Project Partners
Learn more about the partners in studying bilingual education programs and policies in Massachusetts.
This website was developed with funds from an Institute of Education Sciences State Longitudinal Data Systems grant. The goal of the grant is to support Massachusetts in achieving its policy goals related to bilingual education.
Research Partners
WestEd
WestEd, a nonpartisan research, development, and service agency, works with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults. The English Learner and Migrant Education Services (ELMES) team at WestEd is a nationally recognized leader in improving practices, policies, and processes to meet the unique needs of English and Multilingual Learners to advance equitable student learning outcomes.
WestEd Contributors
Molly Faulkner-Bond is a Senior Research Associate at WestEd, where her work focuses on MLs, policy, and assessment. In this role, she has worked with multiple state education agencies to help them synthesize, summarize, and act on the research base for effective EL instruction to support program design, implementation, and evaluation. Prior to joining WestEd, Dr. Faulkner-Bond was a grant program officer at the National Center for Education Research at IES, where she provided technical assistance and monitoring to applicants and recipients of EL-focused grants under the Center’s various competitions. She has coauthored a book on federal policies affecting ELs and coedited a volume for the California Department of Education on translating research to practice for MLs, educators, and programs.
Lorna Porter is a Research Associate II at WestEd. In this role, she uses quantitative and mixed-methods research methods to examine critical questions pertaining to educational equity for MLs. Her areas of expertise include education policy; secondary-age MLs; and quasi-experimental methods. In her dissertation research, she examined the relationship between newcomer program participation and course taking for newcomer MLs across the state of Oregon, as well as the impact of the implementation of a state funding and support policy on ML outcomes. Her work has been published in the Review of Educational Research and the Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, and she has coauthored multiple ML-focused publications through her work with the Regional Educational Laboratory (REL) program.
Florencia Tolentino is a research assistant with the English Learners and Migrant Education Services (ELMES) team at WestEd. She assists with coordinating projects for English learners and providing research TA on different projects. Prior to WestEd, Tolentino’s work focused on developing accessible content assessments for English learners and young language learners by examining the use of dual language assessments and using formative assessments to improve teaching and learning.
Tuyet Nhung Tran is a Research Assistant II at WestEd. Her work includes: analyzing quantitative and qualitative data for a study at the National Research & Development Center to Improve Education for Secondary English Learners; contributing to products for the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition; serving as a data analyst and contributing to the development of the Migrant Student Profile and Comprehensive Needs Assessment for California’s State Service Delivery Plan; and working with districts and state departments of education to analyze data related to English learner policy. Ms. Tran holds a BA in psychology from the University of California, Berkeley.
University of California San Diego
The University of California San Diego is recognized as one of the top 20 research universities worldwide.
University of California San Diego Contributors
Megan Hopkins is a Professor in the Department of Education Studies at the University of California, San Diego. She leads several collaborative research projects to advance the field’s understanding of the impact and implementation of ML-related policies. She also serves as advisor to the EL Collaborative of the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), for which she provides technical assistance and supports capacity building to state education agency staff. Her work has been funded by the U.S. Department of Education (USED) as well as the William T. Grant and Spencer Foundations. Her work has appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, and the American Journal of Education, and she has coedited two books, including Forbidden Language: English Learners and Restrictive Language Policies (Gándara & Hopkins, 2010).
Expert Advisors
The LOOK Act implementation study is supported by a board of five expert advisors who have deep knowledge and experience related to bilingual education programs and the State Seal of Biliteracy.
Expert Advisors Contributors
Amy Heineke is a Professor of Multilingual Teaching and Learning in the School of Education at Loyola University Chicago, where her research focuses on language policy and teacher education. She is the preeminent scholar on the SSoB for MLs and has led several projects examining implementation. Her findings have been published in several journals, including Educational Policy, The Modern Language Journal, and Educational Policy Analysis Archives, as well as in two books: The Seal of Biliteracy: Case Studies and Considerations for Policy Implementation (Heineke & Davin, 2020) and Promoting Multilingualism in Schools: A Framework for Implementing the Seal of Biliteracy (Davin & Heineke, 2022).
Elizabeth Howard is an Associate Professor of Bilingual Education in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Connecticut (UConn). With support from USED, she is investigating the development of sociocultural competence and its relationship to equitable bilingualism and biliteracy outcomes, and she has served as the Principal Investigator (PI) or co-PI of three large-scale IES-funded studies of the literacy development of Spanish-English bilinguals. Prior to UConn, she was a senior research associate with the Center for Applied Linguistics. She is the lead author of Guiding Principles for Dual Language Education (Howard et al., 2018), an evidence-based framework for DLE program implementation across the U.S.
