Professional Development

Professional Development for Administrators, Teachers, EL Specialists, Parents and Special Education are available and offered yearly based on needs assessment and requests from the school districts YCOE serves. Professional Development from the English Learner staff is centered on EL Leadership, ELD, SDAIE, Assessment, Intervention, Curriculum and Instruction. The professional development offered at times has been region-wide and in partnerships with other county offices of Education, such as San Joaquin COE, Sand Diego COE, Sacramento COE and Santa Clara COE.

English Learner State and Federal Compliance

Our school districts are required to meet state and federal compliance with English Learner program services, funding and student outcomes. Needs have risen to have YCOE assist in coordination and facilitation of CPM (Categorical Program Monitoring) Self-Review process, conduct “Needs Assessments” in English Learner Services at the district or school site level, and facilitating development of “Action Plans” for addressing non-compliance items and/or improving academic outcomes for English Learners.

Program Improvement

English Learner (EL) Services facilitates assessing and analyzing data to target (intensive, strategic and benchmark) support for certain English Learner proficiency groups. The director of EL Services has experience in conducting individual school site needs assessments, facilitating development and monitoring implementation of doable school site Action Plans focused on improving academic achievement of English Learners subgroup to improve the district’s AMAO, AYP and API outcomes as a whole or at a site level. 

Action Research

Action research is a method for targeting a school improvement effort, increasing parent involvement, or improving instructional practices and keeping data to support and document the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of such implementation. Many of the support services English Learner Services offers can be provided through Action Research.

Parent Involvement

Increasing involvement of English Learner parents as "Partners" in their child’s education has been another major effort of The YCOE C and I Department’s English Learner Services. A menu of various parent trainings have been put together and are available to assist and support school site personnel in working with parents to increase EL parent involvement. The topics available are:

Program Implementation English Learner Support  

English Learner Services assists YCOE’s Head Start Preschool program in developing a timeline and facilitating the full implementation of English Language Development at all YCOE preschool classrooms. This is an example of the kind of program support that can be provided to school districts. External support is always helpful, be it for program design, implementation or compliance monitoring. It is many times needed to help buffer the backlash that "change" sometimes brings along. Services in this area are tailored to meet our client’s needs.

In addition, YCOE provides EL support for ELD, SDAIE, EL Materials Fairs, applications for EL district funding, and dissemination of federal and state news pertinent and relevant to English Learners instruction, best practices, program accountability and leadership. The YCOE C and I Department’s English Learner Services is experiencing success in supporting our school districts in these various support services. We encourage all school districts we serve to meet with our administration so we can tailor support in EL services to meet your district’s individual needs.