ELL News Headlines

Dignitaries from across West Virginia — and union leaders from across the country — recently came together to celebrate the construction of Renaissance Village, a mixed-use complex that officials hope will spark a revitalization in McDowell County. And more than that, they’re pinning their hopes on it attracting more teachers to their local school system, whose ills are exacerbated by a revolving door of novice instructors and substitutes. The building represents the latest in the county’s ambitious efforts to boost academic achievement by first tackling the effects of rural poverty — including a lack of suitable housing, as well as the far-reaching impacts of the decline of the coal industry, two floods, and a catastrophic wave of opioid overdoses and deaths.

Caring for students across six schools last year pushed one certified school nurse on the picket line to the brink. Barbara Raphoon, a registered nurse in the Chicago Public Schools system who also holds an educator license, splits her time between four campuses. Last year, she was assigned to six schools. She was ready to quit. But on Thursday, Raphoon was one of dozens of nurses, social workers, counselors, psychologists and other staff who provide specialized services to children who flooded sidewalks at the morning rush, standing in picket lines and holding signs blasting thousand-to-one ratios.

As tributes poured in for Cummings, who died early Thursday morning, many of them made mention of what could be Cummings’ most lasting legacy: mentor and guide for an army of young men and women with aspirations to change Baltimore or reach beyond it, those who loved him said.

Interest in the seal of biliteracy has surged across the country, with nearly every state scrambling to offer special recognition for high school graduates who demonstrate fluency in two or more languages. But more than 80 percent of students earning the seal are concentrated in just a handful of states, a new report reveals.

Teachers in the third-largest U.S. school district are expected to go on strike Thursday for the first time in seven years after contract negotiations between the Chicago Teachers Union and city officials hit a stalemate Tuesday night. Along with familiar issues such as contract length, benefits and class sizes, one of the core demands of the teachers union is not explicitly about their work environment but rather community justice: access to affordable housing.

Gumbo. Chile con queso. California roll. Spaghetti and meatballs. The names are as familiar as household brands. Yet how much do you know about these dishes? Based on the names alone, with their roots in other languages and other cultures, each dish sounds like an import. In some ways, they are. But each dish also morphed and adapted to its new environment, transforming into something uniquely American.

Hundreds of community members and local leaders gathered Tuesday at Gaithersburg High School to highlight inequities in MCPS education. And they have a plan to address the issue. The newly formed Black and Brown Coalition for Educational Equity and Excellence organized the forum following recent reports to the Montgomery County Board of Education showing that students of color are more likely to be taught by teachers with less experience.

Immigrant parents worry their children will struggle with reading and fret that as non-English speakers, they can't help. A new study shows that's simply not true. Reading to a young child in any language will likely help them learn to read in English.

With the Maryland suburbs becoming increasingly diverse, advocates for black and Hispanic students have joined forces to call attention to inequity in the state’s largest school system and to push for changes. They cite a recent study showing that students of color, particularly those from low-income families, are more likely to be taught by novice teachers in Montgomery County and that schools with more children from low-income families are more likely to have novice principals.

In the early 1990s, when Dr. Michelle Martin was in graduate school, she wrote papers about wilderness-survival stories for kids. Over time, Martin began to notice something: Of all the picture books about children exploring the wild outdoors for fun, only a scarce few feature African American kids as protagonists. Martin hopes that drawing attention to this particular vacuum within children’s literature will help encourage authors and illustrators to fill it. But taking note of that particular gap in children’s literature, and its potentially detrimental side effects, is the easy part. Understanding why the gap exists is a much more complicated pursuit.