Science and Teacher Training Are On ELL Chief's Agenda

Rosalinda B. Barrera, the new director of the U.S. Department of Education’s office of English-language acquisition, plans to use the “bully pulpit” of her office to draw national attention to the need for English-learners to receive high-quality science instruction.
—Stephen Voss for Education Week

By Mary Ann Zehr | Ed Week
November 12, 2010

Washington

Rosalinda B. Barrera, the new director of the U.S. Department of Education’s office of English-language acquisition, has a strong interest in improving science instruction for English-language learners and building the overall capacity of the nation’s teachers to work with such students.

“In this day and age, with the diaspora of English-language learners across the nation, it behooves us to prepare all teachers to work with ELLs,” Ms. Barrera said this week.

In a 45-minute interview, the former dean of the college of education at Texas State University-San Marcos focused on how she aims to increase awareness of the needs of ELLs nationally through new research studies and by ensuring that such students benefit from existing federal initiatives or grant programs. But she stopped short of revealing her position on any proposed policy changes to affect English-learners.

Ms. Barrera “is not one who has been on the regular scene on the national policy level,” but she is well known in the fields of teacher education and bilingualism and biliteracy, said Kris D. Gutiérrez, a professor of literacy and learning sciences at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the president of the Washington-based American Educational Research Association.

“I was excited when I learned of the appointment that they were selecting someone who brought in a deep understanding of the language processes and practices of the English-language learners,” added Ms. Gutiérrez, who has known Ms. Barrera professionally and personally for 25 years.

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Groups Say ELLs Got Short Shrift in Race to the Top

This is so shameful.

Also check out the letter NALEO sent to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan stating that “future competitive selection grants processes should place more weight on the ELL criteria in the scoring and review process.” The letter also mentions that they “are concerned that state applicants are not required to offer a comprehensive ELL strategy as part of their application for [Race to the Top] funds.”

-Patricia

Federal officials promise to do better when they provide technical assistance to states
By Mary Ann Zehr | Ed Week
September 27, 2010

Three civil rights groups contend the U.S. Department of Education failed to give adequate attention to the needs of English-language learners in the $3.4 billion Race to the Top state grant competition and say they plan to hold federal education officials accountable for promises they will give them more attention in the future.

“The applications [for winners] rarely mentioned English-language learners, except in passing and rarely fleshed out any thought to how they were going to close the achievement gap for ELLs,” said Roger L. Rice, the executive director of Multicultural Education, Training and Advocacy of Somerville, Mass., in an interview last week.

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The Feds Give an Update on ELL Demographics

Here's the NCES's recent report "Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Groups"

Here are the tables with data on bilingual learners (also referred to as English language learners).

-Patricia

Mary Ann Zehr | Ed Week
July 20, 2010

About 5 percent of all elementary and secondary students in the United States speak a language other than English at home and have difficulty speaking English, according to parent surveys, says a federal trend report.

"The Status and Trends in the Education of Racial and Ethnic Minorities" report provides the latest data describing English-language learners in this country. It says that in 2007, the most recent year for which data is available, 11 million school-age children spoke a language other than English at home. That equals 21 percent of all students. The report says that one in four of the students who spoke a native language other than English at home had difficulty with English, according to their parents.

Another way of stating that last statistic is that three out of four children who speak a language other than English at home speak English with ease. That indicates to me that commonly, the children of immigrants are learning English.

The categories for reporting English proficiency are "very well," "well," "not well," and "not at all." If parents reported that children spoke English less than "very well," they were counted as speaking English with difficulty.