ELL News Headlines

Corinne Davidson is a journalism student at San Diego State University and a member of EdSource's California Student Journalism Corps. In this editorial, she writes, "My mom always talks about Cantonese being my first language, but it’s hard to believe now that I can barely understand it."

In the spring of last year, Rachel and Yariel Colon came to Allentown from the Dominican Republic. For the siblings — both students at South Mountain Middle School — the move has made for a relatively smooth transition because their classmates have been so welcoming.

The 2023 English Language Learning (ELL) summer program on the Vineyard wrapped up its classes earlier this month. The program serves English language learners in kindergarten through seventh grade.

Denver schools remain intensely segregated by race and family income — conditions that have persisted for decades and play a major role in shaping educational opportunities, a new study finds. 

Virginia Vasquez, 16, only started learning English five years ago when she and her family left Venezuela for a better life in the U.S. Like generations of immigrant teens before her, Virginia has become a crucial lifeline for her family as she translates invoices and bills and other information for her Spanish-speaking parents, who left behind careers as an elementary school teacher and a horse trainer and now clean offices in the Tampa, Florida, area.

Boston Public Schools anticipates an additional 2,000 students to enroll in summer learning programs this year compared with last year, thanks in part to the expansion of a program that combines enrichment activities with coordinating classroom lessons.

In February, Montana state Rep. Lola Sheldon-Galloway proposed a bill that would have banned social-emotional learning in schools, arguing that the lessons that emphasize regulation of emotions, healthy relationships, and empathy violated parents’ right to direct their own children’s upbringing. However, by the end of the Feb. 27 education committee hearing on the bill, during which educators, lawmakers, and parents lined up to speak in opposition, Sheldon-Galloway, a Republican, had changed her mind. The committee ultimately tabled the bill, but the discussion highlighted three intertwined themes: Confusion over what comprises social and emotional learning; the political backlash it’s generated in recent years, linked to other political lightning rods like critical race theory; and finally, how the opposition softens once it’s explained.

The State Seal of Biliteracy was adopted by California in 2012. High school graduates can receive the gold seal on their high school diploma or transcript if they demonstrate proficiency in English and another language. Yet many students, particularly English learners, don’t receive the state seal of biliteracy, even though they are bilingual, because there aren’t enough options to show students are proficient in English, according to some advocates and district and county officials. A bill currently in the Legislature, Assembly Bill 370, aims to change that.

Amanda Marie Rosas (she/her) teaches Spanish and Women's Studies at Visitation High School in Mendota Heights, Minnesota. She writes, "Working as a World Languages teacher, my job is to erase the pressures of perfectionism that impede our students’ progress toward language fluency and proficiency. I want to create a learning environment that embraces and affirms the humanity of each student and prioritizes our relationships with one another. Learning a new language is often challenging, and being vulnerable enough to make pronunciation, verb conjugation or listening comprehension mistakes can be embarrassing, especially for a student being evaluated based on their ability to learn it. Yet, if learning a new language is going to stick, being bold enough to take risks is essential."

or years, Suyapa Jaqueline Trejo watched her community dwindle as many of her neighbors looked for a better life in the U.S. When she was elected mayor in 2021, she began to think of ways to seek help from those who had left Macuelizo, a municipality of about 40,000 that's made up of several villages in northwest Honduras.