ELL News Headlines

On a recent morning in teacher Geri Ross's classroom at Marion Elementary School, second graders sat at clusters of desks, singing songs and reading stories in Spanish. The students have spent the past school year in a pilot class that is testing bilingual education in the Ritenour School District. Just across the river in Illinois, schools are required to provide bilingual education in some classrooms. But Missouri schools have found it difficult to start similar programs. As educators search for ways to help students who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic, Ritenour leaders say its pilot class has had a hugely positive effect on students’ confidence and their test scores.

Former English learners — students who were once ELs, and shed that status when they mastered English — often emerge as high achievers, matching or surpassing their peers’ performance in school and on standardized tests, including the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, or MCAS.

In Albany High School’s AP calculus class sits the school’s valedictorian and salutatorian, who are both wrapping up the school year and are both English language learners. For Pyae Sone Hmine, this year’s valedictorian, the end of high school brings mixed emotions. He moved to the district in the midst of the pandemic, and only really got a taste of being inside an Albany classroom last September. Before coming to the Capital Region, Hmine and his family lived in Myanmar.Tonema Mitra, the class’s salutatorian, family moved to the United States from Bangladesh six years ago. "I'm really proud of that, honestly. I think that it's amazing to show how when you have the determination and the confidence to do something, you can actually do it," said Mitra.

Curiosity and creativity were on display when dozens of top teachers from around the U.S. gathered on the National Mall at the end of April. While reflecting on the state of their profession, each member of a trio of honorees expressed a variation of the following observation: Teachers are experts who deserve more trust.

Early in elementary school, many children already believe that boys are more interested than girls in computer science and engineering. That stereotype can impact girls’ willingness to participate in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) classes and activities, and even affect career choices down the road.

The Arizona Department of Education announced Thursday its award of $10 million for an English Language Learners program through a collaboration with nonprofit WestEd.The targeted funding will go  toward WestEd’s Quality Teaching for English Learners, which will implement rigorous, generative instruction for students to accelerate learning, according to a press release.

Although college graduation and degree attainment rates are among the highest in the state for Asian American Californians, the same can’t be said for Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders in California.  The vast diversity of the racial groups can hide that Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islanders in California have lower admission rates into the University of California and Asian Americans have low transfer rates from the California Community Colleges, according to a report released today by the Campaign for College Opportunity, a nonprofit research organization. 

For two years, the COVID pandemic meant that the nonprofit Dancing Classrooms, which offers lessons at schools across New York City, had to figure out how to teach students how to waltz, swing, and rumba without touching their partners or even coming within three feet of one another. But about a month after the mandate to wear masks in schools ended in March, also marking the end of social distancing requirements, the nonprofit decided it was time for students to once again take each other by the hand.