Friday was Peter Zamora's last day as the Washington regional counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Zamora sent me a brief e-mail saying he's accepted a job as the senior education counsel for U.S. Sen. Jeff Bingaman, a Democrat from New Mexico. I mention Zamora's job change on this blog because he has been one of the most prominent voices among nonprofit advocacy organizations speaking about English-language learners at various education meetings in the nation's capital. On behalf of MALDEF, he has supported the No Child Left Behind law's current requirements (and U.S. Department ...

Nik Peachy has published online the latest edition of the blog carnival for teaching English-language learners. One of the sites he selected that relates the most to the education of ELLs in primary and secondary schools in the United States (the subject of this blog) is a post, "The Best Sites for K-12 Intermediate English-Language Learners," by Larry Ferlazzo, who founded this particular carnival. Lindsay Clandfield also has an interesting post, "Six computer games to use in an English-language classroom." Peachy includes in his edition of the language-learning carnival criteria for what makes for a good blog post: informative, complete, ...

The National High School Center in Washington will host a Webinar on research-based methods for educating ELLs in high school. A school principal and two researchers will talk about "best practices" for educating ELLs and how these practices can be supported by policies at the district, state, and national levels. The event will be held on Thursday, May 14, from 2 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. Eastern Time. Click here for more details. While the question of how to improve high schools for ELLs is getting more attention in education circles (see this earlier post of mine), I ...

WestEd is sponsoring several free webinars about the education goals of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. One of them will feature members of the English Language Learner Working Group, a group of researchers who have made recommendations for how states and school districts can use federal stimulus funds to improve schooling for ELLs. That webinar will take place on Tuesday, May 26, from 10:30 a.m. to noon Pacific Time. For more details, scroll down to the last event publicized here. Federal education officials have included one example of how to use stimulus funds for ELLs in a ...

I received more questions and comments for today's chat with Margo Gottlieb about assessing ELLs than I could use during the hourlong event. (Find a transcript of the chat here.) Gottlieb told me that if anyone feels his or her voice wasn't heard or topic wasn't addressed, she's willing to respond to questions by e-mail at [email protected] One topic that was really hot on the chat was how to tell whether an English-language learner has a learning disability. If you'd like to weigh in on this or add to the chat discussion in some way, please use the ...

U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan focused on early childhood education, not the needs of English-language learners, while visiting the Oyster-Adams Bilingual School yesterday, according to my colleague Christina Samuels, who reported on the press conference there. Samuels told me this morning she can't recall that he made any mention of ELLs. That's despite the fact he was visiting a school that gives instruction in both English and Spanish to all students, including many ELLs. He could have worked ELLs into the conversation in a number of ways, but didn't. I'm puzzled why the Obama administration seems to be ...

Margo Gottlieb, the lead developer for the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment, or WIDA, consortium, will be answering questions about assessing English-language learners today in a chat. I'll be the moderator. Find more details here....

Superintendent Carol R. Johnson of Boston Public Schools announced today that she's chosen a new director of programs for English-language learners. The new director is Eileen de los Reyes, who served as a program director for the school system from 2002-05. She then led a team responsible for program and professional development for ELLs. She's also been a faculty member for the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Goddard College. (A source tells me the ELL director position had been open for months.) The press release says that Johnson has selected de los Reyes "to reform education of English-language learners ...

After nearly a decade of reporting about Flores v. Arizona, a long-running federal court case concerning funding for ELL programs in Arizona, I finally interviewed the Flores women who are plaintiffs in the case. I talked with Miriam Flores, the parent, a few weeks ago in Nogales, Ariz. I later interviewed her daughter, who has the same name and lives in Tucson, by telephone. They contend that programs for ELLs were deficient and underfunded during the years that the younger Miriam Flores attended schools in Nogales—and still are. The young Miriam is now 22 and a student at the ...

It's not easy these days to get insight into the Obama Administration's priorities for English-language learners. But maybe U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan will fill us in a bit more during his press conference, scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern Time tomorrow at the Oyster-Adams Bilingual School here in the Washington area. The preK-8 school provides all instruction through dual language programs, in which students who are native speakers of English and students who are native speakers of Spanish learn both languages in the same classrooms. The school always has a waiting list for students who want to ...