The Quality Teaching for English Learners™ initiative is a research-based professional development program for teachers, coaches, and school leadership devoted to improving educator capacity to support the linguistic and academic development of English Learners (ELs) and other students needing to develop academic uses of English. QTEL specifically addresses the development of EL students’ abilities to read, write, and discuss academic texts in English across the disciplines.

The 2023-24 QTEL initiative in SDP consisted of a series of professional development opportunities for K-12 educators across 42 schools. This report summarizes the results of a year-long implementation evaluation of the QTEL initiative.

Key Findings

• Teachers who participated in QTEL reported that they were implementing what they learned in their classrooms at least weekly.
• QTEL participants felt that training was beneficial across subject areas and improved their knowledge of best practices and instruction for ELs, especially scaffolding.
• QTEL participants indicated that they would benefit from more time to collaborate and plan together.
• QTEL participants recommended that their administrators receive QTEL training to better inform their understanding and support of best practices for ELs.