ELL News Headlines

NPR will be covering and celebrating Latino culture and history throughout National Hispanic Heritage Month. The Pew Research Center has been tracking key facts and figures on U.S. Latinos for years and here are some of the latest highlights.

President Joe Biden signed an executive order Monday intended to coordinate efforts across the federal government to improve educational and economic outcomes for Hispanics. The White House Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence, and Economic Opportunity for Hispanics will focus on policies that address "systemic causes" of challenges faced by students, improve their access to high-quality teachers, and address racial disparities in education funding, among other issues. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona will serve as chairman of the initiative, which will be established at the U.S. Department of Education, and Cardona in turn will pick its executive director.

In celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month, Google is honoring Panamanian-American nurse and educator Ildaura Murillo-Rohde, who dedicated her life to enhancing the quality of health care for underrepresented communities while equipping other Hispanic nurses with the skills to do the same.

Jefferson County Public Schools teacher Penelope Quesada sees over 100 students a day between her six classes at Semple Elementary School in Louisville, KY. The majority of students at Semple qualify for free or reduced-priced school meals, which is a commonly used measure of poverty. Quesada said she has spent nearly $600 of her own money on cleaning supplies and other precautionary measures. She's taught for 18 years and said this year has been more stressful and emotional than any other year.

Scarlet Taveras was 17 when she evacuated her high school, just south of the World Trade Center, on Sept. 11, 2001. She is now a mom of two children, and the behaviors and feelings she’s noticed in her sons as they live through the COVID-19 pandemic are similar to — but not exactly the same as — what she and her friends experienced in their teenage years in the wake of the terrorist attacks.

For many children of immigrants, to "succeed" in America, we must adopt a new language in place of our first — the one our parents speak best — without fully considering the strain it places on our relationships for the rest of our lives.

Santa Fe Fiesta's Pet Parade (or Desfile de los Niños) is the inspiration for Judith Torres' new picture book "An Alphabet Pet Parade in Topsy-Turvy Town, Population 26." Torres, born and raised in Santa Fe, has many fond memories of the fiesta. But the event that remains most vivid is the Pet Parade, "seeing the other kids and their animals going around the plaza," she said in a phone interview from her home in central California.

Amazon is offering to cover four-year college tuition for most of its approximately 750,000 hourly workers in the United States, the latest major employer to offer the perk to attract and retain hourly employees in a tight job market. It will also begin covering high school diploma programs, GED's and English as a Second Language (ESL) certifications for employees.

The Justice Department has reached a settlement with Newark Public Schools to resolve the department's investigation into the school district’s programs for its students who are English-language learners. The agreement ends the district's longstanding and common practice of removing students from programs for English learners before they become fluent in English. The district has agreed to improve services for English-learning students, so they can access the same educational opportunities as other students in the Newark Public Schools.