ELL News Headlines

A Nevada NPR station is aiming to strengthen its ties with an underserved community by taking the unusual approach of publishing local news in Spanish. Like most other public radio stations, KUNR once offered news only in English. But the contrast between its largely white audience and Reno's racially diverse population spurred KUNR to start experimenting with multilingual news in early 2017. Hispanics made up 24.6 percent of Reno’s population in July 2017, according to U.S. Census data, whereas only about 5 percent of KUNR’s weekly audience is Latino.

Steven Spielberg has found his Maria, and it’s a 17-year-old girl from New Jersey. Rachel Zegler, of Clifton, was announced Monday as the new star of Spielberg's highly anticipated "West Side Story" reboot, which plans to revamp the classic 1957 Broadway musical and 1961 film.

In this review of Malala Yousafzai's new book, We Are Displaced: My Journey and Stories from Refugee Girls Around the World, professor and author Fernanda Santos writes, "It is a stirring and timely book that strips the political baggage from the words 'migrant' and 'refugee,' telling the deeply personal stories of displacement and disruption that were lived by Yousafzai and nine other girls. Each of the girls we meet in these pages was pushed out of her homeland by violence. In the girls' own words, we hear about escape, resettlement and the conflicting emotions that come with fitting into a new place when so much is defined by where they came from. The accounts are intimate, and strike me as honest. At times, it felt as if the narrator were sharing her story with a trusted new friend."

Poor students and those learning English in Delaware would get about $60 million in new educational resources over the next three years under a plan proposed Tuesday by Gov. John Carney. Carney said he proposed the measure, in large part, because Delaware is one of only a handful of states that doesn't target additional resources for kids who are poor and learning English. The American Civil Liberties Union is currently suing the state over its 80-year-old school funding formula, arguing that it deprives many children of their constitutional right to an adequate education.

Education advocates spoke this week in support of Arizona Senate Bill 1014, which provides schools flexibility in instruction for English Language Learners, and the Senate Education Committee approved the bill with amendments. SB 1014 would provide schools more flexibility in how they deliver instruction to English Language Learner (ELL) students and that would help more ELL students graduate high school on time. The ELL student graduation rate in Arizona is currently about 20 percent – the lowest for these students in the entire nation.

Eddie Ramirez says he and his wife Norma have 142 kids. The U.S. Army veteran and retired City of Poughkeepsie teacher have 36-year-old and 39-year-old biological sons. The rest are students they've supported over 20 years throughout the Hudson Valley.  "We would pick up the newspaper and see the high school honor rolls throughout the Hudson Valley area and I would count the amount of Hispanic names in these honor rolls," Ramirez said. "I was astonished that there weren't many listed." It was then that the two decided they would create what ultimately became the Hudson Valley Latino Scholarship program.

A team of school leaders recently completed an exploratory look into the possible implementation of a foreign language program at the elementary level, as part of the district's ongoing mission to create global citizens and promote cultural competency. If approved through the budget process, students kindergarten through fifth grade might see Spanish integrated into everyday education.

Three weeks into a partial government shutdown that has stalled nine federal departments, Nargess Lakehal-Ayat spends her days at home, fielding questions from her 12-year-old son that she’s unable to answer. That’s how Lakehal-Ayat found herself Friday, on the shutdown’s 21st day, in a nondescript government building in Falls Church, Va., one of about 200 federal workers who applied to become substitute teachers in Fairfax County School District during a hiring event for furloughed workers.

The partial federal government shutdown has now stretched into its 24th day, and is the longest in history. And if negotiations between President Donald Trump and Congress over a potential border wall continue to falter, states could find themselves in a tight spot when it comes to funding one of the most important programs for poor children—Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF—as well as other federal child-care benefits. 

In the past decade, the popularity of the seal of biliteracy has surged across the country. What started out as an effort to promote educational equity for English-language learners in California may be morphing into something else as more states pass legislation that honors high school graduates who demonstrate fluency in two or more languages. For English-language learner advocates and foreign language instructors, the national embrace of bilingualism is a welcome sight. But a big unanswered question remains: Bilingualism for whom?