News in Brief: A Washington Roundup

After months of disagreement between federal officials and the Denver school district over how best to serve students in the district whose native language is not English, federal civil rights officials last week, in an unusual move, turned the issue over to the Department of Justice.

Generally, when the Department of Education's office for civil rights concludes that a district has violated federal rules, the district and the agency negotiate a plan to remedy the problem. Negotiations between the Denver district and the federal government broke off last month when the two sides could not agree...