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A message from the
Massachusetts Department of
Elementary and Secondary Education

March 17, 2021
 
Adult and Community Learning Services Newsletter
 

A Note from the State Director

The next State as Partner webinar
will be held virtually on
Thursday, March 18, from 1:00 to 2:30.
 

The 2021 Annual Directors’ Meeting  
will be held virtually on 
May 20, 2021. 

Please save the date.

 

HSE Update


Purchasing Materials on GED® Marketplace
GED® has informed states that all study products purchased on GED® Marketplace now have state taxes added to the purchase price. Study materials and test prep products, including the GED Ready® practice test, are taxed in accordance with Massachusetts legislation.  
 
This change was implemented in mid-December when GED® updated their eCommerce platform. Therefore, you may notice a higher total at checkout, with these taxes now automatically included in your purchase. Students will not see this change as they have been paying tax on GED Ready® and other study tools through their www.GED.com  accounts. 
 
If a program purchases prep materials or GED Ready® Tests via the GED® Market place - https://shop.gedmarketplace.com/index, the program will need to provide a copy of their tax exempt certificate and the email address they use as their GED® Marketplace account and email both items to storehelp@ged.com. The GED Marketplace team will then connect that tax exempt status to their account so they won't be charged tax on future purchases. 
 
Remote and In-person Testing
As COVID-19 restrictions are lessened and test centers start to reopen, both HiSET at Home ® and GED OP® will remain as options for testers. CALCs are also allowed to use their computer labs to provide additional options to candidates who lack the necessary technology at home to access these options.  
 
ACLS will continue to maintain a list of open test sites on the HSE website https://www.doe.mass.edu/hse/.

As always, registration for testing and detailed schedules are maintained at the test vendor websites www.GED.com ; www.hiset.ets.org .  
 

LACES Update

Employment and Wage Records 
ACLS submitted 28,063 records of students who exited adult education between January 1, 2019 and September 30, 2020 to the Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA) and the State Wage Interchange System (SWIS).

Of those, 11,022 (39%) were matched. Of these, approximately 96%, had signed the confidentiality release of information form, so 10,544 LACES student records were updated.  

However, only 14,387 (51%) of the LACES records related to exited students provided a social security number. While ACLS and DUA also attempt to match based on first name, last name, and date of birth, that effort yields only another 4%.  

For various reasons not every working student who provides a social security number will be successfully matched to a DUA or SWIS record. First, because many of our students are self-employed or subcontract, their wages are not reported to DUA, so even if they provide your program with a social security number, there may not be a match. In addition, data entry errors persist. Wage records rely on an exact match between the SSN entered in LACES and the DUA wage record. For Massachusetts to meet these WIOA performance requirements, programs must follow up and enter that information. 
 
Users are encouraged to review the Shannon’s Table 5 Employment Outcomes tutorial video (password = cashew), which clearly describes using the LACES alerts and searches to identify students for follow-up.  

Remember that Desk Reviews are due March 26th.

Curriculum, Instruction, and Assessment


Culturally Responsive and Sustaining Teaching
What is culturally responsive and sustaining teaching (CRST) and why is it important? What is the connection between CRST and rigor? How can teachers build on students’ cultures? How does CRST improve instruction?

If these questions piqued your curiosity, you can read the answers from experts on cultural responsiveness in this brief document from the Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) or in the latest COABE Journal (Fall 2020) on racial equity and immigrant integration.

For a deeper dive into what CRST looks like in the adult ESOL classroom, check out Standard 3 of the MA Professional Standards  for Teachers of Adult ESOL Students and the Indicators of Knowledge and Sample Applications chart of this standard to learn how to apply five elements of CRST in your ESOL teaching practice. For an even closer look at this standard, join Dana Varzan-Parker and Dori McCormack at the MCAE Network 2021 conference on Thursday, March 25, from 11:00 AM to 12:30 PM.

New Teacher’s Guide to the CCRSAE
This Teacher’s Guide to the College and Career Readiness Standards (CCRSAE) for Level A and Level B Adult Learners, by John Strucker, EdD, will help teachers of adult learners at GLE 0-3.9 think about how they can implement the CCRSAE for ELA in real-world adult education classrooms, bridging the gap between the standards and instruction.

This resource addresses the following questions:
  • What are the instructional needs for Level A and Level B learners and which standards from the CCRSAE should teachers prioritize?
  • Which CCRSAE standards overlap and can therefore be combined in one lesson or activity? 
  • How can important skills emphasized in the CCRSAE, such as developing language (including vocabulary) and comprehension skills, be addressed in the beginning-level ELA classroom?
The Teacher’s Guide includes an annotated version of the CCRSAE with helpful comments from the author, including suggested activities and materials that might be used to implement the standards.
Dr. John Strucker will present an introduction to this guide at the MCAE Network 2021 conference on Friday March 26, 2021 (session 1).

