ELL News Headlines

After weeks of insisting Democrats were ultimately responsible for the migrant-child crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, President Donald Trump did an about-face Wednesday, reversing a policy that has separated thousands of migrant children from their families — most of whom are coming from Central American countries. But meanwhile, thousands of children will remain in federal custody and are entitled to certain education services while they remain there.

Erik Hanshew is an Assistant Federal Public Defender in El Paso, Texas. In this column, he writes, “The president Wednesday signed an executive order ending the policy, but that changes nothing for my clients or the thousands of other parents who have already lost their kids at the border."

American Airlines and United Continental asked the U.S. government not to fly immigrant children separated from their families on their aircraft as President Donald Trump said he was abandoning his "zero tolerance" border-enforcement policy. In joining critics of the U.S. detention of the youngsters, the carriers highlighted a central mystery in the political and human-rights crisis: Federal officials weren’t saying how the children were being ferried from near the U.S.-Mexico border to a network of facilities in 17 states.

As the Trump administration's policy of separating parents from children at the border has sparked outrage across the country, teachers are speaking out and joining nationwide protests.

Larry Ferlazzo's new question-of-the-week is: "How can we help English Language Learners meet the Common Core Standards?" On one hand, you have Common Core Standards or, in states that don't use Common Core, there are similar ones. On the other hand, you have English Language Learners, who are supposed to learn everything in the Standards as well as learn a new language and culture at the same time. This series will explore how to make the two challenges connect.

Last month, U.S. Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions announced the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" policy of charging migrants in federal criminal court before their cases reach immigration court. When adults are taken to court, they are separated from their children, who are sent to shelters. Here's a guide to key issues concerning family separations.

In South Texas, pediatricians started sounding the alarm weeks ago as migrant shelters began filling up with younger children separated from their parents after they crossed the U.S.-Mexico border illegally. The concerned pediatricians contacted Colleen Kraft, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and she flew to Texas and visited a shelter for migrant children in the Rio Grande Valley. There, she saw a young girl in tears. "She couldn't have been more than 2 years old," Kraft says. "Just crying and pounding and having a huge, huge temper tantrum. This child was just screaming, and nobody could help her. And we know why she was crying. She didn't have her mother. She didn't have her parent who could soothe her and take care of her."

Note: See more on this story from CNN and Fortune, as well as statements from the American Academy of Pediatrics and former First Lady Laura Bush. 

Latino Americans, the largest and the fastest growing ethnic minority in the United States, are half as likely to hold a college degree as non-Hispanic white adults, an education gap that has been widening since 2000, according to a June 2018 report.

Emcee Jacqueline Woodson set the tone right away for Friday morning’s children's book and author breakfast at BookExpo, explaining, "We're very intentional in the stories we are trying to tell. Through our narratives, we're trying to change this crazy world." The panel included Meg Medina, Dave Eggers, Jacqueline Woodson, Yuyi Morales and Viola Davis.

California schools are using various methods to not only get low-income and diverse high school students interested in STEM subject areas, but to increase the odds they'll actually get a STEM-related degree and wind up working in one of those fields.