Park City School District in Utah is the latest school district I've heard of that is requiring new teachers to get an English-as-a-second-language endorsement. Deseret News reports that the district is requiring all new teachers to get an ESL endorsement within the first three years of their employment. Only three states—Arizona, Florida, and New York—require all prospective teachers to show they are competent to teach English-language learners, according to Quality Counts 2009, "Portrait of a Population: How English-Language Learners Are Putting Schools to the Test." But one by one, school districts are approving policies that require their teachers...

Kirsten E. Gillibrand, New York's new senator, has told elected Latino officials that she supports a congressional bill that would provide a path to legalization for undocumented students who grew up in the United States and are attending college, according to the New York Times. That bill, called the DREAM Act, which is short for Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors Act, last stalled in the U.S. Congress in November 2007. Despite Gillibrand's pledge of support for the DREAM Act, the Times' Feb. 1 article also says that some Latino officials didn't sound convinced that she was sincere ...

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, in Tyler, Texas, has decided that Texas may wait to overhaul the state's programs for secondary English-language learners until the appeals court decides if a lower court was correct in ruling that the state's programs don't comply with federal law. (Click here for the court document granting the stay.) William Wayne Justice, a senior U.S. district judge for the eastern district of Texas, Tyler division, ruled in July in U.S. v. Texas that Texas violates the federal Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974 by not providing adequate programs ...

Among the posts selected for the 9th edition of the EFL/ESL/ELL Blog Carnival is one by EFL Classroom 2.0 about Project Peace, which aims to help teachers of English-language learners around the world share ideas about how to teach about peace. Some of the other posts give teachers advice on how to shape lessons on various elements of the English language, such as how to use adverbs. Larry Ferlazzo of Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day is the founder of this English-learning Carnival. I hosted the 8th edition....

This week marks the two-year anniversary for this blog about English-language learners at Education Week. The interactive format has helped me to do a better job of covering issues about these students than when I was simply a print reporter. That's because many of you have sent me interesting articles or news tips that have led to blog posts or stories in the newspaper. Thank you and keep it up. The most popular blog item in two years has been "What's in a Home-Language Survey?," which leads me to believe there's not a whole lot of information out there about ...

James J. Lyons, a former executive director of the National Association for Bilingual Education, is back in town after an absence of a decade and is speaking out about issues concerning English-language learners. He was the executive director of NABE from 1989-1998. It turns out that Mr. Lyons has been hired by a number of affiliates of the National Association for Bilingual Education, or NABE, to express their views to federal education officials and members of Congress on issues affecting ELLs. Mr. Lyons' first step on behalf of these state groups was to send a letter last week to U.S....

"Lonely Language Learners?" in Teaching Tolerance magazine's spring issue emphasizes the social aspects of a dual-language program at La Escuela Fratney in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The article pitches such a program as giving English-language learners an opportunity to speak up in class, while in a regular English-only classroom, they might be ignored. In the program, students who are dominant in English and students who are dominant in Spanish learn both languages in the same classroom. It facilitates "social inclusion," the article says....

It was mentioned during the presidential campaign that Sen. Joe Biden would no longer have to commute back to Delaware by Amtrak on weekends if he became vice president of the United States. The flip side of that statement is that Jill Biden, his wife, would no longer live in Delaware. She's moved to the Washington area and has been hired to teach two classes this semester at the Alexandria campus of the Northern Virginia Community College. She's teaching English as a second language and developmental English, according to a Washington Post blog, 44: The Obama Presidency. The blog post ...

Rick Nahmias, an internationally recognized photographer, has helped high school students from Los Angeles to create a photo exhibit about immigration. It's called "The Way We See It" and features photos of the students' own families and community. Hat tip to ImmigrationProf Blog. I promote these kinds of projects on this blog whenever I hear about them in the hopes that it might give educators of English-language learners ideas for how they can build connections between students and people outside of schools....

Dearborn, Mich., schools' superintendent clarified his district's language policy after a consultant wrote in a report that the district should "prohibit the use of any language other than English" except when necessary for communication with parents. The report is posted on the district's Web site. I wrote about the clarification in "Curb on Arabic Use Urged, but Rejected, in Dearborn District," published this week in Education Week. Superintendent Brian Whiston told me in an interview that the district doesn't have any intention of restricting the use of languages other than English among students. He added, though, that he believes that ...