ELL News Headlines

In California, home to the largest number of undocumented students enrolled in public school, many are scared they may not reach graduation amid political uncertainty over DACA protections. But an increasing number of educators are getting training to become Dreamer advocates. Fernando Cienfuegos of Northview High School and NewsHour’s Student Reporting Labs reports.

Mike Moran, the principal at Bryan Adams High School in Dallas, says oftentimes when students are homeless, they're too embarrassed to tell anyone. "A lot of times it is revealed that there's a temporary living situation, they're in a motel, they're now staying with an aunt and uncle," he says. Principal Moran has heard similar stories about 50, or so, kids at his school, just one of dozens of high schools in the district. That's why Dallas schools have put something called a drop-in center at nearly every high school in the district.

Norwalk Public Schools has seen its enrollment of English Language Learners rise by nearly 200 students over the past two years, making it the district of choice for immigrants in Fairfield County. Superintendent Steven Adamowski said Norwalk's ELL students consistently outperform other districts and the state. The district plans to ask the school board for an increase in ELL funding for the coming year.

The roof over teacher Zelideth Otero López’s classroom is giving out, and her family’s devotion to the school, which runs three generations deep, might do the same.

In a study published in Psychological Science, the journal of the Association for Psychological Science, Pascale Engel de Abreu of the University of Luxembourg and her colleagues examine the effects of bilingualism on the executive functioning of low-income children. "Low-income children represent a vulnerable population," says Engel de Abreu. "Studying cognitive processes in this population is of great societal importance and represents a significant advancement in our understanding of childhood development."

A young DACA recipient from Virginia will join dozens of other Dreamers at the State of the Union address Tuesday night as the White House and members of Congress remain in a standoff over the fate of the more than 1 million undocumented young immigrants. 

A group of Democrats in Congress has introduced a bill designed to remedy the national shortage of teachers who work with English-language learners. The Reaching English Learners Act would create a grant program under Title II of the Higher Education Act, the part of the law that governs teacher preparation, to pave the way for colleges and school districts to develop curricula for aspiring ELL teachers.

Of the 690,000 undocumented immigrants now facing an uncertain future as Congress and President Trump wrangle over the DACA program are about 8,800 school teachers. The real possibility that they'll be deported if the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program is allowed to expire has put enormous stress on them.

Alaska Native languages are in a "linguistic emergency" and most are predicted to be extinct or dormant by the end of the 21st century unless action is taken to save them, according to a new report out this month from a state body.

If recent best-seller lists are any indication, biographies of women written for children are a very hot commodity. It's also worth noting the sheer number of them being published by large and small publishers and the subjects they are opting to highlight. Gone are the days when kids would learn about the same six female historical figures over and over again. Those women haven't disappeared from our books or history, nor should they. But at the same time, it's marvelous to consider which women have become the standard bearers for the next generation of young readers.