ELL News Headlines

Ileana Najarro, a 2015 graduate of Stanford, is a business reporter at The Houston Chronicle. In this personal essay about Stanford's graduation ceremony for Latino students, she writes, "There was no more special way to honor (my parents) than by participating in Nuestra Graduación, the separate graduation ceremony for Latino students at Stanford, a tradition that was started in the 1970s… These ceremonies aren't held in place of official graduation ceremonies, but are an additional celebration of the work of students from marginalized communities. So often, students who come from backgrounds that aren't well represented at their college feel that they don't belong; or if they fit in, they may end up feeling distanced from the communities they came from. Alternative ceremonies are an acknowledgment of a community within the college — an opportunity to honor collective perseverance in the face of unique challenges."

A new survey shows that serious obstacles impede Latino families' quest for autism diagnosis and treatment in the United States. Challenges include a lack of information about autism and a concern that consulting experts might bring them legal trouble. The findings may help explain why Latino children with autism are diagnosed later on average than non-Latino white children in the U.S.

Traci Chun, a teacher-librarian at Skyview High School in Vancouver, Washington, is all done with shushing. "When my library is quiet, that's a red flag," said Chun. In fact, the busier it is, the better — whether it's kids experimenting with the Makey Makey circuitry or uploading designs to a 3D printer, or a class learning media literacy or a student seeking advice on a video she’s editing at one of the computer workstations.

Linnea Van Eman, the gifted education coordinator for the Tulsa school district, sees too many gifted students who simply don't have the language skills to show what they can do. The 36,000-student Oklahoma district has been pushing hard to bring more students from traditionally underrepresented groups—and English-language learners in particular — into its gifted program. Using a combination of more-diverse testing, greater parent outreach, and closer observation, Van Eman and her teachers are working to fill equity gaps in the district's advanced programs.

For months this year, shootings on Chicago's West Side kept hundreds of students at one school inside for recess. Some students protested gun violence by marching for peace and going outside to play.

An Arizona-born charter school known for its call-center-like appearance has run into trouble as it attempted to expand to other states. Carpe Diem schools, which rely on computer-based lessons and some in-person instruction, began in 2006 and opened five additional schools in Texas, Ohio and Indiana about five years ago. This week, one of the schools in Indiana is closing. The management agency charged with implementing the expansion has been disbanded, leaving the four remaining spin-off schools to rethink their strategy. Some have ditched the cubicles and are giving teachers more autonomy to go off script, as they scramble to boost anemic enrollment.

Maria Blanco did a double take when the Google alert popped up in her inbox late last week: President Trump had reversed his campaign pledge and decided to continue a federal program temporarily suspending deportations of young people who are in the country illegally. The news thrilled Blanco, an attorney who heads the University of California Immigrant Legal Services Center — the nation's first and only university system to provide free legal aid to students without legal status and their families. But her excitement was quashed within hours, when administration officials clarified that they still had made "no final determination”"on the program — called Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA — leaving in question the fate of 750,000 young immigrants under its protection. An estimated 3,700 students without legal status attend UC campuses.

A kids-centric dual-language center in the Financial District that provides "complete immersion into the Russian language and culture" is opening a second outpost on West 50th Street. Enrichment programs will include drama, art and dance classes conducted in Russian; math classes conducted in English; gifted-and-talented test prep and bilingual speech therapy services, she added.

The Department of Education is scaling back investigations into civil rights violations at the nation’s public schools and universities, easing off mandates imposed by the Obama administration that the new leadership says have bogged down the agency.

There's a growing movement in the nation's schools to overhaul parent-teacher conferences. In hundreds of schools in the District and elsewhere, these conferences look drastically different as educators seek to build stronger relationships with parents and equip families with tools to reinforce classroom concepts at home. Teachers and parents meet in a large group setting at least three times a year, sometimes with students present. They discuss how students are performing on key measures such as reading comprehension and mastery of math concepts. Parents leave the meetings with games and other activities they can use at home to reinforce classroom learning.