UW–Madison’s Jenni Torres, the new executive director of WIDA, housed in the School of Education’s Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER), was recently featured in Education Week. In her first interview representing WIDA, Torres shares her vision for supporting multilingual learners, their teachers, and families across 41 states.
In the interview, Torres outlines her priorities for WIDA as: “Continuing to work alongside multilingual learners, their families, and the educators [who] serve them, ensuring that we can really provide best-in-class, multilingual instruction with effective and measured outcomes.”
When asked if she has concerns over how English learners will be prioritized under the new federal administration, Torres notes, “We’re all watching and learning together what the federal level approach will be, but as an organization, we are really led by what our states want. We will be thinking about what each individual state wants from us and asks for.”
She further shares that the WIDA team is gathering feedback from the annual conference and other channels to build a robust plan for ongoing professional development, especially to help content-area teachers integrate language support into subjects like math and science.
To learn more about Jenni Torres’ vision for WIDA, check out the full interview with her in Education Week.