ELL News Headlines

When Elycea Almodovar was searching for a college three years ago, she had just two criteria: It had to be diverse, and it had to have a record of actually graduating students like her — not just taking their money and letting them drop out. Salem State, the most diverse public university in her home state of Massachusetts, checked both boxes. Thanks to the efforts of schools like Salem State to recruit and support more Latino students, hire more diverse faculty and expand cultural programming, more Hispanics are going to college, and their graduation rates are rising. The bad news? This progress remains uneven. Nationwide, the proportion of Hispanics who graduate within six years is still 10 percentage points lower than the proportion of whites, according to the Education Department. The proportion who graduate in four is nearly 14 percentage points lower.

New York City has named 17 teachers winners of Big Apple Awards, a competitive prize that rewards 'exceptional success' in instruction, impact on student learning, and overall contributions to school communities. The winners were culled from a pool of more than 6,500 nominees. The winners include a special education teacher who had her students' artwork exhibited at MoMA, a dual language teacher who wrote her own Chinese literacy curriculum, and an early education teacher who uses an app to communicate with parents.

In November 2017, nearly two months after Hurricanes Irma and Maria successively devastated the island of Puerto Rico, officials at New York University offered a small group of Puerto Rican students admittance to the world-renowned institution for one semester, granting each of the 57 evacuees escape from the unbearable trauma of devastated life back on the island. One semester later, students who say that their stay at NYU has opened up a world of opportunity both personally and professionally, face returning to a multitude of insecure and troubling circumstances in Puerto Rico. Appeals to NYU leadership for a temporary program extension have proven unsuccessful.

Education and immigration advocates are pushing back against a Trump administration plan that would consolidate the federal office that helps guide education for millions of English-language-learner and immigrant students. Under the proposal, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos would fold her department's office of English-language acquisition into the broader office for elementary and secondary education, according to advocacy groups briefed this week on the department's potential plan.

"Alva, along with coauthor Mills, narrates his experiences as a young child crossing the Mexican and U.S. border with his father…. Alva and Mills make this bilingual autobiographical story readily accessible through well-written and vivid text."

At age 5, Laura Jimenez left everything in her home country of Columbia behind to come to the United States with her mother. Thirteen years later she's using what she experienced as a child to help Venezuelan refugee students adjust to life away from their home country.

New bilingual programs teaching Chinese, Spanish and other languages will be launched at 14 Queens schools this fall, Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza announced Thursday. The Schools Chancellor said that the city plans to spend approximately $1.2 million to open 48 new Transitional Bilingual Education and Dual Language programs at schools this fall.

When she was young, Nicole M'Carthy felt trapped between two cultures. Born in Ghana and raised in Canada, she endured racial bullying and almost lost sight of herself.  But her negative experiences helped set the stage for a youth mentorship program she founded called Girl Talk, aimed at girls from immigrant families.

The White House is asking Congress to cut $7 billion from the Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, which Congress recently renewed, as part of an effort to cut $15 billion from the federal government's bottom line, mostly from unspent funds, senior administration officials said Monday. 

Once a month, students from the political left and right at Hume-Fogg Academic Magnet High School in Nashville, TN, discuss weighty, and often emotionally-fraught, political issues over pizza. This is not a debate, as many would assume bringing Republicans and Democrats together to discuss these issues would be. These are conversations that, in the end, often lead to a compromise of ideas or, at least, better understanding — not victory or defeat.