Portrait of English-Language Learners

From Mary Ann Zehr of Education Week:

Quality Counts 2009, entitled “Portrait of a Population: How English-Language Learners Are Putting Schools to the Test,” was released today. The report contains new data that can be used to inform policy debates, such as that states estimate that more than 56,000 new English-as-a-second-language teachers will be needed in the next five years and that only 11 states provide incentives for teachers to receive an endorsement in ESL. . . .

Because I’m “a people person” as well as a policy person, I particularly invite you to browse the section of the on-line report that provides 13 profiles of English-language learners (and former ELLs) across the nation. You can really sense through the audio interviews and photos how determined these students are to learn and how resilient many of them have been in adjusting to U.S. culture. Click here for the rest of her column.

bh