Texas programs for limited-English kids get mixed grades
About three in 10 Texas students whose native tongue isn’t English are failing to make significant progress in mastering the language, according to a national report released Wednesday.
The state’s progress rate was worse than the U.S. average. Nationally, the report found, about 25 percent of limited-English students are not moving closer to mastery.
On the upside for Texas, a greater percentage of the English language learners here already have reached proficiency. More than one-quarter of those students met the English passing standard in Texas, compared with 17 percent nationwide, according to the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center.
The study from the Maryland nonprofit comes as the Texas Education Agency is working on a court-ordered plan to improve programs for limited-English students. State lawmakers also are expected to consider bills on the topic after they reconvene next week.
Free ESL course offered by COS in South County
College of the Sequoias and Community Services Employment Training are joining forces to bring free English as a second language courses back to Pixley and Visalia beginning next week.
Anyone, not only those whose primary language is Spanish, who wants to learn English is invited to register at no cost and can join the class at any time during the semester.
Documentation is not required to attend the classes. CSET welcomes businesses and their employees to take advantage of this opportunity.
This is the third semester that classes are being offered at no cost to the public.
Class times are:
– Visalia — Tuesdays and Thursdays from 5:10 to 7:10 p.m. at 312 N.W. 3rd Ave., Visalia.
– Pixley — Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6 to 8 p.m. at 43 S. Main St., Pixley.
For more information or to register, call Rose Salazar in Visalia, 732-4194, or Erika Perez in Pixley, 757-1601.
– Contact Anita Stackhouse-Hite at 784-5000, Ext. 1043, or astackhouse-hite@portervillerecorder.com.
Screening Students Proves to Be Crucial
On the day before Lexus Barak Garcia is to start 8th grade in Gwinnett County, Ga., the 12-year-old takes part in a rite of passage shared by English-language learners nationwide: a screening test for students whose parents have said they speak a language other than English at home.
Lexus is a U.S. citizen born in New York City whose native language is Spanish. When he was 2 years old, his mother, Mercedes Garcia, took him to the Dominican Republic, where he lived until coming back last year to live with relatives.
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Education Week: Screening Students Proves to Be Crucial.
ELLs and the Law: Statutes, Precedents
Case law and statutes involving the right of English-learners to a public education—and the responsibilities of state and local governments to provide it—stretch back decades and continue to evolve. These are among the cases and laws that scholars and advocates consider landmarks in the area of the rights of language-minority and immigrant students:
Meyer v. Nebraska (1923)
In the first U.S. Supreme Court case to address foreign-language teaching in American education, the justices struck down a Nebraska law that barred public and private schools from offering instruction in any language but English. A teacher in an evangelical Lutheran private school had been charged with reading a Bible story in German to a student, in violation of a law adopted at one peak of anti-immigrant sentiment.
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Education Week: ELLs and the Law: Statutes, Precedents.
English-Learners Pose Policy Puzzle
English-Learners Pose Policy PuzzleThe task of ensuring that millions of children learn English—and succeed academically—is putting pressure on states and school districts as they push to boost student achievement overall.
Here, in the nation’s largest school system, the face of the typical student is, increasingly, that of a child whose parents were born somewhere other than the United States—and, in many cases, someone who enters school speaking little or no English.
More than half of New York City’s nearly 1 million public school students have at least one foreign-born parent. This school year, 148,000 students are classified as English-language learners, or ELLs—up from 109,000 in the 1990-91 school year. By the end of this school year, about 30,000 more such students will have enrolled, the city education department projects.
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Education Week: English-Learners Pose Policy Puzzle.
Who’s hiring now - Education jobs on the rise in 2009
Education is growing at a healthy clip in 2008. The industry added more than 126,400 jobs during the first eight months of the year. Many factors are contributing to the industry’s surge. The movement toward universal preschool and all-day kindergarten will require more preschool and kindergarten teachers.
A necessity for more special education teachers is the result of a greater emphasis on classroom inclusion of disabled students. To meet the needs of special education and ESL students, classrooms will need additional teacher assistants. More high school graduates will attend college and professionals will return to school to enhance or update skills therefore feeding the demand for postsecondary teachers.
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Who’s hiring now — Newsday.com.
Minnesota lagging in number of ESL teachers
A study by Education Week magazine found a 49-to-1 ratio of ESL students to certified teachers in Minnesota. Nationally, the ratio stands at 19 to 1.
At Mississippi Elementary School in Coon Rapids, 100 out of 415 students speak a language at home other than English.
There are two teachers — Emily Suedbeck and Jeremy Rubel — assigned to get those students over the hump of not only mastering a new language, but learning their subject matter as well. Among those students are at least 18 foreign languages. The ESL teachers circulate among the school’s classrooms, helping keep those students from falling behind their classmates.
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Minnesota lagging in number of ESL teachers.
ESL tutors help foreign students attain fluency in everyday English
Memphis Literacy Council volunteers Dr. Jose Moréy and Ke Qi began a recent lesson by asking one student to introduce herself to the class.
“I am from Japan,” said Makiko Watanabe cautiously, pausing to formulate sentences in her mind before speaking them. “I am a researcher. I am working at St. Jude.”
Volunteer ESL instructor Jose Moréy is currently working with researchers at St. Jude who are from Japan.
Volunteer ESL instructor Jose Moréy is currently working with researchers at St. Jude who are from Japan.
Report: English-learning students struggling
About one-third of Texas students who don’t speak English as their first language are not making progress in learning it, compared with about a quarter of such students nationwide, according to a national report being released today.
“A lot of progress has been made in recent years to understand who (English-language learners) are and how they perform in school,” said Christopher Swanson, the director of Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, which authored the report. “But it is clear that many of these students are struggling.”
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American Statesman Report: English-learning students struggling.
Ohio needs more English-language teachers, study says
Ohio is in need of more educators certified to teach English language due to the rising number of students who listed English as a second language. Cleveland’s English-language learners primarily speak Spanish, but the district also counts 75 other languages among its students.
Ohio schools need more specially trained teachers to educate a growing number of students whose primary language is not English, a new study says.
From 1995 to 2005, the number of so-called English-language learners in Ohio jumped more than 60 percent, to 27,616, according to a study released today by Education Week magazine. The study said the increase was part of a nationwide surge that saw totals triple in some states, primarily in the Southeast.
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Ohio needs more English-language teachers, study says - Metro - cleveland.com.