Members of the University's Education Alliance traveled to northeast Georgia Monday to meet with officials from the Hall County School System, a district that serves 25,000 students in 33 schools, to look at how the district teaches English to its non-native speakers, many of whom are Hispanic.
The effort is part of the Comprehensive School Reform Support and Capacity Building Program, or CSR. This two-year initiative, funded by an $800,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Education, will evaluate policies for teaching English to non-native speakers in 10 different school districts.
Phyllis Hardy and Chris Unger, both EA program planning specialists, met with Deputy Superintendent of Hall County Schools Will Schofield to determine how the partnership will operate. Hardy is currently program planning specialist for equity and diversity programs for the EA, while Unger is a program planning specialist and breaking ranks coach.
The EA, founded in 1975, works to serve "populations whose access to excellent education has been limited or denied," according to its online mission statement.
"We do research and development around education related to K-12 public education basically in the northeast," said CSR Project Director Brett Lane. "We work primarily through soft money, that is, grants from places like the U.S. Department of Education."
Schofield said he hopes the partnership with the EA will allow his district to benefit from Brown's expertise in education.
"We have a large number of second language learners, and what the visitors from Brown have to offer is an incredibly powerful network of resources," he said. 31 percent of the district's students are Hispanic, according to Georgia Department of Education numbers cited in a March 14 Gainesville Times article.
"What we're doing is working on a clear understanding of what we will do and what will they do," Schofield said. "Most specifically we'd like to better serve the girls and boys of Hall County. What we hope to get is an outside set of eyes looking at our policies and how we work internally and to determine what the logical next action step is," he said.
In evaluating Hall County's policies, Schofield expects the visitors from the EA to survey faculty and staff from his district to determine if Hall County's plans to teach English to non-native speakers are clear.
"Through interviews with various leadership they'll give us some feedback in terms of how we're articulating our plans," he said.
Lane said the program, in general, "will provide technical assistance to states and districts designed to help underperforming schools make inclusive and sustainable school improvement."
The plan is based on the premise that "schools and districts should take on a systemic approach when trying to help students," Lane said.
Lane went on to describe the process this particular initiative will follow. "This is collaborative research whereby we collect information and document how the district is working to provide support to students and schools," he said. "Then we provide that information to that district to promote reflective discussion and dialogue about what they're doing and what they can do to make it better."
The EA is partnering with 10 sites over the next two years, Lane said. The districts will be similar to Hall County in that they will have high numbers of non-native English speakers, he said.
Though Hall County is the first official partnership, Lane said the EA is working to finalize partnerships with other counties. "We just don't have formal partnership agreements," he said. "We're in the process of formalizing partnerships."
Unger and Hardy could not be reached for comment.
