Compiled Impact Report: 2011-2016

City of Lakes AmeriCorps (CoL) is a partnership between Minneapolis Community Education and the Minneapolis Public Schools’ (MPS) Multilingual Department. The mission of CoL is to provide Long-Term English Learners (LTEL) access to grade-level content through dedicated and rigorous language learning support. Their mission for members is to build a learning community through service, reflection and inquiry.

Study Goals:

The goal of this study is to summarize the evaluations completed during the program’s five-year implementation period. It also summarizes the resulting continuous improvement decisions made to the program as a result of those evaluations.

Research Questions:

The research questions were:

• Will CoL students:
  • show improved academic performance?
  • show greater growth on standardized test scores compared to middle school LTELs not being serviced by CoL?
  • show increased student engagement?
  • have increased parent engagement?

Findings:

The report found the following:

• There is promising evidence that CoL in its current form leads to improved academic outcomes for middle school LTELs in Minneapolis Public Schools, both in academic language skill and school engagement.
• Moving forward with a consistent structure in place, a system for continuous improvement, and continued evaluation will allow this program to broaden its impact.

For more information, download the full report.