Quality Counts 2009, entitled “Portrait of a Population: How English-Language Learners Are Putting Schools to the Test,” was released today. The report contains new data that can be used to inform policy debates, such as that states estimate that more than 56,000 new English-as-a-second-language teachers will be needed in the next five years and that only 11 states provide incentives for teachers to receive an endorsement in ESL.
In a quick search, I pulled up articles about the report in the following newspapers: The Arizona Republic, Pioneer Press, Star Tribune, Providence Journal, and the Courier Post. Update: Other articles appear in the Honolulu Advertiser, Naples Daily News, and Nebraska StatePaper.com.
Because I’m “a people person” as well as a policy person, I particularly invite you to browse the section of the on-line report that provides 13 profiles of English-language learners (and former ELLs) across the nation. You can really sense through the audio interviews and photos how determined these students are to learn and how resilient many of them have been in adjusting to U.S. culture.
The EPE Research Center and Education Week has three on-line events planned in the next week to coincide with the report. The first event is a chat that takes place tomorrow, Jan. 8, at 2 p.m. Christopher B. Swanson, the director of the EPE Research Center, and I will be fielding questions about the report.
I invite all readers of this blog to participate in the national conversation about ELLs that we hope the report will generate.