ELL News Headlines

As publishers adjust to the school closures and needs of educators and public librarians, Audible has stepped up with a new offering, Stories.Audible.com. The site will be "a place where anyone, in any country, can enjoy unlimited streaming of hundreds of titles for kids and families for free," according to the company's announcement.

Every elementary school student in Glastonbury was sent home with an iPad on the day Connecticut’s governor declared a “public health emergency” to blunt the spread of the coronavirus. On it were all the learning platforms students would need to resume learning online. Students without internet access at home were provided a connection by the district. A few days later classes for this suburban town’s nearly 6,000 students went virtual. That morning, Molly Willsey’s first graders logged onto their iPads just after 9 a.m. and started their school day. In one of Connecticut’s poorest cities, however, the transition hasn’t been nearly as seamless. In Bridgeport, where one out of every 26 public school students in the state attend school, some children were sent home with with worksheets and assignments, but this was an effort by individual teachers and not a coordinated approach by the district. Many of Bridgeport’s students went home empty-handed.

As schools have shut down across America, the nation's education community is beginning to pressure Washington for stimulus funding to help weather the coronavirus pandemic. But what could and should a K-12 stimulus actually look like? 

First Book, a national nonprofit that gets books, education materials, and other life essentials to children in need has a new, immediate mission — get seven million books to kids whose schools are closed but don't have books at home or internet access.

As the growing COVID-19 pandemic shuts down school for millions of students, educators are worried not just about missed class time but missed meals, with an estimated one in six children living in homes without enough food, and many families relying on schools to feed their children.

The Scripps National Spelling Bee won’t be held as scheduled this year because of the coronavirus. Scripps announced its decision Friday morning, citing recommendations against large gatherings by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the ongoing state of emergency in Maryland.

With a pandemic pressing tens of thousands of the nation's school districts into extended closures, special education administrators across the nation are wrestling with a weighty dilemma: how to provide services to students with disabilities.

Virtual calming corners for students. Online staff hangouts instead of in-person team meetings. Student advisory groups on Zoom. Video morning greetings for students. This is what the principal's job is looking like right now in the age of coronavirus.

City educators say they're bracing for herculean challenges in adjusting to teaching students remotely and are racing to adapt their lessons as the city rolled out additional guidelines for principals and teachers Wednesday.

The threat of COVID-19, the novel coronavirus, is forcing educators across the country to think about what they’ll do if they have to close their schools for weeks or even months at a time. State and federal agencies have advised schools to create online learning plans to minimize the disruption to student learning. For some schools, that’s a small leap. Their students have internet connections at home, laptops they can work from, teachers who know how to design online lessons and a strong foundation of in-school blended learning experience.

But the fact is, these schools are rare. Most schools are completely unprepared – or, at best, woefully underprepared – for coronavirus and virtual learning.  Unequal internet access is just the tip of the iceberg of a massive equity crisis facing U.S. schools should coronavirus force education online.