"NEWS Headlines" provides access to full-text articles written about education, society and language in daily newspapers, periodicals and electronic media from around the world. "Featured Reports" highlights interesting articles from the educational research community. "Multimedia Reports " provides recent broadcasts addressing multilingual, multicultural issues. "Teacher Education and Professional Development" reviews articles and reports on teaching excellence to raise student performance. Articles and resources listed here are not necessarily endorsed by the CMMR; they are listed for informational purposes only. These current awareness resources are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather a sampling of what is currently available. If you would like to submit an item for inclusion on this page please write our webmaster. To suggest a site to be added to this web site please visit our "Submit a Site" page.

NEWS HEADLINES

• American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many - (Part 1) (Audio and written reports)

  This is the first in a two-part NPR report by Charla Bear. -- For the government, it was a possible solution to the so-called Indian problem. For the tens of thousands of Indians who went to boarding schools, it's largely remembered as a time of abuse and desecration of culture. The government still operates a handful of off-reservation boarding schools, but funding is in decline. Now many American Indians are fighting to keep the schools open.

  (Part 2) - American Indian School a Far Cry from the Past. - These days, most American Indian children go to public schools. But remnants still exist of the boarding-school system the federal government set up for Indian children in the late 1800s. Some people, such as U.S. officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs, question whether the government should continue to be in the boarding-school business. Charla Bear reports for NPR that many students at these schools say they are a necessary escape from the poverty and addiction that plague many reservations. Until the 1960s, the government schools tried to expel Indian culture among students. They were severely punished if they practiced Indian ways. That isn't the case anymore. Teachers are working to revive American Indian customs. A recent federal budget change is cutting each boarding school's funding by hundreds of thousands of dollars. Officials at the Bureau of Indian Affairs say they know these schools are in financial trouble. But they disagree over whether the federal government should even be running Indian schools in the 21st century.
  

  
  

• Report: Federal Program Fails to Improve Reading Skills (Video)

  WASHINGTON DC -- An Education Department report disclosed the ineffectiveness of No Child Left Behind's $6 billion student reading program. State education officials Douglas Christensen of Nebraska and Michele Goady of Maryland debate Reading First's merits in a recent PBS Newshour video report. A Transcript of the program is also available at the PBS NewsHour site.
  

  
  

• ESOL Training Cut Would Be Felt in South Florida

  MIAMI, FL -- One in every seven students in Miami-Dade and Broward public schools is learning English as a second language. Despite special training for reading teachers who work with them, these students are not very likely to read at grade level or graduate from high school. Yet several North Florida legislators are trying for a second time to slash training requirements for reading teachers. Advocates for students learning English say they will be handicapped by teachers with less training, and cuts might run afoul of a 1990 legal settlement that led to the special training in the first place. (Miama Herald)

  
  

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• Intentan recortes en la ensenanza de ingles

  MIAMI, FL -- Aunque escasamente una tercera parte de los estudiantes que aprenden ingles en la Florida leen a niveles de sus grados y solamente la mitad se gradua de secundaria, algunos legisladores del estado estan tratando por segunda vez de recortar los entrenamientos de los maestros de Lectura que trabajan con esos estudiantes. (El Nuevo Herald).

  
  

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• Bilingual Educators Ratchet Up Criticism of Federal NCLB Law
  SAN ANTONIO, TX -- Speaker after speaker at the National Association for Bilingual Education's annual conference urged bilingual teachers to oppose the No Child Left Behind Act's requirements for English-language learners. That tone was reinforced by the keynote address delivered to the 7,000 educators meeting here by Alfie Kohn, a prominent education author who is a critic of standardized testing, the accountability movement, and the federal education law. Mr. Kohn listed groups of students who, in his view, are put at a disadvantage by the requirements of the law, including students of color, English-language learners, and "students who aren't affluent." Then he said: "We are facing nothing short of an educational ethnic cleansing in America." (Education Week).
  

