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 focuses on the development of EL students’ abilities to read, write, and discuss academic texts in English across the disciplines.

The 2022-23 QTEL initiative in SDP consisted of a series of professional development opportunities for K-12 educators across 29 schools. This report summarizes the results of a year-long implementation evaluation of the QTEL initiative.

Key Findings

• A large majority of respondents indicated satisfaction with aspects of the QTEL Summer Institute, and more than half reported that it was very beneficial.
• Respondents demonstrated an increase in knowledge of quality instruction for EL (English Learner) students after the Institute.
• A large majority of respondents reported using QTEL practices and that their students were engaged with QTEL practices based on five principles that guide and reflect quality instruction for ELs: (1) sustain academic rigor, (2) hold high expectations, (3) engage ELs in quality interactions, (4) sustain a language focus, and (5) develop a quality curriculum for ELs.
• Survey responses indicated that a primary challenge to implementing QTEL during the 2022-23 program year was not having enough Professional Learning Community (PLC) time devoted to QTEL.
• A large majority of respondents reported that participating in QTEL greatly improved their approach to teaching English Learners.
• After participating in QTEL, respondents had positive feelings about their ability to teach English Learners.