ELL News Headlines

Latinx students at a San Antonio college are learning to challenge negative perceptions around Spanglish.

Mayko Calmo-Gomez, 19, is among a new generation of Latino students in Sampson County, North Carolina who are striving for something that eluded their parents. The county is known for hogs and blueberries, which provide jobs that have attracted hundreds of Latino immigrant families. The percentage of Latino students in the county has grown from 27 to 40 percent in the last decade. But the jobs have a downside. The work is hard, the hours are long and the pay is meager, exacerbating a cycle of poverty that has been tough to break. Just 31 percent of Latino adults who are older than 25 have a high school diploma, one of the lowest rates in the country.

The number of Latino kids in Tennessee grew more than 250% over the span of 17 years, helping lead the growing diversity among the state's children.

Four months after taking over management of the Adams 14 school district north of Denver, MGT leaders have submitted a plan to the federal government on how they will educate English learners.

Pine Forest Elementary School fourth grader Julietta Ramirez won Florida's Hispanic Heritage Month Essay contest for a piece she wrote on Circuit Court Judge Tatiana Radi Salvador. Both Julietta and Judge Salvador are Colombian. "Not many fourth-graders would choose to spend their free time researching for an essay and setting up appointments to interview judges," fourth-grade teacher Michelle Lovelace said. "But Julietta is very passionate about public service and Hispanic representation in her community. She is proud of her roots and wants to share that with the world around her."

The Chicago teachers' strike is now in its fifth day, with no clear indication of when it might end. Teachers are calling for changes that include increased compensation, but also go beyond it -- and they charge that the city's new mayor, Lori Lightfoot, has shifted her position since coming into office in May. John Yang reports and talks to reporter Brandis Friedman of Chicago's WTTW.

Just 15 years ago, bilingual education was banned in three states — Arizona, California, and Massachusetts — which altogether educated 40 percent of the nation's English-language learners. Now, amid the national embrace of biliteracy and dual-language education, those statewide English-only laws are on the brink of extinction.

How do you say "subsidized loan" in Spanish? Or in Tagalog? Or in German?  Every year, students across the United States open their financial-aid letters from the colleges to which they have worked hard to be admitted. The letters are there to tell students, and their parents or guardians, how much money they are being offered to help pay for their college journey — and how much they have to pay themselves. It seems like a pretty straightforward concept to understand. It’s not.

The 12-year-old identical twins entered Texas from Mexico days apart in the foothills of Mt. Cristo Rey. One came with their father. The other arrived with their mother. The parents had hoped that crossing the border separately, each with one son, would improve the chance that they all would be allowed into the country. But that’s not what U.S. immigration officials decided. They released Nostier Leiva Sabillon and his father in Texas, and sent Anthony Leiva Sabillon and his mother back to Mexico. The difference in treatment shows how arbitrary the U.S. immigration system has become as the Trump administration tries to stem the flow of migrants from Central America.

All across social media, friends and colleagues are saying "Happy Book Birthday!" to Kevin Maillard and Juana Martinez-Neal. That's because their book, Fry Bread: A Native American Family Story is officially available, today, October 22, 2019.