• English Learners in California Schools: Unequal Resources, Unequal Outcomes

  WASHINGTON DC -- by Gandara, P., Rumberger, R., Maxwell-Jolly, J. and Callahan, R. The Williams vs the State of California class action suit on behalf of poor children in that state argues that California provides a fundamentally inequitable education to students based on wealth and language status. This article, an earlier version of which was prepared as background to that case, reviews the conditions of schooling for English learners in the state with the largest population of such students, totaling nearly 1.7 million in 2008, and comprising about 40 percent of the nation's English learners. (Education Policy Analysis Archives, 11(36).
  

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• The Gap Between English and Non English Fluent Students Increases in California

  CALIFORNIA -- According to recently released Stanford 9 data, the gap between English fluent and non English fluent students has increased in California at every grade level since Ron Unz's anti bilingual education proposition came into affect. Since California's Proposition 227 passed in 1998, 88% of California's non English fluent students have been placed into English immersion classes which are designed to not normally exceed one year. Since 1998, Stanford 9 test scores have shown a widening gap between non English fluent and English fluent students. According to Denis O'Leary, Far West Region of the League of United Latin American Citizens, while proclaiming success, proponents of "one year of intensive English immersion" are now suggesting that standards be lowered. "This is a deliberate ploy to detract the public from the English immersion failure to make close to one million Californian immigrant students English fluent. This calculated distraction from massive failure in California is intended to promote the same oppressive methodology in other states." (League of United Latin American Citizens)
  

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FEATURED REPORTS

• Early Bilingual Programs Found To Boost Test Scores (HEADLINE REPORT)

  WASHINGTON DC -- English-language learners do better academically over the long term if they participate in special programs to learn English at the start of their school careers, rather than attend only mainstream classes, according to one of the largest longitudinal studies of such students ever conducted. That conclusion comes from a study of English-language learners released last month by Wayne P. Thomas and Virginia P. Collier, researchers at George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. The authors say the study also confirms what they found in earlier research: Students who take bilingual education classes do much better on standardized tests after entering mainstream classes than students who take English-only classes. (Education Week)
  
  Full-Text Report Available for Download at CMMR
  Executive Summary Available for Download at CMMR
  
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• English Literacy and Language Minorities in the United States

  Elizabeth Greenberg
  Reynaldo F. Macías
  David Rhodes
  Tsze Chan

  This report from the National Center For Education Statistics examines the language and literacy skills of adults living in the United States in the context of their race and ethnicity, their country of birth, and the language(s) they spoke as young children. Chapter 2 of this report presents an overview of the oral and literacy proficiencies of adults living in the United States broken down by race and ethnicity, immigration status, and language(s) spoken while growing up. Chapter 3 examines the relationship between English literacy and formal education. Chapter 4 explores the relationship between employment and country of birth, language fluency and literacy. Chapter 5 summarizes the important findings of this report.

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• School Segregation on the Rise Despite Growing Diversity Among School Aged Children

  Almost a half century after the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that Southern school segregation was unconstitutional and "inherently unequal," a new study from The Civil Rights Project of Harvard University shows that segregation continued to intensify throughout the1990s. The study, "Schools More Separate: Consequences of a Decade of Resegregation," by Gary Orfield with Nora Gordon, analyzes statistics from the 1998-99 school year, the latest data available from the National Center of Education Statistics' Common Core of Education Statistics. Researchers found that much of the progress for black students since the 1960s was eliminated during a decade which brought three Supreme Court decisions limiting desegregation remedies. The data also shows that Latinos, the nation's largest minority, have become increasingly isolated for the last 30 years, with segregation surpassing that of blacks, and the rapid growth of suburban minorities has not produced integrated schools. (The Civil Rights Project Harvard Graduate School of Education)

  En Español - La segregación en las escuelas está aumentando a pesar de la mayor diversidad entre los niños en edad escolar
  Executive Summary
  Full-Text Study by Gary Orfield and Nora Gordon

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TEACHER EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT

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• An Overview of the Preparation and Certification of Teachers Working with Limited English Proficient (LEP) Students

