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L.A. Strike Sets Tone for Funding, Charters

LA students support their teachers

Weakening of districts and unions through increased ‘charterization’ was at the heart of the dispute

Now that the teachers’ strike in the nation’s second largest school district (Los Angeles Unified-LAUSD) with the highest number (over 160,000) of English Language Learners (ELLs) has come to an end after six days, it makes sense to analyze what caused the district’s first strike in 30 years, especially since teachers in Denver and Oakland, which also have large minority populations, are on the verge of walking out.

Of course, pay was one of the reasons behind the disagreement but United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA, which counts about half of the city’s teachers as members) was prepared to accept a staggered six percent pay rise before the strike.  So, this strike was about much more than pay.

It’s telling that first on UTLA’s summary of the deal was the agreement that “the Board of Education [BOE] will vote on a resolution calling on the state to establish a charter school cap and the creation of a Governor’s committee on charter schools at the next BOE meeting,” whereas LAUSD’s press release only mentions that they “also agreed to work together through joint committees that would provide recommendations on Charter co-location” and other topics in its final paragraph.

With 277 charter schools, Los Angeles already has more than any other school district in the U.S., but 53 of those schools are affiliated to the district. The creation of more charter schools has become a contentious issue because they can operate independently of LAUSD, thus reducing the district’s income, and, by the same token, their teachers negotiate separate contracts, which undermines teachers’ unions.

According to UTLA, the parties agreed by the end of June, the district will designate 20 community schools, with an additional ten the following year. These community schools will have additional funding (with UTLA positions) and their Local School Leadership Councils will have full discretion over all budgetary items outside of infrastructure.

Some Angelenos, especially those in more affluent areas where charters are very popular, want to limit the scope and power of LAUSD and the teacher unions. However, LAUSD and the unions will need to combine their resources if they are to tackle the underlying problem of inadequate education spending.

Despite recent increases and the introduction of the Local Control Funding Formula, California still ranks in the bottom ten states in per pupil spending, so it’s hardly surprising that most of the strike agreement is about money.

Under the agreement, not only will UTLA, LAUSD, and the Mayor’s office jointly advocate for increased county and state funding, but LAUSD will:

  1. Decrease class sizes in G4-12 by four students over the next three years;
  2. Eliminate Section 1.5, which had previously allowed the district to unilaterally ignore all class size averages and caps;
  3. Increase salaries by six percent;
  4. Provide 300 more school nurses;
  5. Provide 82 more school librarians;
  6. Provide 77 more school counselors.

In among some of the other agreements on hours and procedures, is an agreement to create a joint committee to “provide recommendations on the English Learner Master Plan including American Sign Language,” and another “to identify all district assessments [and] develop a plan to reduce the amount of assessments by 50%.”

LAUSD Superintendent Austin Beutner was appointed just a few months ago after a contentious and expensive school board race in 2017, in which charter school supporters spent about $10 million to gain control of the board. Beutner claimed that giving in to union demands would bankrupt it and lead to teacher layoffs, while UTLA disagreed, saying that the District was holding on to $1.9 billion in unrestricted reserves.

During the strike, schools were kept open with skeleton staff by administrators who encouraged parents to send their children as usual. However, despite over 1000 school buses running every day and the childcare necessities of working families, only about a third of the district’s students were in attendance during the strike, indicating an unexpected level of support for teachers among parents, and causing a massive decrease in state funding for the district.

LAUSD enrolls more than 650,000 students at over 900 schools, over 710 square miles. The ethnic composition of the LAUSD student population is primarily Latino (73.4%); the remainder are African American (10.0%), White (8.8%), Asian (3.9%), Filipino (2.2%), Pacific Islander (.04%), American Indian (.04%) and two or more races, not Latino, (1%). In all, 92 languages other than English are spoken in LAUSD schools. The primary languages of its 160,000 English language learner students are Spanish (93.4%), Korean (1.1%), and Armenian (1.1%) with Tagalog, Cantonese, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Russian each accounting for less than 1% of the total.

Cooperative Construction

Andrea Honigsfeld and Maria Dove examine the architecture of co-assessment practices for English learners

The topic of assessment often weighs heavily on the shoulders of many teachers. More specifically, educators in general have concerns about gathering appropriate and adequate assessment data from a variety of sources for the teaching and learning of English learners (ELs). In addition, breaking down that data to find meaning and devising instructional changes from such analysis should not be a solo job. For this reason, we promote the idea of joint assessment practices for the sake of ELs. In doing so, we have created an assessment framework and liken co-assessment to designing, building, and enjoying a house. In the following reading, we invite you to use this metaphor to think about co-assessment as (1) designing and laying the foundation of a house, (2) building the house, (3) moving in, and (4) enjoying it.

