English learners are the fastest growing segment of the public
school population in the United States. The National Education
Association (NEA) predicts that by 2025 one in four
students in the U.S. will be from homes where a language other
than English is spoken. California has already reached this
threshold. Moreover, California public schools educate over
one-third of the nation’s English Learners ( Source: California
Legislative Analyst’s Office report, 2007-08.)
Implementing Educational Language Policy in Arizona: Legal,
Historical, and Current Practices in SEI, edited by Chris
Faltis and M. Beatriz Arias, brings together scholars,
researchers, and educators to present a critical examination of
Arizona’s restrictive language policies as they influence teacher
preparation and practice. The Structured English Immersion model
prescribes the segregation of English learners for four hours a
day from English speakers and academic content for a minimum of
one year.
George Yonge, education professor emeritus, is translating
Afrikaans texts from the faculty of education at the University
of Pretoria in South Africa. Yonge says that the depth and
substance of the work done in the faculty has led to his decision
to spend part of his retirement years by making these texts
accessible to a wider audience. Read more at the
University of Pretoria’s Web site.
Standardized testing that seeks to measure students’ English
language proficiency has improved significantly nationwide since
2001, when Congress passed the No Child Left Behind Act,
according to “English Language Proficiency Assessment in the
Nation: Current Status and Future Practice,” a report edited by
Professor Jamal Abedi in November 2007. Read the Executive
Summary. Abedi’s 196-page report is the first to summarize
the progress of the four effort s and to report on the current
testing landscape nationwide.
Jamal Abedi, professor of education, is an expert in the
“how-to” of K-12 educational testing. Among the leading
scholars in his field, he studies nuisance variables — things
that interfere with students’ ability to properly show what
they know and can do.
