ELL News Headlines

A panel of Hispanic college and university presidents said affordability is greatly affecting Hispanic students' access to college and offered suggestions for boosting public investment in higher education at a plenary session at the American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education's annual meting.

Auto mechanic. That's what Rigoberto Morales wanted to become when he entered Roseland University Prep charter high school in Santa Rosa nearly four years ago. Now a senior, Morales is preparing to enter Sonoma State University in August to study psychology or sociology. After college he hopes to return to Roseland to work with teens, or as he puts it, "to come back to the community and give back." Like many fellow students, the gentle-voiced Morales credits his instructors for setting him on the path toward college.

Broadcasting teacher Jo Ray led a group of students in a Spanish chant Wednesday, seeking to scratch together some enthusiasm from the tired voices gathered for first period at Springdale High School. "<em>Sí, podemos</em>," they said. The phrase translates to "Yes, we can." The students, representing ethnic groups and ages assembled from elementary, middle, and high schools throughout the district, were gathered to film a public service announcement designed to motivate Spanish-speaking peers and parents to put more emphasis on state-mandated standardized tests, such as the state Benchmark Exams. The announcement will air in both Spanish and English on the high schools' news channels, the local affiliate for Univision TV, and local Spanish radio stations, she said. Language specialists hope to broadcast similar announcements statewide.

Federal investigators found "credible evidence" that certain Arizona school officials retaliated against their district's former ELL coordinator for advocating for minority students and being a whistleblower in a federal probe of the district's shortcomings in serving ELL students. "The District's actions were intended to intimidate, threaten, coerce, and discriminate against you," the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights (OCR) reported to her last month at the conclusion of its investigation. The district, on the other hand, argued that its actions to demote and terminate the employee were for unacceptable job performance, not because she was a whistleblower. However, the OCR concluded the district could not show, by its treatment of any other employees, that its handling of the whistleblower was usual and customary.

With a student body that is 71 percent Hispanic and 27 percent black, Public School 59 does not seem an obvious home for a thriving Irish dance troupe. And when Caroline Duggan first arrived from Dublin at age 23 to try her hand as a New York City public school music teacher, it wasn't. Many of her students had never heard of Ireland. Why, they wanted to know, did she talk funny? Then, to stave off homesickness, Ms. Duggan hung a "Riverdance" poster in her fifth-floor classroom, and one thing led to another. The children pointed to a long-haired dancer on the poster and asked if it was her. No, she laughed, but I could show you a few steps. The impromptu lesson grew into a wildly popular after-school program and, for the first time last year, a trip to Ireland that still inspires dreamy looks among those lucky enough to go.

A large number of Chicago public high school students "sell themselves short" by attending two-year colleges or vocational schools when they could go on to four-year colleges, a new report says. The study, "From High School to the Future: Potholes on the Road to College," released Wednesday, found that many students simply gave up trying to go to four-year colleges, discouraged or intimidated by the application and financial-aid processes. The three-year study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago found that Latino students were least likely to apply to four-year schools.

When parents of students at Maryland's Bladensburg Elementary School need help navigating the complex bureaucracy of their school system, they often wander to a room cluttered with music stands and boxes of chemistry equipment, just outside the main office. This is the Parent Resource Center, Olga Noriega's room. As the school's parent liaison, she serves as a bridge between the staff and the community with the ultimate goal of bolstering student achievement. But in a school where more than 83 percent of about 600 students qualify for free and reduced-price lunches, Noriega sometimes provides much more fundamental assistance.

The English Language Learner population of Delaware's Indian River School District has increased from 259 children in 2001 to 683 this year. In the same period, state ELL funding has dropped from $530 per student to $212. That's $145,047 this year — only enough to pay for half a teacher and three paraprofessionals district-wide. North Georgetown Elementary has been affected the most: Seven years ago, 6 percent of the school's students were English language learners; more than 40 percent are today. Despite these challenges, however, North Georgetown is rated a "superior" school with a student population excelling on state exams.

Colleges and universities are anxiously taking steps to address a projected drop in the number of high school graduates in much of the nation starting next year and a dramatic change in the racial and ethnic makeup of the student population, a phenomenon expected to transform the country's higher education landscape, educators and analysts said. After years of being overwhelmed with applicants, higher education institutions will over the next decade recruit from a pool of public high school graduates that will experience, among other trends, a double-digit rise in the proportion of minority students — especially Hispanics — who traditionally are less likely to attend college and to obtain loans to fund education.

One morning last August, Yvonne Watterson, the principal of Arizona's GateWay Early College High School, sat in her office, grimly scrolling through the database of its 240 students. At the behest of a new state law, she looked for which ones listed a Social Security number and which did not. Without a number, it was virtually certain that a child was in America illegally. Under the statute popularly known as Proposition 300, illegal immigrants could not receive in-state tuition at public colleges and universities in Arizona. Nor could school administrators like Ms. Watterson use state money to pay it. After losing at least one student due to the law, Yvonne Watterson vowed to do something so she would not lose any more of her students, partly because of her childhood experiences in her hometown in Northern Ireland.