I. Designing and Laying the Foundation: Essential Considerations 

For optimum outcomes, it is essential for co-teachers to have a shared foundational understanding of assessment for ELs. Building upon Tonya Ward Singer’s (2014) suggestion to establish problems of practice and inquiry questions, we encourage you and your co-teacher, or teaching teams, to begin co-constructing your joint assessment practices by critically reflecting on and coming to an agreement regarding shared goals for student learning, demonstrated student success, and instructional changes as determined by your responses to the following key questions:

What are our shared goals for student learning?

Where are our students today and where do we want them to go? 

How are we planning for content and language development? 

How do we measure student growth in both content and language development?

How do we ensure a sharing of responsibility for student outcomes in both content and language development? 

How will all students, including ELs on every level of proficiency, demonstrate success? 

What is our definition of success for ELs (and non-ELs)?

How do we differentiate instruction and assessment for all levels of ELs?

How do we set attainable goals for all our students yet remain mindful of the grade-level benchmarks? 

What assessment tools and measures are we going to use that are fair, meaningful, and equitable?

What instruction will we provide collaboratively to ensure success for all our students? 

How do we integrate content and language instruction?

How do we scaffold and support learning?

How do we gradually increase student autonomy?

How do we ensure active student engagement? 

Engaging in structured conversation protocols such as by using the above questions enhances the effectiveness and outcomes of collaborative discussions for co-assessment purposes and lays an important foundation concerning assessment practices for ELs for all teaching-team members.

II. Building the House: A Framework for Co-Assessment 

Margo Gottlieb’s (2016) three-pronged framework defines assessment for ELs from three different perspectives—assessment as, for, and of learning: 

Assessment as learning is student self-assessment. When supported by two teachers, English learners can be meaningfully included in this assessment process. ELs develop agency and become more self-directed, independent learners when they are regularly invited to engage in self-assessment and reflection by co-teachers. As a result, ELs learn to do the following:

Set their own goals

Monitor and reflect on their progress

Make choices of assessment tasks and projects when offered

Develop, maintain, and reflect upon their own work-sample portfolios

Participate in the assessment process in many other ways

Assessment for learning refers to the process that both classroom teachers and ELD/ESL specialists may employ on a regular basis. Teachers collect evidence of what learning targets their students have mastered, are in the process of mastering, and have yet to attain. Assessment for learning consists primarily of a formative process, and as such, it helps inform instruction and offer feedback to students. Through formative assessment practices, co-teachers will:

Promote student learning in a continuous, ongoing manner

Elicit evidence of learning in a variety of ways (on the fly, preplanned, curriculum aligned, language focused) and through a variety of assessment tasks

Change the roles of teachers and students by placing students and their needs at the center of instruction and assessment

Set learning goals and use tools that indicate progressions to monitor learning

Offer meaningful feedback to students and adjust instruction to improve learning for students

Help students self-assess and become self-directed, autonomous learners

Assessment of learning refers to processes that yield summative assessment data, including classroom assessments and standardized tests. As co-teachers, carefully consider what types of summative assessment will provide the most valid and reliable information to determine if a student has mastered the target content and language and literacy skills. Since summative assessments are used to measure how well students have met instructional goals for a specific learning segment that may range from a unit of study to a quarter or marking period (or even an entire academic year), they may be designed together by co-teachers or may be standardized at the school, district, or state levels:

End-of-unit tests or projects 

Chapter reviews or tests 

End-of-marking-period or semester exams 

District benchmark or interim assessments 

State assessments 

Using this architectural design, teaching teams can not only empower English learners to set goals and monitor their own progress but also gather assessment data to inform instruction and determine if language and content learning goals have been met.

III. Moving In: Implementing a 

Collaborative Assessment System 

Co-teachers need to agree on how assessment practices for ELs will fit into a comprehensive system that spans from daily assessments to collecting benchmark assessment data and administering summative assessments, not excepting the inclusion of ELs in large-scale, high-stakes assessments. For this reason, we invite you to “move in” and implement this practice by reflecting on and answering the following questions together:

Daily formative assessments:

How do we collect meaningful assessment data about each student? 

How do we use the data to inform instruction?

How do we provide immediate, useful feedback to students?

Benchmark assessments:

How do we monitor student progress and growth? 

What common assessments are we going to develop or select?

How often are we going to collect data? 

In what ways will the benchmark data be used to make short-term and longer-term decisions about ELs? 

Summative assessments:

What types of summative assessments are we going to utilize?

How do we account for variances in student characteristics (prior knowledge or lack thereof; cultural experiences with tests, exams, or projects or lack thereof)? 

