choose LAS Links?
LAS Links is used in Texas as the single statewide assessment for the purpose of EB identification. We chose LAS Links as our progress monitoring tool to maintain the consistency of using one tool as well as the consistency in data. We use this data to support student language development across campuses and the district.
Formative, ongoing data is typically used to make instructional decisions. Our EB learners deserve their instruction to be informed by linguistic growth data alongside academic data.