Education

A Good Read: A Story About a Refugee Kid Named Bill Clinton

By Mary Ann Zehr — February 12, 2009 1 min read
  • Save to favorites
  • Print

The eighth installment of a series about a school year in the life of a 9-year-old named Bill Clinton Hadam didn’t say one thing that this reader wanted to know: How did a Congolese boy who grew up in a refugee camp in Tanzania get that name? I had to turn to the fine print in “about this project” over at the Christian Science Monitor to learn that bit of information.

But in a very captivating way, this week’s “Who’s failing—the student or the test?” installment of the series “Little Bill Clinton: A school year in the life of a new American” uses Bill Clinton’s progress in school to illustrate the mismatch between English-language learners and some of the accountability provisions under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Relish the writing and in-depth reporting in this series because it’s rare these days that a reporter has a chance to follow a single student for a whole school year and produce a multimedia series about it. I’m definitely jealous.

A version of this news article first appeared in the Learning the Language blog.