  This descriptive study combined wide-scale survey data with qualitative analysis to explore the preparation of teachers of English language learners (ELLs) in institutions of higher education throughout the U.S. The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) disseminated a survey to its member institutions and website users designed to ascertain the breadth and depth of preparation programs for teachers of ELLs. The National Clearinghouse for Bilingual Education built on this data by comparing AACTE's findings to its analysis of both state level bilingual education teacher licensure requirements and the content of courses required by institutions of higher education for a degree and/or licensure in bilingual education. Licensure and course requirements were categorized according to areas of knowledge, and revealed that while typically emphasizing the areas of pedagogy and cultural/linguistic diversity, by contrast, the area of linguistics receives less emphasis at both state and institutional levels. At the state level, while there is great variance in the ways in which states mandate requirements for bilingual education teacher licensure, the requirements dictated by the states do impact the programming that occurs in institutions of higher education. And at the institutional level, it was found that programs vary in the depth of their coverage of areas of knowledge; in specific, bachelor's programs were found to be more likely to cover studies within an area of knowledge through a broad overview or survey course that may combine various topics or areas within a single course. Findings indicate further that only a small minority of institutions of higher education offer a program specifically to prepare bilingual education teachers, and fewer than 1/6 th of institutions studied require preparation for mainstream teachers regarding the education of ELLs.
  
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• Success for English Language Learners: Teacher Preparation Policies and Practices

  A Position Paper of the California Council on the Education of Teachers, the California Association of Colleges of Teacher Education, the State of California Association of Teacher Educators, and the Independent California Colleges and Universities Council on the Education of Teachers; Prepared by the Joint Policy Committee. This policy paper was adopted by the Delegate Assembly of the California Council on the Education of Teachers following prior review and recommendation by the Boards of Directors of the four organizations represented by the Joint Policy Committee.
  
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• New Teacher Support Pays Off: A Return on Investment for Educators and Kids

  New teacher support is a critical component of a comprehensive solution to achieving excellence in teaching quality. High-quality support programs for new teachers — often referred to as induction programs — not only increase the retention of beginning teachers, but also their impact on student learning. The staff of the New Teacher Center at the University of California, Santa Cruz (NTC) has two decades of experience developing induction programs that support and strengthen new teacher practice. This Policy Brief describes why high-quality induction programs are an efficient and effective use of public resources. This evidence should help to convince policymakers to invest in such programs. Equally important, it also makes the case for public policies that strengthen the quality of induction programs, maximizing their beneficial impact on educators and the students they teach.
  
  This publication is only available in PDF format.

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• From High School to Teaching: Many Steps, Who Makes It?

  In this paper the authors, Vegas, Murnane, and Willett, focus on the roles that race, ethnicity, and academic skills play in predicting whether high school students persist along each of the various steps of the path into teaching. They show that the challenge of creating a racially and ethnically diverse teaching force is not primarily one of influencing the occupational decisions of minority college graduates. Instead, the critical challenge is to increase the high school graduation, college enrollment, and college graduation rates of minority youth.
  
  This publication is only available in PDF format.

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MULTIMEDIA REPORTS

HEAR AND SEE THE LATEST STORIES

DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFT

 

Latinos have quickly become America's largest minority population, and the Pew Hispanic Center has reported that Latino births in the United States are outpacing even the rate of Latino immigration. Terence Smith discusses the unique American experience of second-generation Latino citizens with Roberto Suro, director of the Pew Hispanic Center and co-author of the report.

 

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NEW YORK CITY & BILINGUAL EDUCATION

 

The New York City schools are poised to become the next big battleground over bilingual education. Schools Chancellor Harold Levy is scheduled to propose limits on the amount of time students can spend in bilingual programs. NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports.

