The parents of English learners need to be involved in decisions about accessibility features for their children. An NCEO affiliated project, Improving Instruction for English Learners Through Improved Accessibility Decisions, recently developed a Parent-Educator Toolkit which contains a set of concise briefs for parents, teachers, and principals. There is a brief for parents that provides clear examples of what accessibility features and accommodations are, and how they can benefit English learners. There are also briefs on how to work with interpreters, and how to foster communication between families and schools.

The Improving Instruction project is a collaborative project between NCEO and the West Virginia Department of Education. West Virginia has a small number of English learner students and teachers compared to many other states, and the Improving Instruction project has created materials to help general education teachers make content accessible for English learners in classes and on tests

The next step is translating the briefs into some of the languages most commonly spoken by English learners and their families in West Virginia. Text and audio versions of Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, and Vietnamese translations will be published within the next several of months, and will be added to the toolkit.