ELL News Headlines

During budget cuts, a chief financial officer's matter-of-fact, jargon-laced presentations to school boards often strike anxious teachers and parents as dismissive and emotionally detached from the lives their decisions will upend. Enter Nolberto Delgadillo, the CFO of the Tulsa school district. Knowing early this school year that he’d have to cut more than $20 million from next year’s $325 million budget, Delgadillo went on the road, explaining in layman’s terms why the district expected a budget shortfall despite an increase in state aid. And then, he did something school administrators rarely, if ever, do: He invited thousands of community members to dig into the budget with him and figure out what to keep and what to cut.

The percentage of Iowan children from immigrant families grew from 2.4 percent in 1990 to 11.3 percent in 2017, according to the Migration Policy Institute. Woodbury County, home to Sioux City, had a higher percentage of students from immigrant households (17 percent) than any other county in Iowa as of 2017, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, another think tank.

A record-high 1.5 million students were homeless during the 2017-18 school year, 11 percent more than the previous year and nearly double the number a decade ago, according to new federal data.

On February 5th, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva introduced the Supporting Young Language Learners’ Access to Bilingual Education (SYLLABLE) Act in the House of Representatives. The bill helps establish high-quality dual-language immersion programs in communities with high numbers of low-income families and supports those programs from pre-K to 5th grade. “Today, bilingualism is an asset in our multicultural society and provides our students with more job opportunities in the economy of the future,” said Rep. Grijalva. “The SYLLABLE Act recognizes that importance, supports dual language programs in low-income communities, and ensures that every child has access to new educational opportunities that prepare them for a successful future.” Studies show both native English speakers and English Learners in dual-language immersion programs benefit from bilingual education and experience substantial gains in language, literacy, and math. While these programs remain in high-demand across the country, they tend to cluster in affluent communities that provide limited access to low-income students.

Mi papi tiene una moto/My Papi Has a Motorcycle by Isabel Quintero, illustrated by Zeke Peña, and translated by Andrea Montejo (Kokila, 2019), has won the first-ever gold medal for Best Spanish Language Picture Book from the Center for Children's Literature at Bank Street College of Education. 

English-language learners are severely underrepresented in gifted and talented education programs in the nation's K-12 schools — and the problem may be rooted in the procedures and policies that schools use to identify gifted students. A new guide from Education Northwest offers a series of recommendations, focused on rooting out educator and assessment bias, that could allow more English-learners access to gifted and talented education.

The backlash to the announcement of literary "classics" with covers featuring people of color was immediate, a response that seemed to only surprise those responsible for Diverse Editions. The books will never see the shelves.

Tulsa Public Schools plans to implement or expand dual language programs at three school sites next year, the district announced Monday. The district has broadened its multilingual programs at the elementary level for the past seven years.

Finding bilingual educators has been a long-standing problem for school districts across the country. Now, a study out of Georgia State University explores why finding those teachers may be only half the problem. The "invisible work" of translating and creating curriculum materials in languages other than English that falls on the shoulder of dual-language bilingual educators "too often goes unrecognized and is never remunerated." That responsibility could lead to teachers leaving the profession, concludes Cathy Amanti, a clinical assistant professor at Georgia State.

Students at three Pennsylvania schools were recently told to stay home amid concerns over lead and asbestos contamination, as Pennsylvania State Police investigate what former district officials did to address problems with tainted water. An environmental engineer said he first notified district officials in 2016 that he had found elevated lead levels in drinking water. Joseph Guzek said that when he returned in December 2018 and again in December 2019, he also found lead in the water.