Evaluating bilingual education programs requires assessing students' bilingualism, biliteracy and sociocultural competence. This book documents how dual language programs in the United States implement institutional policies and instructional practices for evaluating program quality and measuring student achievement. Literature consistently identifies seven guiding principles, with associated criteria, for implementing quality dual language programs: (a) program structure, (b) curriculum, (c) instruction, (d) assessment and accountability, (e) staff quality and professional development, (f) family and community and (g) support and resources. Emphasizing the assessment and accountability strand of quality dual language programs, this book provides policymakers, practitioners, as well as family and community members, explicit guidance around assessment and evaluation in bilingual/dual language settings.

Evaluating bilingual education programs requires assessing students' bilingualism, biliteracy and sociocultural competence. This book documents how dual language programs in the United States implement institutional policies and instructional practices for evaluating program quality and measuring student achievement. Literature consistently identifies seven guiding principles, with associated criteria, for implementing quality dual language programs: (a) program structure, (b) curriculum, (c) instruction, (d) assessment and accountability, (e) staff quality and professional development, (f) family and community and (g) support and resources. Emphasizing the assessment and accountability strand of quality dual language programs, this book provides policymakers, practitioners, as well as family and community members, explicit guidance around assessment and evaluation in bilingual/dual language settings.

Latinas Pathways to STEM: Exploring Contextual Mitigating Factors presents transnational case studies of Latinas and Mexicanas pursuing a STEM degree/career from the United States (Georgia, New York, Texas) and Mexico. The authors underscore that the experiences of the participants highlighted in this book provide insights into how to support successful Latinas and Mexicanas in STEM career pipelines and pathways. In doing so, the authors address the need for a set of approaches to STEM education policy that acknowledges that institutionalized pipelines often create replication by funding intervention programs that attempt to sterilize context by identifying variables and ignoring the associated contextual mitigating factors (CMFs). Researchers and funders of STEM intervention efforts can learn from the analysis of these case studies that successful Latinas and Mexicanas developed tactical understanding, which reinforced their identity and resisted how they were positioned by negative CMFs, reaffirming their aspirations and successes in STEM. Education graduate students, research methodologists, policy makers, and practitioners will find CMF analysis a useful methodological tool to interrogate how sociocultural factors position designated underrepresented people in STEM pipelines and pathways. Education policies that advocate for the existence and maintenance of pipelines that increase underrepresented Latinas and Mexicanas in STEM are important but are often crafted with blind spots that leave out how context mitigates policy especially at the individual level.

Latinas Pathways to STEM: Exploring Contextual Mitigating Factors presents transnational case studies of Latinas and Mexicanas pursuing a STEM degree/career from the United States (Georgia, New York, Texas) and Mexico. The authors underscore that the experiences of the participants highlighted in this book provide insights into how to support successful Latinas and Mexicanas in STEM career pipelines and pathways. In doing so, the authors address the need for a set of approaches to STEM education policy that acknowledges that institutionalized pipelines often create replication by funding intervention programs that attempt to sterilize context by identifying variables and ignoring the associated contextual mitigating factors (CMFs). Researchers and funders of STEM intervention efforts can learn from the analysis of these case studies that successful Latinas and Mexicanas developed tactical understanding, which reinforced their identity and resisted how they were positioned by negative CMFs, reaffirming their aspirations and successes in STEM. Education graduate students, research methodologists, policy makers, and practitioners will find CMF analysis a useful methodological tool to interrogate how sociocultural factors position designated underrepresented people in STEM pipelines and pathways. Education policies that advocate for the existence and maintenance of pipelines that increase underrepresented Latinas and Mexicanas in STEM are important but are often crafted with blind spots that leave out how context mitigates policy especially at the individual level.