Over at civilrights.org, a blogger quotes David Goldberg, the senior counsel and senior policy analyst at the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, as saying that the stimulus package doesn’t have any money for high school reform or English-language learners, which Goldberg calls “missed opportunities.”
Many English-language learners, however, would benefit from the billions allocated for Title I, the part of the No Child Left Behind Act for disadvantaged students. According to Quality Counts 2009, 66 percent of ELLs are from families that have an income below 200 percent of the poverty level, while that’s the case with only 37 percent of non-ELLs, and since poverty is a measure of being disadvantaged in schools, ELLs should end up benefiting from some of the economic recovery money.