ELL News Headlines

State courts have sparred with politicians for decades over how much money lawmakers are constitutionally obligated to provide public schools. But in Kansas this year, lawmakers and school officials are asking deeper questions about not only how much money is spent but also where to invest that money to assure that black, Latino, and low-income students, in particular, are seeing academic results.

House Democrats are asking the Trump administration to send a clear message reminding the nation's public schools that, despite recent changes in federal immigration enforcement policy, they are still legally obligated to educate undocumented children. The representatives expressed concern that the educational rights of undocumented students may be overlooked as the new administration cracks down on those in the country illegally. The Supreme Court ruled 25 years ago that U.S. public schools must serve all children, regardless of their immigration status.

Here’s a fun trivia question for you. Putting aside the fact that these are written works for children, what do Pippi Longstocking, the Moomins, many of the books by Cornelia Funke, Press Here by Hervé Tullet, and the works of Hans Christian Andersen and the Brothers Grimm all have in common? If you said every one of these was a work of translation, you have earned yourself a cookie. It should come as no surprise to many of us that quite a few classic books for kids that we treasure and love originated in other countries.

In a school cafeteria adorned with whimsical children’s artwork, the men and women hunched over thick packets of paper one recent night, fiddling with pen caps and rubbing their foreheads as they confronted a challenge: preparing for what happens if immigration agents show up at the door. Some at this clinic in Northern Virginia were undocumented, and others had relatives in that situation. Some had legal status but were not permanent residents, and they wondered what shifts in federal immigration policy would mean for them and their relatives. The PTA at Ramsay Elementary in Alexandria, VA sponsored the March 22 clinic, supplying pizza and providing volunteers to care for children of those who came to hear from immigration lawyers and other experts.

Washington, D.C.'s Capital City Public Charter School feels like a mini United Nations. Many of the school’s 981 students are first-generation Americans with backgrounds spanning the globe, from El Salvador to Nigeria to Vietnam. So when the staff of the literacy non-profit 826DC began a book-publishing project with the junior class, they picked a topic everyone could relate to that also left room for cultural expression: food. Writing coaches asked students to think of a family recipe with a backstory — and then write an essay around that dish. The 81 recipes and their accompanying stories that resulted make up a cookbook of global cuisine with a heartfelt touch, revealing that storytelling may be the most important step in any recipe.

March Mammal Madness was created five years ago by Katie Hinde, an evolutionary biologist at Arizona State University, though now, she says, the competition depends on a whole team of volunteer scientists and conservationists: biologists, animal behaviorists, paleoanthropologists, marine biologists. It's a competition that has been playing out online and in hundreds of classrooms over the past month. Real animals wage fictional battles, while students use science — a lot of it — to try to predict the winner.

Black and Hispanic students with promising test scores are far less likely than similarly skilled white students to be enrolled in college-level classes in Palm Beach County's public high schools, a disparity that school district leaders blame in part on "implicit bias" in the schools.

Seattle and Beijing-based publishing company Candied Plums, the children’s book imprint of Paper Republic LLC, has entered the American market with a list of 20 contemporary English and bilingual picture books from China. Candied Plums publisher Richard Lee launched the company in December 2016, after seeing an increased market for Chinese-language books, particularly in schools and public libraries.

Teacher Kathleen Melville writes, "When I met my students on their first day of high school, most of them were not readers. They knew how to read, but they thought of reading as teacher-mandated drudgery. Some of their indifference to the written word could be attributed to the drill-and-test regimen common in urban elementary schools. After nine years as students in these schools, my students are very familiar with isolated 'passages' and multiple-choice comprehension questions and much less acquainted with books that inspire curiosity or reflect their experiences. But the problem extends beyond school policy and begins before kindergarten; the lack of children's literature that is representative of urban children, people of color, and the wide diversity of society is well-documented. And it means that most of my students have come to know books as largely irrelevant to their lives."

March 31 is Cesar Chavez's birthday and a holiday in California, Colorado and Texas. The Los Angeles Times has republished his obituary along with photos of Chavez from the archives.