Learning the Language

By December 11, 2008 at 11:05 AM

Yesterday, in a Webinar intended to clarify guidance on the "supplement-not-supplant" provision of Title III, U.S. Department of Education staff relayed four questions that school districts can use to determine if they are spending Title III funds appropriately. The Oct. 2 guidance for the section of the No Child Left Behind Act that authorizes funds for English-language-acquisition programs reiterates a provision of the law that says funds for English-language learners may not be used to replace money from local, state, or federal sources that would otherwise be used for this group of students. The four questions, in the wording ...

By December 11, 2008 at 10:43 AM

Some schools in Mexico are trying to figure out how to best include children from some migrant families who have returned to their home country because of a lack of work in the United States. Some of the children don't speak Spanish at all or have weak skills in reading and writing Spanish, according to an article published today in the Arizona Republic. The trend could eventually lessen the impact that undocumented immigrants have on hospitals and schools in U.S. border areas, a demographer from the Brookings Institute points out in the article. Says one returning Mexican migrant: "The ...

By December 11, 2008 at 10:23 AM

A teacher/blogger from New York City expresses how she feels about teaching in a school that has been labeled as needing "corrective action" under the No Child Left Behind Act. "I'm proud to have 80 percent ELLs in my class," she writes. "The media always puts down these 'underperforming' schools and it's so sad that my school has been categorized this way." (Hat tip to GothamSchools)...

By December 10, 2008 at 3:09 PM

I'm concluding from my colleague Kathleen Kennedy Manzo's article, "Puerto Rico Attains Low NAEP Scores," published today that educators aren't likely to see really strong math skills among many English-language learners moving from Puerto Rico to the mainland United States. The article says that students on the island struggled to answer most of the questions on the National Assessment of Educational Progress in math, administered in 2007. The students took the test in Spanish. Ms. Manzo notes that some education officials in Puerto Rico have written a letter to the U.S. Department of Education arguing that problems with the ...

By December 10, 2008 at 12:45 PM

On Jan. 30, Kathyrn M. Doherty, who has been an important point person for English-language learners in the U.S. Department of Education, is leaving her post with the federal government. She's a special assistant to the Education Department's deputy secretary, Raymond J. Simon, and a political appointee. She told me this week briefly over the telephone that she doesn't have another job lined up. She's expecting a baby in April. Since May, when Margarita Pinkos left her job as the Education Department's director of the office of English-language acquisition, Ms. Doherty has been the department's spokesperson for federal ELL ...

By December 10, 2008 at 10:53 AM

The Grand Forks Herald of Grand Forks, N.D., has published a definition for an English-language learner in that part of the country. The piece, "What is ELL?," accompanies an article published yesterday about how public schools in Grand Forks, N.D., have recently experienced a dramatic increase in enrollment of such students. The newspaper's definition for "English-language learner" includes some technical information about ELL programs, such as that "students can be taken out of the program when they reach [level] 4.5, according to state law, but staff members at schools can decide to continue the ELL education." ELL ...

By December 9, 2008 at 10:53 AM

Staff members of the U.S. Department of Education have provided me with a factual statement about states that have alternative tests for English-language learners for calculating adequate yearly progress under the No Child Left Behind Act—and states that have dropped such tests. They provided me with this statement in response to questions I had about whether federal education officials had told Oregon it had to suspend use of one of its Spanish-language tests. Here's the statement: There have been a few states that stopped using a specialized assessment for ELL students because the test did not meet the ...

By December 5, 2008 at 9:50 AM

Oregon has become the latest state to stop using an alternative test for English-language learners because federal education officials have questioned its comparability with the state's regular test. A number of states have already dropped alternative tests for English-language learners for the same reason. Some educators in Illinois are still upset that the state dropped the use of its simplified English test for ELLs. This is the first time that I've heard of a state having to suspend the use of a Spanish-language test for ELLs. Doug Kosty, the assistant superintendent for assessment and information services for the Oregon Department ...

By December 5, 2008 at 9:45 AM

The Detroit Metro Times has published an in-depth story this week about Iraqis who are new arrivals in Michigan. Called "Bush's War, Our Refugees" it mentions the impact of the new refugees on schools. For example, 21 of 24 students are Iraqis in one of the classes for English-language learners at Sterling Heights High School in Sterling Heights, Mich. The article says that 2,000 Iraqi refugees are expected to settle in Michigan this year. For more about the arrival of Iraqi refugees to the United States, see my post "Iraqi Refugees Trickle to the United States." The Center for ...

By December 5, 2008 at 9:45 AM

Quality Counts 2009, which will be published by Education Week on Jan. 8, focuses on English-language learners, so you'll soon be able to read up-to-date information about state policies concerning these students across the nation. To help illustrate the diversity of English-language learners in this country in the report I visited a school that just opened in the Bronx this school year to serve immigrant youths from ages 16 to 20. Many students at that school had just arrived in New York City over the summer. The school is called the English Language Learners and Support Preparatory Academy, ELLIS, for ...

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