ELL News Headlines

One of the most important mindset shifts secondary schools can make is challenging the idea that literacy instruction belongs exclusively to ELA teachers or reading specialists. The skills adolescent students need to succeed across all subject areas — decoding and deciphering multisyllabic vocabulary, comprehending complex text, analyzing and synthesizing information — are literacy skills. A history teacher helping students decode colonization and a science teacher breaking down electromagnetism are both doing literacy work.

Tracye Fortin is the Educare Maine chief impact officer and former chief operating officer of KVCAP Child & Family Services and Educare Maine at Waterville. In this commentary, she writes, "In Skowhegan, we did not want to just build a school; we wanted to build a case for a new way forward that shows what high-quality early education can look like in practice when systems align. Educators in Skowhegan and at Educare have known from the outset that one strong school would never be enough. That’s why we sought to create a replicable structure in which children could learn in inclusive settings and where families could access support through a more connected system."

The science of reading has affected teachers and students across the country. This series from Larry Ferlazzo shares the direct experiences of educators with these efforts.

Recent threats from the second Trump administration have thrust Head Start into the spotlight. Last year, its programs faced disruptions and threats of closure following funding freezes, a federal shutdown, staff layoffs across the agencies that oversee Head Start and attempts to exclude immigrant children. Now, the federal government could attempt to deregulate standards that Head Start programs are required to maintain, according to a program official. At each turn, supporters — alumni, teachers, families, child development experts, community members — have rallied behind the program. Lawsuits were filed and preliminary injunctions halted some of the federal actions. A proposal to block immigrant children from social benefit programs drew half a million comments.

The research behind the influential “science of reading” movement was built over decades through federally supported research spanning cognitive science, neuroscience, psychology, linguistics and classroom studies. Education research organizations say a proposed 100-page sweeping overhaul of federal grant rules, which would add a new review by political appointees, could make it harder to produce similar important bodies of evidence in the future. 

English learners make up a growing share of Philadelphia’s district enrollment, with around 25,000 enrolled last year. But they're significantly less likely to make it to graduation than their peers — and that gap has only widened over the past decade.

Texas offers more bilingual education than California and backs it up with more funding. We visit an elementary school and a middle school in Austin, Texas, where students learn in Spanish and English. And we talk with a researcher about why Texas is so much farther ahead than California in bilingual education.

Economists are sounding alarms that the United States is already facing what’s projected to be the biggest shortage of workers in its history.

Thousands more public school students will receive free swim lessons next year under new City Council funding, part of a long-term effort to teach every second grader in New York City how to swim.

Guiding elementary students to dive into learning about how a single word can boost their curiosity and vocabulary skills.