Professional Development Opportunity: Standards-in-Action for English Learners
You know that 10 out of 10, or 100%, of the students enrolled in your ESOL classes are English learners. That’s why you ensure ESOL teachers understand second language acquisition (SLA) and use instructional practices that support SLA.
But do you know the percent of students enrolled in your ABE classes who are English learners (ELs)? If the blue silhouettes are first language speakers and the gray ones are English learners, which of the charts below look like your ABE classes?

Why do we ask? Because it makes a difference!
Research shows that Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills (BICS) are not enough to prepare students for cognitively demanding academic and workplace contexts and that it takes ELs at least five years to develop Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP).

Standards-in-Action for ELs is a national professional development opportunity from the Office of Career and Technical Adult Education (OCTAE) for both ESOL teachers and ABE teachers (of any of the following content areas: math, ELA, social studies, science) that have ELs in their content classes. This training will focus on how to design instruction for ELs that addresses two critical needs: language and content development.

If you are an ABE/ASE teacher of math, ELA, social studies, or science and wonder how you can better support the ELs in your class to master the content you teach, this training is for you.

If you are an ESOL teacher and wonder how you can better support your students’ engagement with complex content and prepare them for next steps (e.g., transition to content area classes), this training is for you.

If you are a program director and wonder how you can better support both your ESOL and ABE/ASE teachers to collaborate and accelerate outcomes for ABE/ASE and ESOL learners, promote this PD opportunity among your teachers.

ACLS is accepting applications to form a team of Massachusetts ABE, ASE and ESOL adult educators that will participate in this training in the August-September 2021 cohort. For more information on this training, please visit the Standards-in-Action for ELs webpage here.

Programs who are interested in being part of the MA Standards-in-Action for ELs team must email Dana Varzan-Parker with the names of the proposed participating teachers and a copy of their resume by March 31, 2021 at dana.varzan-parker@mass.gov. Selected programs will receive a budget increase in FY22 to support teacher time and participation in this training.

Voices from the Field-Remote Teaching and Learning
Remote teaching and learning in a pandemic come with very specific challenges. While challenges may be different from one program to another, ACLS would like to highlight specific practices from two programs that have problem-solved together with their staff and made changes to support teachers and students. The practices highlighted below may help other programs facing similar challenges.

Blue Hills Adult Education’s leadership team developed new practices to solve some of the challenges that many of its students and teachers have been facing. Some of these practices are:
  • Single class log-in: Our ASE program has adopted a single Google Meet log-in for each class.  To prevent confusion and wasted time, we no longer have students “move” from a unique log-in for Math, STAR, and ELA classes.  Students remain in class and the teachers rotate from “room to room.”  
  • Testing: Our ASE students were given a choice of in-person or remote testing to accommodate their schedules and comfort level.  For the ESOL program, we administer the pretest as part of orientation.  Our test administrator logs each new student into the TABE CLAS E portal on a school Chromebook and our technologist is available to help if necessary.  This streamlined process allows students to focus on actual test-taking and not on accessing the test.
  • New Student Orientation:  Our ESOL program switched our students’ first day to a physically distant in person (PDIP) orientation.  Our program found that enrolling ESOL students and orienting them remotely was overwhelming for new students and time-consuming for teachers.  At the orientation, students rotate through three stations: program and career pathway information (including forms), technology help logging into Google Classroom, and test administration.  Now our new students start their first day of class ready to log in to class with their required paperwork complete.
  • Tech support: Our ESOL program found that a small number of students with limited tech skills were relying on the teacher for one-on-one support which delayed the opening of class and slowed class progress.  We asked teachers to identify students who would benefit from small group technology help in their first language.  We scheduled Q&A sessions in English, Spanish and Portuguese with our technologist to address common questions.  The ASE program encountered similar challenges and scheduled both PDIP and remote tech support sessions.  In order to provide our students with immediate technical assistance, our program purchased mobile phones for each technologist and encouraged students to contact our technologists via WhatsApp or telephone call with any questions.  These changes allowed teachers to focus on instruction.
  • Grouping students into cohorts: Some of our ESOL teachers decided to break larger classes into smaller cohorts in order to differentiate learning and foster student engagement.  These cohorts are grouped by specific skills such as writing and meet individually. 
The leadership team at the Framingham Public Schools Adult Education Program, in collaboration with teachers and advisors, implemented the following practices to support staff and students with remote teaching and learning:

Tech Supports
  • Established the technological framework needed (Google Classroom LMS, Zoom accounts for teachers).
  • Set up a help desk (help@faesl.org) and made sure that there are several people monitoring it in shifts.
  • Set up a Tech Help account and clear systems for staffing it (e.g., Who is covering the email on which days? Who is the backup?)
  • Loaned out Chromebooks with custom user guides in different languages and photos to make the user guides student-friendly
  • Created student LMS and Zoom guides in different languages
Curriculum and Instruction
  • Spent over 1,000 hours of in-house PD to get teachers ready to use the technological framework and help export their existing pedagogy to the online environment
  • Identified staff (in addition to the admin team) who had strong tech skills and could help peers.
  • Built in paid prep-time for bi-weekly teacher level meetings because this allowed teachers to help each other and solve pedagogical and technical challenges specific to their level
  • Provided teachers with materials for the LMS (e.g., texts with good online components, apps that are engaging and easily integrated)
Advising
  • Spent significant amount of time one-on-one with students to get them ready for class and keep them engaged in the program
  • Became more flexible regarding student transfers between AM and PM classes to better accommodate students’ needs
  • Established processes for communication at a distance:
    • Shared documents for attendance (all staff), class change requests (admin team), and outreach) so that everyone involved knows what needs to happen at every step in the process and their responsibility in it. For instance, when a student needed to switch a class due to a change in their work schedule, the program staff realized that there were 11 steps in the process. So, the program created one shared sheet where the changes are requested, authorized, changed in our Access DB, in LACES, in Google Classroom, and on the testing lists. Then it ensured that the sending and receiving teachers are notified, and ultimately that the student is notified of the approval of this change request. This process involved many people; establishing a workflow and one shared space for updates prevented the program from losing students.
  • Adjusted messaging to students and created a YouTube video for them (with auto-translate closed captioning): “We know you miss in-person class, but for the immediate future this is all that there is. Don't wait until this is over, keep studying with us now. We are making this the best online learning it can be. Online learning is not going away, and we are the place to learn this. The ability to do things remotely is important and you can learn that with it. You will need the literacy, fluency, numeracy, and technological skills we teach to be part of the recovering economy.”
Assessment
The ACLS Assessment Policy Manual has been updated to incorporate all the policy changes triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. All the COVID-19 policy updates that ACLS announced since April 2020 are reflected throughout the manual in red with the title COVID-19 Policy Update, followed by the date the policy became effective. These COVID-19 assessment policy updates are also summarized in Appendix A of the manual. The revised assessment manual can be found here

Reminder Regarding the Exception to the 65-Hour Post-Testing Policy
ACLS understands that there are valid reasons for occasionally post-testing earlier than the policy allows. While the policy still mandates 65 instructional hours between tests (40 h for students in CI), programs (including CI) can test at fewer hours when the justifications for those exceptions are realistic, within reason, and rare. ACLS tracks these exceptions in LACES.

However, in recent months data shows a high number of programs post-testing at fewer than 65 hours. ACLS reminds programs to consider this policy exception carefully and apply it only when circumstances dictate. Programs that consistently have a high volume of exceptions will be contacted by their program specialist and asked to provide additional details regarding their rationale for such frequent policy exceptions.

FY21 Recertification Reminder
To ensure scoring accuracy statewide, BEST Plus 2.0 Administrators/Scorers and CLAS-E Writing Folio Scorers need to go through an annual recertification process.  In light of ongoing challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic, the recertification process for FY21 has been modified.  Practitioners have been notified via email regarding their recertification status for FY21.  For a practitioner to be able to administer/score these assessments in FY22 the below tasks must be completed by March 31, 2021

The two-step recertification process for FY21 is as follows:
  1. Watch the recertification video
  2. Complete the online form
***Practitioners who are EXEMPT from recertification for FY21 must complete the following form: TABE CLAS-E Support Webinar Recording Now Available
On February 25, 2021, staff at the UMass Amherst Center for Educational Assessment (UMass CEA) were joined by a panel of three practitioners who shared strategies and solutions for remote administration of the TABE CLAS E Reading and Writing tests. This session was recorded and is now available on the ACLS Test Blog and via direct link.
For technical assistance and questions about NRS test administration and scoring and recertification requirements, please contact UMass CEA at aclstesthelp@educ.umass.edu. For assessment policy matters, please contact Dana Varzan-Parker, ACLS Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Coordinator at dana.varzan-parker@mass.gov.
 
 

MCAE Network Conference

 

 
MARCH 25-26, 2021
A 2-day virtual conference
Join Your Colleagues at NETWORK!
 
 
 

 News from the Field!

 
Teaching Equity in Health Care
The teachers at Ascentria Care Alliance in Worcester are continuing their education services remotely. All teachers have expanded their flexibility to adapt to the challenges students are facing. For the Citizenship class, the ESL teacher continues to conduct one-on-one sessions with students to help them understand the laws, information, and rights concerning equity in health cate. Below are two pictures that demonstrate materials used in class that speak to equity in health care. 
 


 

 

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