CSULB Center for Language Minority Education and Research Receives $1.3 Million Contract from Los Angeles Unified School District

The Center for Language Minority Education and Research (CLMER) at California State University, Long Beach received the third installment of a $1.3 million contract from the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) to conduct a program evaluation of the district's English Language and Intensive Literacy Program (ELILP).

Cal State Long Beach Professor J. David Ramirez, executive director of CLMER, will lead a team of researchers in the evaluation. The district initially contracted with CLMER in January 2001 for $100,000. It then expanded the contract to $700,000 after six months, and increased that figure with an additional $600,000 in December.

In recent years, literacy and English language development have been the much-discussed topics at the national, state and district levels.

As the LAUSD noted in its grant application, it is the second largest district in the country with the highest number of English Language Learners (ELL). In the year 2000, the district's student population reached approximately 716,000, of which 312,000 (43.6 percent) are designated ELL, representing 21 percent of the entire state of California's ELL population.

A California Department of Education grant was awarded to LAUSD to implement ELILP into its schools and to comply with the grant's requirements. To do so, LAUSD contracted with CLMER to assist local districts and schools in putting the program into operation and measuring its effectiveness by facilitating data collection, analysis, preparation of various instruments and reports, and writing, preparing and disseminating a final report due November 2002.

CLMER was selected by LAUSD to assist them with the ELILP implementation because it is a non-profit, non-partisan university-based organization engaged in interdisciplinary, collaborative programs that focus on issues that impact linguistic minorities.

CLMER is staffed with approximately 30 professional development specialists and admin-istrative personnel from around the globe who are involved in projects that provide comprehensive services to diverse populations in order to effect systemic change in the educational system.