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Introducing the New LEP Module for CheckPoint

Michael Nutter

February 22, 2018

Your district is entitled to additional funding to support students with Limited English Proficiency. Vinson’s LEP module for CheckPoint makes it easy to understand how many students need help gaining fluency in English, and helps you obtain the necessary funding to support them.

In 2013, there were over 2.5 million Americans of school age with limited English proficiency (LEP) — a number has likely increased significantly in the time since given nationwide trends of immigration and population growth.

Supporting these students takes additional resources, namely to staff classrooms with bilingual teachers who can bring LEP students to parity with their native English-speaking classmates and give them an equal opportunity at getting a great education.

But in order to secure that extra funding, districts need a firm grasp on exactly how many LEP students are attending their schools. That means tracking a number of key metrics:

  1. Test scores that determine students’ eligibility for LEP programs
  2. How long students have been enrolled in those programs
  3. Which LEP students are enrolled at which schools

To help you monitor these exact metrics, we’ve developed a new module for the Vinson CheckPoint platform that makes it easy to track all that information and check it for accuracy. That means you can rest easy knowing you’ll have all the resources you need to support students with limited English proficiency.

Tracking LEP Assessment Scores

Districts are first responsible for identifying all students whose first or home language is not English, then administer an assessment that determines whether those students need additional help in school learning English. The CheckPoint LEP module centralizes the results of these assessments from schools across your district and offers simple tools for checking and rechecking their accuracy throughout the reporting period.

This makes it much harder for LEP students to fall off your radar if, for example, they move to a different school within your district or test out of LEP programs faster than expected. CheckPoint has a simple indicator that lets you know which data points may be incorrect or invalid and, by laying out a clear audit trail, makes it easy to find the person responsible for correcting that information.

Ensure Title VI Compliance

Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act requires that schools take specific and effective measures to help limited English proficiency students overcome language barriers. Without these measures, LEP students are far more likely than their peers to experience frustration and failure in class, and even run the risk of being erroneously placed in special services programs. Failure to provide these measures puts your school at risk of being investigated by the Office of Civil Rights.

You need the requisite funding to match the number of LEP students in your district if you’re going to provide them with the level of support required by Title VI, and you can’t get that funding if you’re underreporting your LEP student population. Properly tracking this information doesn’t just fix logistical headaches for your district’s EMIS stakeholders — it ensures that the Constitutional rights of students in your district are respected and upheld.

When paired with CheckPoint’s other core capabilities, like our Percent of Time module and Special Services module, the LEP module gives school districts everything they need to ensure they don’t leave a single dollar of state funding on the table. That helps not just the students themselves, but teachers and administrators do their best work and provide a great education to students of all abilities and backgrounds.

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