Superintendent of Schools

In 1990, as a result of a META Consent Decree, the State of Florida approved standards for delivering instruction to LEP students, as well as specific requirements for certification and inservice training in the area of English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) (The League of United Latin American Citizens et al. v. State Board of Education et al., 1990). Recently, the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act of 2001 includes a mandate to staff all public classrooms with highly qualified teachers in core academic subjects by the end of 2005-2006. Also, under NCLB, Title III legislation aims to assist educators to improve the educational services for limited English proficient (LEP) students. Project BEST is a five-year capacity building training grant funded by Title VII (now Title III) and designed to provide new teachers in Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) with the training required by the State of Florida META Consent Decree. The attached evaluation examines whether Project BEST has progressed, during the first four years of implementation, in achieving its goal of training qualified bilingual/ESOL education teachers through the appropriate endorsement courses. In addition, the evaluation examines the impact of Project BEST on LEP student achievement across the district from 1999-00 through 2002-03. The report highlights the following findings