ELL News Headlines

In recent years, an increasing number of U.S.-born students have enrolled in Mexican schools. About half a million now attend classes south of the border, and educators on both sides are pushing for greater collaboration to help meet those students’ unique needs — among them, gaining language skills, adjusting to different education levels, and adapting to new school cultures and structures.

English Language Learners make up the fastest growing student group in the First State. Delaware's Rodel Foundation released a fact sheet recently detailing that growth.

Representatives from Osceola and Orange County school districts met with state Sen. Jack Latvala with a plea for help. Thousands of students have traveled to Central Florida from Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, and school officials said they don't have the proper resources to cope with the influx.

It was a dreary Sunday at first, as clouds hung over Tarken Rec Center in Castor Gardens. It even rained briefly, though that didn't stop members of Philly Open Soccer from setting up nets throughout the playground. After all, they'd already been rained out twice. This time, the weather held out and about 50 families made their way to the community event. Children as young as five could be seen kicking and tossing soccer balls around, their parents cheering them on as they made constant goals. Many of them arrived very recently to the United States.

When Edgardo Ortiz boarded a flight from Puerto Rico to Florida on Oct. 7, with his wife and 9-year-old daughter, he didn’t have a concrete plan for what would happen next. At Orlando International Airport, the family ran into Bridget Williams, the chief of staff for the Orange County school system, who, along with other district staffers, had set up a table at the airport five days earlier to greet Puerto Rican evacuees. They were there to inform them about schooling options and social services available in the Orlando area. Williams perked up when she overheard that Ortiz and his wife taught physics and chemistry at the University of Puerto Rico. By the end of the encounter, Ortiz and his wife had job offers to teach science at one of the district's high schools. The couple may start teaching as early as next week.

They're called "kings." All freshmen. All young men of color. And all determined to upend the dominant narrative about young black men in Washington, D.C. Their public high school — the all-male Ron Brown College Prep — is designed specifically to meet their needs. And for many of the young men, their needs are profound. Two reporters, Education Week's Kavitha Cardoza and NPR's Cory Turner, spent hundreds of hours with teachers, students, and parents from the school's earliest days to the final bell. These three episodes tell the story of Ron Brown's first year.

Some 5,700 houses and structures have been destroyed and many more damaged by the blazes that barreled through Northern California last week. About 100,000 people were displaced, temporarily or permanently. It is still too early to know how many of them were immigrants, who are in the most precarious position of any group. Because many of them are in the country illegally, they are ineligible for most disaster aid, raising concerns that those without places to live will move to other regions where housing is more plentiful and cheaper.

For students who are still learning English and those who are immigrants, forging even small connections with educators and their classmates—as simple as a hallway conversation—can be crucial to keeping those students coming to school and motivated to persevere, both educators and researchers say.

Young children with at least one parent who speaks a language other than English at home are less likely to be enrolled in quality early childhood programs, although it is most critical for those students, according to a national report that includes a 30-state analysis on how different policies affect dual language learners.

As the White House digs in on its immigration legislation, school leaders and immigration advocates across the country face a dilemma in their fight to protect hundreds of thousands of young people from deportation. Trump said the list of proposals must be included as part of any legislation addressing the status of immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children, and whose deportations were deferred by the Obama administration under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. But agreeing to any plan that would prioritize the removal of unaccompanied minors — many of whom have come to the United States from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala in recent years — would create a conundrum for educators and immigration advocates: in order to save DACA recipients, they would have to place another group that has taken refuge in U.S. schools in peril.