CAL provided services to Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS), Maryland, to evaluate services for emergent multilingual (EML) and Latino/a students. MCPS is the 14th largest school district in the nation, with more than 150,000 students, and approximately 30,000 EML students. One-third of the students are Latino/a, and 18% are classified as EML.

CAL’s mixed-method approach included the engagement of a Stakeholder Commission composed of MCPS educators and other stakeholders to steer the direction of the inquiry. We conducted 18 focus groups, an educator survey, a family and community engagement survey, over 350 classroom observations, interviews with central office staff, document review, and quantitative data review.

CAL’s evaluation is aligned to the US Department of Education’s English Learner Toolkit for State and Local Education Agencies, and the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine publication Monitoring Educational Equity.

Our evaluation report is available here.