Martha Martinez is the Director of Research and Evaluation for the Sobrato Early Academic Language (SEAL) model, a research-based dual-language education model that has supported more then 50,000 students and 1,600 teachers in California. She oversees SEAL’s current research and evaluation activities, which includes supporting and directing investigations of the efficacy of the model and high-quality ML instruction in general. Dr. Martinez has more than 15 years of experience researching programs and policies designed to improve outcomes for underserved populations, and more than 10 years of experience examining ML issues. Prior to SEAL, she worked at the Oregon Department of Education, where she served as co-PI on an IES-funded Research-Practice Partnerships grant focused on the ML programs and outcomes.
Patricia Morita-Mullaney is an Associate Professor in English Language Learning at Purdue University. Dr. Morita-Mullaney is a licensed K–12 teacher, coach, and administrator from Arizona and Indiana, where she taught and led ML education programs. She served as past President of the Indiana Chapter of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL). Her research focuses on how the intersections between language and gender shape ML policy implementation within districts, schools, and classrooms. She has conducted quasi-experimental studies examining the impact of DLE on MLs’ achievement, course placement, and grades. Her work has appeared in the American Educational Research Journal, TESOL Quarterly, and the International Multilingual Research Journal.
Jennifer Steele is an Associate Professor in the School of Education at American University (AU) and an affiliate faculty member in AU’s Department of Public Administration and Policy. Her research, which emphasizes quantitative methods that support causal inference, focuses on education policy and the economics of education. Her work has been funded by IES, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and the American Council on Education, among others, and has appeared in the Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, the American Educational Research Journal, and Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis. Dr. Steele’s recent studies have estimated the causal effects of dual-language immersion in Portland, Oregon, and in the state of Utah. She has worked as a policy researcher at the RAND Corporation and as a teacher.
DESE Partners
Office of Language Acquisition
WestEd, a nonpartisan research, development, and service agency, works with education and other communities to promote excellence, achieve equity, and improve learning for children, youth, and adults. The English Learner and Migrant Education Services (ELMES) team at WestEd is a nationally recognized leader in improving practices, policies, and processes to meet the unique needs of English and Multilingual Learners to advance equitable student learning outcomes.
Office of Language Acquisition Contributors
Allison Balter is the Director of the Office of Language Acquisition (OLA), and Special Advisor to the Commissioner, at DESE. Prior to this role, she served as principal of ENLACE Academy, a program for newcomer MLs and SLIFE within Lawrence High School in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which she helped design, lead, and scale. Under Ms. Balter’s leadership, ENLACE was named one of five national Schools to Learn From in 2020. A former English as a Second Language (ESL) teacher, department chair, and program director, Ms. Balter has a long history of collaborating with stakeholders to impact local and statewide policy decisions and improve outcomes for students in Massachusetts.
Sibel Hughes is Assistant Director of OLA. After spending 10 years teaching English as a world language in Turkey, Ms. Hughes served as an ESL teacher, department coordinator, and professional development provider in Arizona and Texas. Since joining DESE in 2013, Ms. Hughes has led several high-priority initiatives, including DESE’s work on the LOOK Act, creating and revising regulations, leading the Steering Committee, and updating or developing guidance documents and compliance criteria for successful implementation.
Elenita Irizarry-Ramos is the Senior Strategist for Multilingual Learning and Dual Language Education at DESE. Dr. Irizarry-Ramos has over a decade of experience teaching in multilingual teaching environments. Dr. Irizarry-Ramos previously served the Western Massachusetts Bilingual Hub Coordinator, where she was actively involved in collaborating with the Amherst-Pelham Regional School District, Springfield Public Schools, Holyoke Public Schools, and Springfield Empowerment Zone Partnership to enhance bilingual education programs in the Western Massachusetts area.
Andy McDonie is the Language Acquisition Lead for World Languages, Heritage Languages, and Seal of Biliteracy at DESE, where he supports implementation of the State Seal of Biliteracy. Mr. McDonie joined OLA from Ohio, where he was a French teacher, department coordinator, Organic World Language (OWL) facilitator, and member of the Language Testing International (LTI) Educator panel.
Office of Planning & Research
The Office of Planning and Research helps DESE and the field make effective use of resources to improve student outcomes. We design programs that help educators use, build, and share evidence about practices; develop tools that provide school districts with information about their use of people, time, and money and enable comparisons between districts; draft plans to advance DESE's work to reach our goal of success after high school for all students; and conduct research to improve program implementation and outcomes.
Office of Planning & Research Contributors
Kendra Winner is Research and Evaluation Coordinator for the Office of Planning and Research (OPR) at DESE. As a trained quantitative methodologist, she also serves as DESE’s lead external researcher. Across more than three decades of educational research and program experience, Dr. Winner has focused on increasing the quality of education and equity in education for students who have been historically underserved, including MLs, students with disabilities in institutional settings, and students attending schools in state-level corrective action. She manages multiple research projects, involving collaboration with OLA, that focus on ensuring the quality of services that Massachusetts provides to MLs.