ELL News Headlines

A racial justice organization says Denver Public Schools is intimidating immigrant teachers who are considering striking, but district officials called it an error.

To be considered a Hispanic Serving Institution, 25 percent of a college's population must be Hispanic. Right now, there are 492 HSIs in the U.S., but David Ortiz with the Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities says that will change soon.

English language learners are underrepresented in STEM fields, in both college and on the job. To understand how education can better work with these students (who could speak one of 350 different languages in the United States) is the topic of a new report from the National Academy of Sciences. "English Learners in STEM Subjects" has three broad sections: a background on English learners, effective strategies for preparing teachers to work with English learners in STEM subjects and how to transform STEM learning itself for the students.

Lawmakers heard a bill recently that would provide state funds for school district programs helping English learners. Rep. Sharon Stewart Peregoy, D-Crow Agency, told members of the House Education Committee that House Bill 18 came from the State-Tribal Relations Committee, and would help students who have limited English proficiency to the point where it is hurting their academic performance. She said the largest number of the 3,000 students in that category are Native American, making up 2 percent of the total student population in Montana.

After nearly two years of a heated contract dispute that resulted in a massive teacher strike, the Los Angeles school district and teachers' union have reached a tentative agreement. The deal includes a 6 percent pay raise for teachers, class-size reductions that will take place over the next four years, and more school nurses, counselors, and librarians. The district has also agreed to create 30 community schools, which have wraparound social services for students, as well as a focus on the arts. The union has also formed a task force with the district to look for ways to create more green spaces on school grounds, and created an "immigrant defense fund" to protect immigrant students and families.

The 2016 National Teacher of the Year has joined the House committee that oversees K-12 education. U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes, D-Conn., has become a member of the House education committee — which Democrats have rechristened from the House Education and Workforce Committee to the House Education and Labor Committee — once the House Democratic Caucus approves recommendations for new committee assignments Tuesday.

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.