ELL News Headlines

Newcomer students, those who have been in the U.S. less than a year, are getting the chance to go into school buildings once a week in Aurora, where all students are learning virtually through the first quarter. The Aurora district is planning for students to return part time to school buildings under a hybrid model in mid-October.

Around the country, teachers and school administrators are hoping that a patchwork of plans cobbled together over the summer will help address one of the most pressing challenges they face as millions of students start a new school year online: How to make sure they come to virtual class, and what balance to strike between punitive and forgiving policies if they don't. Data on why students disappear from virtual school is hard to come by, but there are some obvious explanations. Many lack a computer or stable internet; others have to work or care for younger children; some families were evicted and had to move.

What are specific strategies, lessons, and tools that you have used to encourage students to work collaboratively in a socially distanced physical classroom, hybrid, or remote learning environment? Learn some ideas from Jenifer Hitchcock, who teaches 12th grade AP Government at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Alexandria, Va. She has been a member of the iCivics Educator Network since 2017:

Darwin Velasquez is the National Dreamer Coordinator for College Track, a comprehensive college completion program that equips students facing systemic barriers to earn a bachelor's degree in pursuit of a life of opportunity, choice and power. He came to the United States from El Salvador at age 12 and is the first in his family to earn a college degree. In this editorial, he writes, "In the absence of a permanent solution, let’s focus on what we can do for Dreamers today, especially when they are trying to complete their studies, stay safe and support themselves during a global pandemic."

On a school lawn in Denver Friday, four young Black women told the story of how they pushed an institution to make its curriculum more inclusive of Black, Latino, and Indigenous history. It started last October, when a group of students from Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Early College traveled to Washington, D.C., to visit the national African American history museum.

Most of the nation's nearly five million English-language learners are returning to classes, whether virtual or in-person, after a months-long stretch of distance learning where they were separated from the educators who are key to their academic success. How those students and their teachers rebound from the struggles tied to the school shutdowns of the spring could depend on guidance from their states and school districts about how to recover from learning loss and reconnect with families. To help educators and state leaders take a look at what others are doing around the country, Amaya Garcia, the deputy director for English-learner education with the education policy program at New America, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, compiled a national database of state guidance and resources for English-learner education.

Amy Leipziger is a senior staff attorney in the Queens office of Legal Services NYC, the nation’s largest provider of free civil legal services to low-income communities across New York City. In this column, she writes, "In a study conducted by the Global Strategy Group, only 33% of NYC public school parents reported that they received technical assistance to prepare for distance learning, leaving countless families in the lurch. This failure has an outsized impact on LEP parents who cannot readily access information online. For example, the DOE's survey to parents to request computers or iPads was initially only sent to families in English, leaving many LEP parents without access to remote learning tools in those first two months of remote learning."

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a pioneer in the women's rights movement and the second woman appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court, died Friday at age 87 due to complications of pancreatic cancer. On education issues arising during her 27 years on the court, Ginsburg was a stalwart vote for sex equity in schools, expansive desegregation remedies, strict separation of church and state, and, in a memorable dissent, against broader drug testing of students.

When President Donald Trump took office in 2017, immigration advocates and school officials braced for the prospect that he would undertake unprecedented immigration enforcement measures that could upend the lives of millions. Nearly four years later, the nation's Latino schoolchildren are bearing the mental and psychological brunt of the president's campaign to curtail immigration: A majority of Latino high school students in two states fear that someone close to them could be arrested and deported, a new Migration Policy Institute study reveals.