ELL News Headlines

Throughout the week, Colorín Colorado gathers news headlines related to English language learners from around the country. The ELL Headlines are posted Monday through Friday and are available for free!

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How Will Schools Measure English-Learners' 'COVID-Slide' Learning Loss?

Education Week

The so-called coronavirus- or "COVID slide" may be especially troublesome for English-language learners, the 5 million students still learning English in the nation's K-12 schools. Many of them could fall farther behind because of a confluence of factors, including limited access to the internet and the language support services they often receive in school. Along with their native English-speaking peers, English-learners likely will face a battery of tests when school resumes to gauge what they've learned and lost during the extended school closures—but those assessments may not fully reflect what they know and can do in academic subjects, especially if they cannot demonstrate their knowledge in English. A new policy brief from the Migration Policy Institute explores the policy and practical questions for states considering implementing native-language assessments, tests that may be better suited to gauge what students know and what subjects they need support in apart from their English-language instruction.

Pandemic High: How one of Chicago’s largest schools rebuilt itself for cyberspace

Chalkbeat Chicago
For Curie Metropolitan High School, in the predominantly Latino immigrant neighborhood of Archer Heights on Chicago’s Southwest Side, a lot rides on a bid to reel in its scattered students. Chicago, like school districts around the country, pushed hard to get computers to students who needed them. But Principal Allison Tingwall and her staff of 280 quickly realized that this spring’s steeper challenge was to sustain the vital bonds between teachers and students — relationships tested in a city hard hit by the pandemic, with the racial and income fault lines it exposed. Especially in economically stressed communities, it is often these personal relationships that propel learning, leading students not only to log on, but to stay fully plugged in. If Curie failed to sustain these ties, some of its students — 90% of whom live in poverty — might never come back. Tingwall worries about losing kids to the impersonal void of cyberspace. But she takes pride in knowing 1,800 of them by name, and she is undaunted

Educators look for ways to help students disengaged from distance learning

PBS NewsHour
Nearly a third of Principal Tayarisha Batchelor's students at Rawson Elementary School in Hartford, Connecticut, have been unplugged from distance learning. On a Friday afternoon, as she visited some of their homes, she saw many of the reasons why: Internet service is unreliable. Parents are away at work. Some are uncomfortable with the technology. Still others think their children are doing fine when they are actually using the devices for other things. As the academic year nears an end, districts around the country have been racing to get large numbers of no-show students back on track. Students who were struggling before the pandemic are the ones falling farthest behind. Across the Hartford school system, roughly 80% of students are at least partially active in distance learning. Among students considered most at risk because of issues including past absenteeism, disciplinary problems and poor academic performance, less than half are participating at all.

Ideas to power next school year in NYC: How to confront trauma and foster healing

Chalkbeat New York
Trauma: the word will hang over school communities when teachers and students return next school year, whether to campus, to remote classrooms, or to some hybrid of the two. Trauma-informed approaches will be a major focus of restart plans, according to a letter Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza sent to principals this week. Chalkbeat spoke with educators, students, and other experts about how schools can help their communities begin to process what they’ve lost and begin to heal. Recurring themes include the need to help teachers understand trauma and the importance of prioritizing student well-being over academic benchmarks.

California teachers worry gap widening for English learners during school closures

Ed Source

Teachers across California are worried that students who are learning English will fall behind in their language skills due to the school closures and are trying various approaches to connect with those students and their families. Even as concerns have been raised about the quality of instruction for native English speakers, those who are still new to the language face an even greater hurdle. “The big missing element is that we learn language, usually, in a face-to-face context,” said Leslie Hubbert, who teaches 3rd grade in the small agricultural town of Boonville in Mendocino County. “And English language learners are not getting as much face-to-face contact as they need. It’s just another way that this gap is widening more and more.”

How Schools in Other Countries Have Reopened

Education Week

Schools around the world began reopening weeks ago, giving education leaders in the United States different playbooks to study as they wrangle with how to bring students back into buildings this fall. While no other country has been hit as hard by the COVID-19 pandemic as the United States, the early stories of reopening schools in other countries signal a path forward. District leaders here can adapt strategies used by educators in other countries to maintain social distancing and keep students safe. Education Week spoke to educators in Australia, Denmark, and Taiwan to learn about the measures and precautions they are taking as students return to school.

How Teachers Want Emergency Distance Learning Improved

KQED Mindshift

Teachers from across the country reflect on their experiences teaching during the COVID-19 outbreak. In this post, seven teachers describe the emotional experience of recent months and share some of the successes and challenges of emergency distance learning. From Larry Ferlazzo: : “I would have preferred to be able to spend more time with the English language learner newcomers because those are the students — That's one of the vulnerable populations that's going to take the biggest hit from missing these last few months of school. I think most students are going to be fine, right. But ELLs, special ed students and students who face other academic challenges, they're going to take a hit. So I hope that next year, whatever we do, that we look beyond equality and focus on equity so we can provide extra support to the students who need it the most.”

Readers Recommend a Diverse Children’s Bookshelf

The New York Times

As unrest over the killing of black Americans and police brutality continued across the country, Jessica Grose, the lead editor of NYT Parenting, asked experts how to talk about the protests with kids. In the interest of keeping an open dialogue about racism, she heard from pediatricians and childhood psychologists about the importance of making sure your home library has books with black people at the center of their stories. To start, children’s book authors and Times staffers gave us their favorites. We also heard from nearly a hundred readers with more recommendations of books that their kids have loved over the years. Here are 12 of the most popular suggestions we received, including books with black protagonists, plots centered on racism and activism, and beloved gems by black authors.

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