Learning the Language
Education Week reporters covered English-language learners, bilingual education, and civil rights issues and explored the educational, policy, and social issues surrounding ELLs in U.S. schools. This blog is no longer being updated, but you can continue to explore these issues on edweek.org by visiting our related topic pages: English language learners and bilingual education.
Education
Lawrence, Mass., District Makes AYP for ELLs in Math, But Not Reading
A middle school principal within the Lawrence, Mass., public schools credits the Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol, or SIOP, with helping the school district to make some of the goals the state set for English-language learners under the No Child Left Behind Act, according to a Jan. 25 Boston Globe article. SIOP is a set of strategies that teachers can use to teach both academic content and language to students at the same time. A number of school districts, and some states, are providing workshops for regular classroom teachers to learn SIOP techniques.
Education
EdWeek's New Book
Education Week's new book, The Obama Education Plan: An Education Week Guide, which should be available in bookstores in about two weeks, has an excerpt from the newspaper featuring English-language learners. It's an article I wrote in Dec. 5, 2007, "Instructional Model May Yield Gains for English-Learners," about Brooklyn International High School's success with helping immigrants who arrive in U.S. schools as teenagers to graduate. The book matches aspects of President Barack Obama's agenda for education with Education Week articles that provide insight into how that agenda might be carried out. For example, my article is matched with his pledge to support ELLs.
Education
A Glimpse of What's to Come in Flores v. Arizona?
The U.S. Supreme Court is expected to hear arguments in the case of Flores v. Arizona in April. The lawsuit was filed in 1992 and concerns whether Arizona adequately funds the education of English-language learners.
Education
Students With Interrupted Schooling Get Extra Help in the Big Apple
Morry Bamba is one of New York City's "students with interrupted formal education," or SIFE. He attended school for the first time when he arrived in New York City from the West African nation of Guinea at age 15. He's now a student at the English Language Learners and International Support Preparatory Academy, or ELLIS Academy, in the Bronx, which enrolls immigrant students who have arrived in the United States as teenagers. Like many SIFE students, Morry struggles with reading.
Education
OCR: New York City's Small High Schools Don't Exclude ELLs
The Office for Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Education has investigated whether New York City's new small high schools have discriminated against English-language learners or students with disabilities by excluding them from admission during the first three years of each school's existence. The office has determined that the schools have NOT excluded these students, and thus haven't discriminated against them.
Education
A Good Read: A Doctor Empathizes with Child Translators
Before voters in the city of Nashville rejected a proposal to make English the official language of government in that city, a Nashville physician wrote an opinion piece about what it might feel like to be a child translator for health matters. In "Children Often Caught in Translating Nightmares," published Jan. 20 in the Tennessean, Dr. Gregory Plemmons, the medical director of Monroe Carell Jr. Children's Hospital, argued against the English-only proposal because he thought it would make it more likely that immigrant children would end up translating for family members at clinics and hospitals. (hat tip to Colorin colorado.)
Education
Why Does It Matter If Your State Translates Its Parent Test Guide?
Only 29 states translate their parent guides about tests into a language other than English, according to an analysis by Second Language Testing, Inc., a company that both develops and translates tests to serve English-language learners. The company reports its findings from an analysis of states' parent test guides in the January edition of its newsletter.
Education
Iraqi ELLs in Michigan Recite the Presidential Oath of Office
For Inauguration Day, a class of ELL students at Pearl Lean Elementary School in Warren, Mich., who are mostly newcomers from Iraq, learned how to sing "Hail to the Chief" and say the words to the U.S. presidential oath of office. See the video from a local news station that features them singing and reciting here.
Education
Hearings Will Look at How ELLs Are Tested on NAEP
Over at Curriculum Matters, my colleague Sean Cavanagh reports that public hearings have been scheduled for Jan. 30 and Feb. 4 to discuss how ELLs and students with disabilities are tested on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. The first hearing will be in El Paso, Texas. The second will be held in Washington, D.C.
Education
Break for the Inauguration
Some of my colleagues will be reporting on the inauguration so look for updates at edweek.org. I, however, will simply be mixing with the crowds, not reporting.
Education
How Much Use of the Native Language is Appropriate?
Periodically school districts consider barring the use of Spanish among Spanish-speaking students in a school and usually an advocacy or civil rights group in the community intervenes and the ban is never imposed, or is lifted. But here's a new twist on an old issue.
Education
Quotable Quotes from EdWeek's Chat on ELLs
Here are some nuggets I took away from "The Future of ELL Education" online chat that I moderated at edweek.org yesterday. Click here for the full chat transcript.
Education
Ask the Parents
The Norwalk, Conn., school district is forming a parent group to advise the district in how to improve programs for English-language learners, according to an article published this week in The Advocate. (I picked it up from TESOL in the News Blog.) From what I've seen in schools, formally seeking parental advice on how to make programs more effective for ELLs is really unusual.
Education
"The Future of ELL Education" Chat Today, 3 p.m. EST
Submit questions to the panelists for the chat hosted by edweek.org here.