Project and Consortium Management: Lessons Learned from the WIDA Experience

1. Project and Consortium Management: Lessons Learned from the WIDA Experience Tim Boals, Ph.D., WIDA Executive Director tjboals@wisc.edu www.wida.us © 2010 Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System, on behalf of the WIDA Consortium www.wida.us

2. Alabama Delaware District of Columbia Georgia Hawaii Illinois Kentucky Maine Mississippi New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico North Carolina North Dakota Oklahoma Pennsylvania Rhode Island South Dakota Vermont Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming The WIDA Consortium WIDA states represent approximately 840,000 K-12 English Language Learners.

3. Principle #1: Have a Clear Mission To promote educational equity and academic achievement for linguistically and culturally diverse students through the development and dissemination of curricular, instructional, and assessment products and resources.

4. Principle #2: A Clear Vision of Products and Services • Common set of research-based English language proficiency standards aligned to state academic content standards • Common English proficiency assessment based on the standards • Research • Professional development • Continuous improvement

5. Principle #3: Strong Public/Private Partnerships and/or Contractual Relationships • Non profit, state administered cooperative with 22 member states • Affiliation with two notable research institutions: • Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at UW-Madison • The Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) • Working with leaders in the fields of ELL education and assessment • Commercial vendor, MetriTech Inc, sought through competitive bid process

6. Organization of Consortium Activities

7. Principle #4: Accountability and Capacity Consortium Members • Meet federal and state requirements • Meet educator needs (and ultimately students) • Provide useful tools and information at all levels University • Fiscal • Regulatory

8. Principle #5: Involve Stakeholders in Decision Making • State (SEA) Advisory Board provides policy and product direction • Educators participate in standards, test item and curricular materials development and refinement • Open lines of communication

9. Principle #6: Plan for the Long Term Consortium Applications: • A clear plan for how the consortium will thrive beyond the initial development phase (at least 3 – 5 years) • A good project home • Products and services that SEAs and/or LEAs need • A source for future funding (revenue generating) • Ongoing input from constituents for improvement (product iterations) • Combination of sole source and bids as needed • State as much as possible EXPLICITLY in the grant application!

10. Principle #7: Assess Adequacy and Efficiency What can go wrong? Consortium … • assumes that the SEAs can manage the products after they are developed • over customizes what should be the core (e.g., common standards and assessments) • does not have a plan for long term management and product renewal • is stuck in a bureaucracy that does not understand its needs • is not innovative enough in original design • has not discussed procurement hurdles with member states

11. Title

12. WIDA New Development Examples • ONPAR (Obtaining Necessary Parity in Academic Rigor) Mathematics and Science assessments • FLARE (Formative Language Assessments Records for English Language Learners) • SAIL (Standards, Assessments and Instructional Links) Centers for Addressing Academic Language within Schools • TOYBOX (Tools for Observing Young Bilinguals’ Oral eXperiences) Pre-School Assessments • Computer-based Testing (ACCESS for ELLs)