ELL News Headlines

Two new studies demonstrate that multilingual exposure improves not only children’s cognitive skills but also their social abilities.

As Janie Carnock details in her recent report, From Blueprint to Building: Lifting the Torch for Multilingual Students in New York State, New York has recently led a bullish redesign of policies and practices to better support the education of its growing, diversifying ELL population. Passed in 2014 under the umbrella of the state’s Blueprint for ELL Success strategy, new rules comprehensively revamp ELL policies across the board. With 2015–16 as the first school year of full implementation, promising changes are already unfolding in districts like Newburgh, which sits on the bank of the Hudson River sixty miles north of New York City and has seen an influx of new immigration from Central America in recent years.

Everyone's favorite red-headed science teacher—and her pet lizard—will soon be back. Netflix's appeal to nostalgia continues with its upcoming reboot of the beloved '90s Saturday morning cartoon "The Magic School Bus," starring eccentric science teacher Ms. Frizzle and her eager students as they embark on out-of-this world field trips. 

Long-term English-language Learners (LTELs) are students who have been classified as English-language learners (ELLs) for more than six years, are verbally bilingual, are below grade-level in reading and writing, and are at high-risk for dropping out. Although there is no national data on LTELs, a high percentage of our secondary schools' ELLs is considered long-term, with a myriad of literacy needs, including mitigating their fossilized language habits.

Grades 4-6: This anthology, published in partnership with We Need Diverse Books, presents 10 short stories from a stellar list of authors: Kwame Alexander, Matt de la Peña, Jacqueline Woodson, Soman Chainani, Grace Lin, Walter Dean Myers, Tim Federle, Meg Medina, Tim Tingle, and Kelly Baptist…Inclusive, authentic, and eminently readable, this collection of short stories is an excellent addition for libraries and classrooms.

I was standing by the airport exit, debating whether to get a snack, when a young man with a round face approached me. I focused hard to decipher his words. In a thick accent, he asked me to help him find his suitcase. As we walked to baggage claim, I learned his name: Edward Murinzi. This was his very first plane trip. A refugee from the Democratic Republic of Congo, he'd just arrived to begin his American life. From finding his bag to finding his apartment and finding a job, there was a lot for Edward to learn.

There was a time when the sub pool was made up of trained and certified teachers—novices hoping to get a full-time job, retired teachers, and the occasional mom looking to return to part-time work in a classroom. Not any more. Substitute teachers are now almost exclusively hired by third-party educational service companies (whose recruitment strategies include advertisements on highway billboards), which take a cut out of limited monies to rid schools of the headache of finding daily replacements, once the worst possible early-morning task of school secretaries.  

When victory is in the balance of war, it's easier to see why a country must reap the talents of all its citizens – including black women – to protect everyone from existential threats. World War II made clear to the military the advantages of recruiting across racial lines. Later, the country's collective talents led to launching astronaut John Glenn into orbit in 1962, along with the science that went along (a story told in the new movie Hidden Figures, based on the book of the same title by Margot Lee Shetterly). Unfortunately, the participation of black women in the sciences has not rocketed.

They hustled into the church on a biting winter evening, unburdened themselves of scarves and gloves, and settled into pews to sound out words in Arabic. “Ahlan fii Rutland,” said Fran Knapp, a retiree who lives about 20 minutes away, one of two or three dozen people who have attended a class here on rudimentary Arabic. Welcome to Rutland.  It was one of many preparations this remote city in central Vermont is making before 100 refugees from Syria and Iraq arrive here over the next year, with the first expected to come later this month.

Readers of Education Week's Learning the Language blog were drawn to posts examining the effects of the Every Student Succeeds Act on English-language learners, research on boosting ELL achievement, and explorations of what it means to be an English-learner or immigrant student in the United States. Here's a look at the top blog posts in 2016.