ELL News Headlines

April Salazar longs to make her Grandma Alice's tortillas with her daughter. It is the same tortilla recipe her grandmother's mother made in Baja California and later in Tucson, Arizona, after she fled the Mexican Revolution. There's just one problem: she needs the stars to align… and the cooperation of her two-year-old daughter.

Nearly every weekday during the summer break, a giant truck from the Food Bank for the Heartland in Omaha, Neb., loads up hot meals and heads out into the community. The goal is to help feed children who would normally get free and reduced-price meals during the school year. It's one of 50,000 programs nationwide providing summer meals to children. Public school districts, parks departments, public libraries, and YMCAs are among the entities that help provide summer feeding programs. But there is still a huge hunger gap during the months when school is out.

The Justice Department said Wednesday it had no broad plans to investigate whether college and university admission programs discriminate against students based on race, seeking to defray worries that a job posting signaled an effort to reverse course on affirmative action. News reports of the posting inflamed advocacy groups that believed it would lead to legal action against universities for not admitting white students over minorities with similar qualifications. But a day after The New York Times reported the department was seeking current attorneys interested in "investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions," the Justice Department said the job ad was related to just one complaint.

Two brothers from Gaithersburg were deported to their native El Salvador on Wednesday in what their attorney says was the fastest deportation process he has ever seen. Lizandro Claros Saravia, 19, is a standout soccer player who had secured a scholarship to play college soccer in North Carolina. His brother, Diego, 22, took extra classes to graduate from Quince Orchard High School on time and "has a heart of gold," a former teacher said.

Colorado educators Elaine Menardi and Jess Buller would seem an unlikely pair to be writing legislation. But neither felt that their students, then middle schoolers, were on track for meeting state benchmarks for workforce readiness in technology and computing. So, while participating in a fellowship together, the two cooked up a solution: a STEM diploma endorsement awarded to high school students with a track record of strong achievement in those subjects. In May, Gov. John Hickenlooper signed the fruit of their labor into law.

Flint, Michigan’s superintendent is leading a comprehensive effort to mitigate the effects of lead on his students. Since alarmingly high levels of lead were found two years ago, the school district taken several measures to ensure the crisis wouldn't stand in the way of their kids' education. Special correspondent Kavitha Cardoza of Education Week reports.

As President Trump moves forward with his campaign to get tough on immigration enforcement, advocacy groups are taking charge by increasing the amount of resources to help immigrants acknowledge their rights. One of these groups is the Immigrant Defense Project (IDP), a national nonprofit organization.

Greatness surrounds Melissa Cabrera when she attends classes at Bronx Community College – but the greatness of which Ms. Cabrera speaks was found sitting alongside her in a children's literature class she took at night, when her fellow students came straight from work, still dressed in the uniforms of nurses, fast-food workers or security guards. A few brought their children, because money for child care was scarce. English was often their second language, and most were the first in their immigrant family to go to college.

A report in The New York Times Tuesday night revealed that the U.S. Justice Department plans to investigate and sue colleges over their affirmative action policies in admissions. For supporters of affirmative action in college admissions, the news was a shock. Just over a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the admissions policies of the University of Texas at Austin, which include consideration of race and ethnicity. Many college leaders feared, prior to the decision coming down, that affirmative action was endangered. But the decision — just three years after another Supreme Court decision upholding affirmative action — assured many that colleges could continue to consider race in admissions.

Promoting good oral language and communication skills is perhaps the most important thing parents, caregivers and educators can do to prepare children to enter kindergarten. Having just completed my 17th year of teaching at Oak Grove Primary School in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, with over 800 students in kindergarten and first grade, I see children daily who have been exposed to models of good oral language. Sadly, I also see many who have not had these models and enter kindergarten at a disadvantage.