 

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STANDARDIZED TESTING AND MINORITY STUDENTS

 

National Public Radio's Weekend All Things Considered Gary Orfield of the Harvard Civil Rights Project and Linda McNeil of Rice University participated in a study that looked into how standardized testing impacts minority students -- especially those so-called high-stakes exams given to high school students to determine whether or not they may graduate. The study found that these tests do discriminate against minorities and force teachers to take valuable class time away from important subjects in order to help students prepare for the exams. (Requires Real Audio Software)

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THE DIGITAL DIVIDE

 

If you are black or Hispanic in this country, you are less likely to have a computer. If you live in a household earning over $75,000 a year, you are five times more likely to have a computer. If you live in a city or suburban area, you are ten times more likely to have a computer than in a rural area. In a society where increasingly we are defined by access to information and what we earn is what we learn, if you don't have access to technology, your going to be left in the digital dark ages. That's what the digital devide is all about. Newshours Jeffrey Kaye takes a look at the chasm between the haves and have nots in the world of cyberspace. (Requires free "Real Audio" software)

 

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SAT - "STRIVERS"

 

Is there a way for colleges and universities to diversify their student bodies without relying on racial preferences? One of the nation's largest testing services thinks there IS a way to identify students who've overcome hardships, to become what the testers call "strivers." NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports. (Requires free "Real Audio" software)

 

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SAT Officials At Odds On 'Strivers' Research Project - The sponsor of the SAT and the testing service that administers it appear to be at odds over the potential uses of forthcoming research on students who, based on such factors as racial, social, or family background, exceed expectations on the widely used college entrance exam. The Educational Testing Service says it is too early to decide whether the so called "Strivers" project will even lead to a formula the ETS can offer colleges for identifying such students. But the Princeton, N.J.-based test-maker has already received inquiries from admissions officials seeking such a tool, ETS officials say. (Education Week)

READING REPORTCARD

Nation's Reading Report -- From National Public Radio's Morning Edition. NPR's Anthony Brooks and Richard Gonzales report on two contrasting states in the Department of Education's reading report. Connecticut got the highest scores in the nation, jumping over Maine with a huge increase. California, which used to be at or near the top, continues to languish at the end of the government's table. (Requires free "Real Audio" software)

Reading-- from National Public Radio's All Things Considered, March 4, 1999, reports on the recently-released NAEP scores. The US Department of Education released its biggest report on how well school children are reading. Known as the nation's "Reading Report Card" this year's state by state breakdown of scores shows some encouraging upward trends, especially in the northeastern US. There is little evidence though that the poorest performing states - namely Mississippii, Louisiana an California, are making much progress. (Requires free "Real Audio" software)

Education Deptartment Releases Reading Scores -- NPR's Claudio Sanchez reports that the Department of Education releases the reading scores of the nation's 4th, 8th and 12th graders this morning. Little attention was paid to the report until several years ago, when it revealed that nearly half of the nation's 4th graders read below their grade level. This year scores are up. But critics say national standardized testing doesn't adequately measure the performance of students in different states or provide a means to improve for states that lag. (Requires free "Real Audio" software)

 

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COPING WITH PROP 209.

 

Redefining Diversity. PBS OnLine NewsHour reporter Spencer Michels reports that California law schools are looking for new ways to achieve diversity in the wake of the passage of Proposition 209, which eliminated affirmative action from the state's public education system. (Requires free "Real Audio" software)

 

Coping With Prop 209. - Full-text transcript of above report.

 

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LANGUAGE AND IDENTITY

 

In the first of a two part series on language and identity NPR's Mandalit del Barco reports that depending upon where you live in America and where you come from, accents can be a benefit or a hindrance both socially and professionally. There are companies that specialize in "accent reduction," offering classes and coaching to people who want to shed a regional or foreign accent. In California, where voters recently rejected bilingual education and mandated English-only education, many immigrants are refining their English in such courses. Hear more on NPR's report "LOSE THAT ACCENT" for Morning Edition. (Requires free "RealAudio" software)

In part two of the series on language and identity, NPR's Mandalit Del Barco reports on Latinos in the United States who are improving their Spanish or who are learning the language for the first time. About one quarter of all Latinos in the U.S. speak only English. Hear more on LATINOS LEARNING SPANISH. (Requires free "RealAudio" software)

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