Celebrating the 100th Edition of the English Learner Newsletter

Every two weeks, we send out a newsletter to highlight the work of New America’s English Learner team and to share EL focused media stories and research from around the country. Today, we reached a milestone — 100 editions of the newsletter! Since our team’s founding in 2015, we have seen large shifts in state policy with both California and Massachusetts abandoning their English-only policies. ELs are also now included in Title I accountability systems due to changes in federal law and at the local level, there has been an explosion of dual language programs that aim to help students become bilingual, biliterate and bicultural. However, in spite of these gains, there is still much work to do to ensure that the needs of ELs are integrated into policy and to counter the deficit perspective that frames their needs as a problem to be solved.

Over the past four and a half years, the EL team has published over 250 blog posts with the goal of elevating new research, exigent issues, long-standing challenges and ideas to help inform policy design and implementation. To that end we have written about key issues in EL education including accountability and data, instructional programs, state and federal policy, local innovations and teacher preparation and professional learning. Below are some of our favorite and most popular blog posts, policy papers and videos. Thank you for your continued support and engagement with our work!

Blog Posts

• Jenny Muñiz examines new research on how the “word gap” may reinforce deficit perspectives about low-income families and linguistically diverse students and the influence on teacher beliefs and instructional practices.
  
• Dual language immersion programs are growing increasingly popular, but how much do they cost to implement? Ingrid T. Colón summarizes a study on the costs of these programs in Portland, Oregon.
  
• Janie Tankard Carnock’s blog series Dual Language Learner Data Gaps explores how state leaders can build data systems that more fully account for young DLLs and their distinct needs.
  
• A majority of states report shortages in bilingual, ESL and dual language immersion teachers, Amaya Garcia describes how university and school district partnerships could help close this gap.
  
• Tony Hanna highlights how some states are using their English-only policies to justify the lack of native language assessments for ELs in their ESSA plans.

Reports and Videos

• In the team’s first report, Better Policies for Dual Language Learners, Conor P. Williams summarizes research, best practices and key priorities to help improve DLLs’ educational experiences.
  
• Amaya Garcia and Janie Tankard Carnock’s A Critical Mass examines the comprehensive and responsive approach taken by Harrisonburg City Public Schools to effectively serve and educate EL students and their families.
  
• In A New Day in California: Training Teachers to Support Bilingualism Sarah Jackson highlights how the Sobrato Early Academic Language (SEAL) model is training California teachers to support the state’s large population of young dual language students.
  
• Our resource Essential Policies and Practices for Grow Your Own programs aims to help guide states and school districts in their efforts to develop high-quality GYO programs for bilingual educators.
  
• In Seeing Clearly: Five Lenses to Bring English Learner Data into Focus, Janie Tankard Carnock offers a 5-point framework for how to best incorporate the unique needs of EL students into state accountability models.
  

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