ELL News Headlines

One state is signaling the growing importance of bilingual skills by touting its young people who are fluent in more than one language. Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper recently signed into law a bipartisan bill establishing a Seal of Biliteracy program, which recognizes high school graduates who are proficient in a second language. The legislation takes effect during the 2017-18 school year, and school district participation is voluntary.

If you know anything about New Orleans public schools, you probably know this: Hurricane Katrina wiped them out and almost all the schools became privately run charters. The thing is, students across New Orleans face high rates of exposure to trauma, but school discipline policies have rarely accounted for that. Crocker College Prep is now one of five New Orleans charter schools in a collective to become more trauma-informed. That means Crocker aims to account for the social, emotional and behavioral needs of all students, and their lives outside of school.

One morning early in his freshman year at Cornell University, Ahmed Ahmed got a writing assignment back, flipped it over and stared at the letter in shock: C+. He went to his biology class, where the professor displayed a large graph showing the distribution of the grades for the exam, for which, like the writing assignment, Ahmed had studied really hard. The average was 85, with a very small deviation. He got his exam, turned it over: 69. He walked quickly to a lake near campus, wiping away tears. Even with his always-laughing, perennially optimistic personality, Ahmed couldn’t help but realize that despite everything he had done to earn a spot at Cornell, and how much a degree from the Ivy League school could transform his own life and his family’s, hard work might not be enough.

The push in the nation's school districts to staff classrooms with more males of color has become increasingly urgent. In 2014, students of color became the majority demographic group in public schools, yet only 2 percent of U.S. teachers are Latino men, fewer than 2 percent are black men, and just half a percent are Asian men. Boston Public Schools wants to advance the effort to recruit teachers who reflect the student body and make sure they remain in the system.

Zainab Adisa's love for writing blossomed in high school, but it took her some time to get there. She spent several years in elementary school in English as a second language classes. Adisa was born in the United States, but her family immigrated from Nigeria. Her family spoke Yoruba at home, which made learning English challenging, she said.  The senior at Pittsburgh Creative and Preforming Arts school was recently awarded the Gold Medal Portfolio scholarship from National Scholastic for her poetry, fiction and non-fiction writing. She was one of only 16 students in the country to receive the award out of more than 330,000 applicants.

For families who don't speak English at home, high school graduations can be a time of stress and confusion, especially with language and cultural barriers. To help address these issues, U.S. Grant High School in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, held a commencement tailored for families of English-language learner students in its "newcomer" program last week with the majority of the event conducted in Spanish with Arabic and French translators on hand.

This year, Ramadan will begin on Saturday, May 27, when many schools have yet to finish for the summer. For schools, it’s important to provide an environment for students where they feel safe to practice their religion, but maybe more importantly, one that ensures their well-being during the school day.

Like many rural communities, Storm Lake, Iowa, has seen a swift change in its student demographics in recent years. The number of students still learning English has skyrocketed in the town. English-language learners (ELL) account for 41 percent of the student body, and when you include students who have successfully exited language-service programs, that number climbs to nearly 60 percent. But while this segment of the student population has grown at a fast clip, the district has struggled to hire teachers trained to serve them.  

Hanseul Kang is the state superintendent of education in the District of Columbia. In this essay, she writes, "I was born in South Korea and came to the United States when I was 7 months old, on Christmas Eve, 1982. When I was 16 — excited to get a driver's license and apply to college — I learned that I was undocumented. In one afternoon, my world turned upside down. With all the trappings of a high school overachiever, I had assumed I could attend pretty much any college or university. But without access to federal financial aid, I might not be able to go at all. I couldn't work, couldn’t drive, couldn't travel outside the country. Even worse was the terrifying possibility that my family might be discovered and deported."

Colorado educators who led the way in developing high school diploma endorsements recognizing bilingual students worry that new legislation establishing statewide standards for such "seals of biliteracy" sets the bar too low.