Educational Approach

EL is driven by the above principles and benchmark practices. It is an approach supported by high quality professional development, not a curriculum. The curriculum is the state standards, district learning targets for each grade level, and the educational materials selected by the school district. One way of thinking about this is that EL provides the structures and practices, and the state and district curriculum provide the content.

Learning expeditions, investigative units of study developed from state standards and district targets in social studies and science, provide the context for explicit teaching in the thinking skills of inquiry. Students learn how to be good observers, ask relevant questions, read critically, record and organize information, select research topics, create drafts, and develop high quality products. Teachers develop units and lessons that use knowledge at all levels of Bloom's Taxonomy of thinking – remembering, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating, and creating. (To see a visual model of thinking skills, click on Bloom's Revised Taxonomy under "Educational Program.")

EL is a systematic collection of the best of practices in teaching and learning and the development of classroom and school culture. These practices exist in strong classrooms and schools in many places. EL provides the structure and professional development to create high quality instruction across each classroom of an entire school.

• EL provides a framework for developing traditions and a school culture that fosters a sense of belonging and supports the development of character.
• EL provides the approach to implement the most effective instructional practices school wide, within the context of Oregon Standards and Beaverton School District Learning Targets.
• There is intentional teaching of high level thinking through engaging and challenging work for all students. There are also structures for planning support for students lagging behind.

The individual practices that comprise EL Education have strong theoretical and research support. Some practices, such as Writers Workshop using the 6 + 1 Trait Model (Northwest Regional Laboratory) and assessment for learning (Richard Stiggins) have been developed and researched in the Portland area and are becoming common practice in Beaverton.

As an approach to creating high-quality schools, EL Education has been proven effective by third-party research conducted by the Rand Corporation, the Academy for Educational Development, the American Institutes for Research and the National Staff Development Council. For more information about the evidence for success of EL schools, go to the EL Results Website.

EL Education has already been implemented at Health Sciences School, a Beaverton option school for students in grades 6-12. This context provided an opportunity for local observations and interviews with the principal and teachers.

In addition, from September to December 2008, founding Principal Cheryl Ames researched EL Education by:

• Meeting with EL experts
• Attending two EL institutes for teachers, one in assessment and another on teaching writing, to assess the scope and quality of professional development
• Talking with teachers at these institutes about their experiences with EL
• Attending a site visit involving observations and meetings with teachers and leaders in two EL Education schools in Rochester, New York

Before making the final selection, a rubric was developed to evaluate the quality of EL in several dimensions.

• Match to Beaverton School District goals
• Match to research-documented essential practices in instruction, assessment, developing character and school culture, and professional development
• Demonstration of success in other locations
• Accessibility of professional development
• Quality of professional development
• Appropriateness for K-8 school
• Initial affordability
• Sustainability (can EL practices be sustained with reduced budgets)

EL Education demonstrated a high score in each of these dimensions. For more information, consult the EL Education website.