U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan made a plug for the teaching of foreign languages in elementary and secondary schools last week without mentioning the great resource this country has of children who grow up speaking a language other than English at home.

Sylvia Mendez will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 in honor of her lifelong work in speaking out for the importance of educational equity, according to Latina magazine.

In court yesterday, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr. used the words "illegal aliens" to describe people who are living illegally in this country while Justice Sonia Sotomayor tended to refer to them as "undocumented aliens."

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid initiated the tabling of a procedural vote on the Senate version of the DREAM Act today in an effort to keep the issue alive in Congress.

The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the DREAM Act with a 216-198 vote; eight Republicans voted "yea".

A high school in a suburb of Chicago has implemented "response to intervention" first for its English-language learners and is now expanding the effort to involve all students.

School districts and charter schools could benefit from working together more on how to best serve English-language learners and students with disabilities, Vicki L. Phillips, the director of K-12 education initiatives for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, told me this week.

Juan Sepúlveda will be the guest for a live Web chat hosted by Education Week on Dec. 16 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m., Eastern time, to talk about how the federal government can work with communities to improve achievement among Latinos.

The Obama Administration has put a concerted effort into pushing for passage of the DREAM Act.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano is urging Congress to pass the DREAM Act because, she says, "it would help improve immigration enforcement."