Policy and English Language Learners

This book provides a critical discussion of the role that select K-12 educational policies have and continue to play in failing Latino students. The author includes specific recommendations that aim to raise achievement, college transition rates, and success among Latino students across the pre-school through college continuum. Chapters cover high dropout rates, access to college-preparation resources, testing and accountability, financial aid, the Dream Act, and affirmative action.

English Learners are the fastest-growing segment of the K–12 population and educators of ELLs are often in a unique position to provide a voice for their needs. This book demystifies the techniques of advocacy for ELLs, including creating a shared sense of responsibility for ELL success, guidance for administrators, and tips for advocacy for ELLs' success beyond Grade 12.

Expanding on a popular report supported by the Campaign for Educational Equity (Teachers College), this accessible guide compiles the most up-to-date research findings to demonstrate how ignoring children's bilingualism perpetuates inequities in their schooling.

Written in a user-friendly question and answer format, this outstanding guide compiles a number of questions and concerns from administrators around the country and provides concise answers written by more than 50 leading ELL experts and researchers. Major themes include policy and accountability requirements, the school-community connection, language acquisition, program development and implementation, assessment, and advocacy. Strongly recommended for pre-service study groups, professional development activities, and professional learning communities.

With increasing numbers of ELLs posing unique challenges and opportunities for schools, the authors address educators' concerns in a concise and accessible way. The book provides a basic but comprehensive introduction that serves as a state-of-the-art guide to the field, using a straightforward Q&A format designed to focus sharply on the major issues, such as the research on effectiveness of various programs, and assessment and accountability for ELLs.

Through the lens of New York City schools, this book explores how high-stakes tests mandated by No Child Left Behind have become de facto language policy in U.S. schools, detailing how testing has shaped curriculum and instruction, and the myriad ways that tests are now a defining force in the daily lives of English Language Learners and the educators who serve them.

Pulling together the most up-to-date research on the effects of restrictive language policies, this timely volume focuses on what we know about the actual outcomes for students and teachers in California, Arizona, and Massachusetts, states where these policies have been adopted. Prominent legal experts in bilingual education analyze these policies and specifically consider whether the new data undermine their legal viability. Other prominent contributors examine alternative policies and how these have fared.

This foundational textbook equips pre-service and in-service educators with the knowledge and skills they need to make informed language and literacy education decisions in school. De Jong goes beyond traditional discussions about "the best bilingual or multilingual model", and introduces four core principles that are applicable across a wide range of multilingual contexts (including bilingual, multilingual, and English-medium programs): Striving for Educational Equity; Affirming Identities; Promoting Additive Bi/Multilingualism; and Structuring for Integration.

Dr. Wayne E. Wright offers a timely overview of the ELL field for educators and administrators that includes chapters about: ELL demographics; second-language theory; historical background; ELL policy at the federal, state, and local level; ELL assessment; language instruction; content-area instruction; primary language support; and technology in the classroom. Chapters tools such as guiding questions, activities, key terms, supporting documents, and exercises available on a companion website make this an essential resource for pre-service courses and professional development.

It has become a major challenge for the United States' public policy, educational system, and non-governmental aid organizations to help the vast numbers of young immigrants and refugees to have successful lives and careers and to fulfill their potential in their new country.

"Corson takes a critical stance on language policy, providing a strong but accessible theoretical foundation for why and how language policy can inform what ultimately happens in schools and classrooms. And there is more: The book includes myriad case studies and examples from actual school sites in a style of writing that will ring true to teachers and administrators.

Educators are at the epicenter of language policy in education. This book explores how they interpret, negotiate, resist, and (re)create language policies in classrooms. Bridging the divide between policy and practice by analyzing their interconnectedness, it examines the negotiation of language education policies in schools around the world, focusing on educators' central role in this complex and dynamic process… Discussion questions are included in each chapter.

This monumental collection presents the first-ever sociological analysis of the No Child Left Behind Act and its effects on children, teachers, parents, and schools. More importantly, these leading sociologists consider whether NLCB can or will accomplish its major goal: to eliminate the achievement gap by 2014. Based on theoretical and empirical research, the essays examine the history of federal educational policy and place NCLB in a larger sociological and historical context.

How solid is the Supreme Court precedent, Plyler v. Doe, that allows undocumented children the opportunity to attend public school K-12 free of charge? What would happen if the Supreme Court overruled it? What is the DREAM Act and how would this proposed federal law affect the lives of undocumented students? How have immigration raids affected public school children and school administrators? To shed some light on these vital questions, the authors provide a critical analysis of the various legal and policy aspects of the U.S. educational system.

Product Description: The Flat World and Education offers an eye-opening wake-up call concerning America's future and vividly illustrates what the United States needs to do to build a system of high-achieving and equitable schools that ensures every child the right to learn.

Drawing on both extensive demographic data and compelling case studies, this powerful book reveals the depths of the educational crisis looming for Latino students, the nation's largest and most rapidly growing minority group. Richly informative and accessibly written, The Latino Education Crisis describes the cumulative disadvantages faced by too many children in the complex American school systems, where one in five students is Latino… and will be essential reading for everyone involved in planning the future of American schools.

Product Description: In this ambitious book, Rosemary Salomone uses the heated debate over how best to educate immigrant children as a way to explore what national identity means in an age of globalization, trans-nationalism, and dual citizenship. She reveals the little-known legislative history of bilingual education, its dizzying range of meanings in different schools, districts, and states, and the difficulty in proving or disproving whether it works — or defining it as a legal right.

The chapters in this important book provide up-to-date syntheses of the research base for young ELLs on critical topics such as demographics, development of bilingualism, cognitive and neurological benefits of bilingualism, and family relationships, as well as classroom, assessment, and teacher-preparation practices. Each chapter reviews the research and answers the following questions: What does the research clearly indicate for policy and practice?; How solid is this database and what findings are emerging?; What should the research agenda be for young ELLs?