[Technology 884] PASSING THE TORCH: CAAL's ESL Report ReleasedGail Spangenberg gspangenberg at caalusa.orgMon Feb 26 11:00:39 EST 2007
New York, NY (February 26, 2007) -- The Council for Advancement of Adult Literacy today released PASSING THE TORCH: Strategies for Innovation in Community College ESL. This 153 page report is the result of two years of intensive work by a research team from the five colleges studied in the project and by the project's study and research directors: Dr. Forrest P. Chisman of CAAL and Dr. JoAnn Crandall of the University of Maryland (Baltimore County). Drs. Chisman and Crandall bring vast prior ESL experience to the study. The highly textured report contains extensive descriptions of exemplary ESL programs and practices in use at five institutions -- all nominated by a national cadre of their peers -- Bunker Hill Community College (Charlestown, MA), City College of San Francisco (San Francisco, CA), College of Lake County (Grayslake, IL), Seminole Community College (Sanford, FL), and Yakima Valley Community College (Yakima, WA). Primary funding for the project came from The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Supplemental support was given by the Ford Foundation, The McGraw-Hill Companies, the Dollar General Corporation, and Harold W. McGraw, Jr. The study examines a rich variety of innovative and successful programs and strategies in use in the institutions, with a focus on non-credit ESL services. It concentrates on generating learning gains, retaining students, and bringing about transititons to future education. The report is for written for both designers of community college ESL service and policymakers and private funders. Among the effective strategies looked at are high intensity instruction, learning outside the classroom, and the use of "learner-centered thematic" curricular. Special attention is given to curricular integration, co-enrollment, vocational ESL (VESL) programs, and the Spanish GED. Issues of faculty training, development, and quality are examined, and recommendations are given for 'engineering innovation' in ESL colleges and programs. A main section of the report deals with costs and funding issues, and calls for substantially greater and more targeted funding for adult ESL. A standalone Executive Summary of the report is available at the CAAL website (www.caalusa.org). The full report is attached (including the Executive Summary as an appendix item) It is also available at the CAAL website. It will be easily accessible to persons with a high speed Internet connection. It is also available at cost ($20 plus postage, prepaid) by regular mail directly from CAAL (bheitner at caalusa.org). Multiple copies (10 or more) will be eligible for a discount. VERY LONG DOCUMENT (2.2 MB) PERSONS WITH A LOW-SPEED CONNECTION MAY WISH TO FOREGO THE DOWNLOAD AND ORDER A HARD COPY FROM CAAL AS PER ABOVE INSTRUCTIONS.  -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/technology/attachments/20070226/626e0d7b/attachment.html -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: eslpassingtorch226.pdf Type: application/pdf Size: 2258568 bytes Desc: not available Url : http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/technology/attachments/20070226/626e0d7b/attachment.pdf -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.nifl.gov/pipermail/technology/attachments/20070226/626e0d7b/attachment-0001.html
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