What trends are shaping up as important for the K-12 ESL profession in the next decade? In this column, the Center for Applied Linguistics briefly highlights three areas for attention: standards, school reform, and teacher education.

Standards
All students across the United States are being held to high academic standards, including English language learners (ELLs). Therefore increased attention must be paid to helping students acquire both English language skills and content knowledge. The ESL Standards for Pre-K-12 Students (Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages, 1997) offers a significant contribution to districts and states engaged in school reform in the areas of standards-based curriculum development, program design, professional development, and assessment policy. These standards set guidelines for what students should know and be able to do in order to use English to communicate in social settings and to achieve academically in all content areas. Some states, such as Tennessee and New Jersey, have adopted TESOLšs ESL Standards for Pre-K-12 Students and have asked ESL programs to develop curricula based on them. Other states, such as California and Florida, have drawn from the ESL Standards to develop their state English language development standards. Still others have infused the ESL Standards into curriculum frameworks for English language arts, social studies, or mathematics.

School Reform
For many years, ESL programs, teachers, and students were not included in plans for school reform; however, recent developments have shifted attention to the needs of English language learners. First, schools are increasingly being held accountable for all students so their reform efforts must be comprehensive and address their entire student body. Second, the publication of the ESL standards prompted the National Study of School Evaluation (1997), the umbrella organization of the regional K-12 school accreditation agencies, to include ESL in the content areas that are evaluated in schools undergoing the accreditation process.

Third, at the federal level, technical assistance services for ESL and bilingual education programs were merged in regional comprehensive centers serving Title I, migrant, safe and drug-free schools, and other programs, and Title I regulations were re-written to ensure that ELLs would be served by those programs if they met the poverty and at-risk criteria. Over the next decade, the ESL professional must monitor and promote the inclusion of English language learners in all local, state, and national reform activities.

Teacher Education
Improved professional development for teachers with linguistically and culturally diverse students is an area of critical need. With more ELLs entering classrooms across the U.S., more content area teachers need preparation for educating them effectively. Unfortunately, most teacher training institutions do not require all preservice candidates to take such basic courses as second language acquisition theory, cross-cultural communication, and instructional strategies for teaching ELLs. While there are a number of efforts underway to improve the development of teachers, many spearheaded by professional associations (e.g., the National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education, the Association of Teacher Educators), most of the activities do not give specific attention to increasing the number and quality of mainstream teachers and language specialists needed for English language learners. Often we find the ESL professional is providing inservice training for the content area teacher (cf Jameson, 1998). In the future, more effort must be placed in improving the recruitment, preparation, licensing, induction, and development of teachers to bolster the educational outcomes for these students.