What Does Standards‐based Educational Reform Mean for English Language Learner Populations in Primary and Secondary Schools?

Abstract

he standards movement has become omnipresent in contemporaryeducation, impacting English teaching and learning in second andforeign language contexts around the world. A particular set of issues,however, is relevant to primary and secondary school settings for learn-ers of English in which English is used as the predominant means ofeducating the student population across the curriculum. In these con-texts, students are not just learning English as a subject matter but arelearning (and being assessed upon) standards-based academic contentin English as well. In these settings, standards, curricula, and assess-ments are designed with varying understandings and incorporation ofissues related to the linguistic and academic development of Englishlanguage learners (ELLs). A focus on standards-based reform in suchEnglish-medium contexts is a particularly relevant and timely focus fora TESOL Quarterly special issue because many countries with English-medium education have growing numbers of school-aged immigrantand indigenous ELL students and ongoing, contested debates abouthow best to educate them. New national standards have recently beenreleased in the US (Common Core State Standards: National Gover-nors Association Center for Best Practices, Council of Chief StateSchool Officers, 2010a, 2010b; Next Generation Science Standards:NGSS Lead States, 2013) and Australia (The Australian Curriculum:ACARA, 2012), while ongoing reforms continue both in other tradi-tionally English-dominant societies, such as England and Canada, andworldwide. Issues of standards-based reform presented in this specialissue are also relevant more generally to the many other countries inwhich the official language of schooling is not that of the larger com-munity or population, and while this special issue is dedicated to Eng-