For decades, the Montana Constitution has made preservation of American Indian culture an explicit educational goal. Educators did little about it until 2004, when the state supreme court ruled that Montana had ignored its responsibility to teach about the state's seven tribes. That ruling jump-started an effort that has yielded curriculum…

Despite academic progress, standardized tests have been a handicap in school's quest to meet the yardstick for adequate yearly progress (AYP) under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. The law requires that students be tested annually in reading and math in grades 3-8 and once during high school. Schools must show sufficient gains in performance…

A new report finds that all states and the District of Columbia have now ushered in new English-language-proficiency tests to comply with No Child Left Behind Act requirements for those still learning the language. The report, "English Language Proficiency Assessment in the Nation: Current Status and Future Practice," released by the University of…

These articles highlight reactions to the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark ruling upholding the Cleveland voucher program. "Justices Settle Case, Nettle Policy Debate" (Mark Walsh) discusses how the ruling has rejuvenated the school choice movement and reinvigorated debates over how best to improve education for all students. "Voucher…

At a time when many states are poised to roll out new standardized tests to evaluate English-language proficiency in unprecedented depth, California is balking at carrying out a federal requirement to test the literacy of young children who are learning English. Recently, the California board of education decided to ask the U.S. Department of…

Educators have several reasons to follow the volatile debate over immigration in Congress--a debate that ground to a halt last week before lawmakers' spring recess. In the long term some of the plans would allow more teachers from other countries to work in schools or change the enforcement of rules governing other school related jobs. More…

The Navajo Language Immersion School--"Tsehootsooi Dine Bi'olta'," to use its Navajo name--made adequate yearly progress in all subgroups under the No Child Left Behind Act during the 2005-2006 school year because "the teachers know exactly where their students are in terms of data." The K-8 school with 235 students in the…

Simplifying test questions so that they avoid unnecessarily complex English is the best way for states to include English-language learners in large-scale testing, according to the most prominent researcher on testing accommodations for such students. But other scholars say not enough studies have been conducted to know how states should alter…

Educators who specialize in teaching English-language learners agree that the 4-year-old No Child Left Behind Act has brought unprecedented attention to those students by requiring schools to isolate test-score data for them. They disagree, though, on whether changes in instruction spurred by the law have been positive or negative overall. Such…

In the past decade, Harrisonburg, Virginia, has become a magnet for immigrant families drawn to jobs in the poultry and construction industries. More than 1,600 of the school district's 4,400 students are English-learners. The largest group of newcomers are Latinos, followed by Kurdish and Russian refugees. In this article, the author discusses a…

Taking a position that is unusual these days, New Jersey officials are promoting research that says bilingual education methods have an edge over English-only methods in teaching English-language learners to read. This article talks about the importance of bilingual education or a blended approach in the implementation of Reading First Program in…

This article reports on an obstacle to achievement that seems particularly pronounced among Native American students high mobility. The turnover rate for one school, North Middle School in Rapid City, South Dakota, was 50 percent overall last year--meaning that half the school's 468 students came or went after the start of the school year. Many of…

This article reports that educators and experts across the country who work with English-language learners (ELLs) are moving toward a consensus that the federal Reading First program needs to be refined to become more effective for children acquiring English. Administrators in several big-city districts with large numbers of such students are…

This article discusses the efforts made by urban schools in upgrading their translation services. The New York City school system is setting up, for the first time, a centralized office to routinely translate school information into eight different languages. Factors fueling the attention include a rising number of students with limited English…

The U.S. Department of Education's first-ever evaluation of how states are meeting requirements for English-language learners under the federal No Child Left Behind Act can be looked at two ways. One view of the report, which was released to Congress on March 15, 2005, is that states have made great strides in laying the groundwork for schools to…