The LUCHA program, which provides online courses to English-language learners in Spanish while they learn English, is continuing to gain a foothold in Texas public schools, according to a press release posted yesterday.
When I visited Brownsville Independent School District a couple of years ago, I observed English-language learners taking the online courses in a computer lab with a teacher supervising them. There, the courses were intended for new arrivals to the United States. ELLs could get a certain amount of high school credits through the Spanish courses, for subjects such as biology, while they were acquiring English.
LUCHA, housed at the University of Texas, Austin, also offers a service in which educators evaluate transcripts of students coming from Mexico and recommend how many credits a U.S. school district should award them. For more about LUCHA, which stands for Language Learners at the UT Center for Hispanic Achievement, see my EdWeek article from last year.