How do we ensure fair and equitable summative assessment tasks and measures? 

Moving in or implementing assessment practices requires its own framework to ensure that there are various data-gathering means in place and to “furnish” classes with appropriate, consistent, and useful assessment tools to monitor the needs and identify the successes and challenges of ELs.

IV. Enjoying Your New House: Practicing Co-Assessment

Remember to use protocols, as the goal for participating teachers is to work toward shared decision making to benefit English learners. To achieve this goal, as co-teachers, you must systematically do the following:

Identify and analyze students’ strengths and weaknesses 

Design the most appropriate intervention strategies that will respond to the patterns of learning challenges ELs face 

Generate possible explanations for student performance levels from multiple points of view

Discuss research-based best practices and promising strategies you wish to implement 

Plan coordinated interventions 

Although most educators do not equate assessment practices with enjoyment, we would like to suggest that through this house-building metaphor, there are great rewards to routine, comprehensive co-assessment practices. Collaborative assessment is highly structured and cyclical—each time new data are collected from students, their performance is reassessed. In this process, co-teachers have the opportunity to continue to reflect on their students’ academic learning as well as socio-emotional and linguistic development. Co-assessment, along with shared reflection and co-planning, helps determine whether the modifications and accommodations co-teachers have planned and executed have offered the necessary support or not and what additional interventions are needed.

Andrea Honigsfeld, EdD ([email protected]) and Maria G. Dove, EdD ([email protected]) are co-authors of several books on collaboration and co-teaching for the sake of English learners published by Corwin Press. They conduct research and provide professional development on the topic across the U.S. and internationally. Portions of this article were adapted from Co-Teaching for English Learners (Dove and Honigsfeld, 2018).

References

Dove, M., and Honigsfeld, A. (2018). Co-Teaching for English Learners: A guide to Collaborative Planning, Assessment, and Reflection. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.

Gottlieb, M. (2016). Assessing English Language Learners: Bridges to Educational Equity. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. 

Singer, T. W. (2014). Opening Doors to Equity: A Practical Guide to Observation-Based Professional Learning. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin. 


Indigenous Migrants Denied Linguistic Access

Newly released research by the Center for Migration Studies of New York (CMSNY) suggests that “the denial of medical attention to migrants in U.S. custody is a widespread and systemic problem, and one that appears to affect Indigenous language speakers disproportionately.” The study was based on more than 1,100 post-deportation surveys with unauthorized Mexican migrants. CMSNY is a think tank and an educational institute “devoted to the study of international migration, to the promotion of understanding between immigrants and receiving communities, and to public policies that safeguard the dignity and rights of migrants, refugees, and newcomers.”


It also appears that both of the most-publicized recent border tragedies—the deaths of two children that occurred while they were in U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) custody—may have been avoided had the CBP interpreters been better able to communicate in Indigenous languages. The main language of the Caal family, whose seven-year-old daughter, Jakelin, died of sepsis, is Q’eqchi’, but shortly before her death, her father signed a form in English saying that his daughter was in good health. CBP officials say they provided a “verbal translation,” but the Caals were not offered a Q’eqchi’ interpreter.


On Christmas Eve, Felipe Alonzo-Gomez, an eight-year-old Guatemalan boy, died from the flu after he was taken to a hospital, released, then returned to the hospital. Felipe’s mother speaks the Mayan language Chuj and does not understand Spanish.


Executive Order 13166, signed by President Bill Clinton in 2000, requires federal agencies to “identify any need for services to those with limited English proficiency; and develop and implement a system to provide those services.” The Department of Homeland Security has a policy that commits to “provide meaningful access for individuals with limited English proficiency to operations, services, activities, and programs… by providing quality language assistance services in a timely manner.” According to the CBP language access plan, the agency is prepared to offer services in eight different languages, including Spanish.


BuzzFeed has also reported on the case of a 27-year-old Guatemalan woman who is facing deportation from the U.S. partly because her main language is Jacaltec. Known as JGCA, she experienced years of sexual assaults because of her light skin and is facing the final hearing of her asylum case to stay in the country with her daughters, who are U.S. citizens.
Today she speaks rudimentary Spanish and is in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention, but her attorney said that at multiple points in her client’s case she was denied translations in the language she was fluent in, she was denied due process rights, and when she had an attorney, they proved to be ineffective, making it so JGCA never had a chance.
Official census figures estimate that 45% of Guatemala’s population is Indigenous, but other studies put the figure at 60%, or close to 6 million people.


In September 2008, when she was 17 years old, pregnant by her husband, and did not understand Spanish or English, JGCA attended her first court hearing alone in Georgia after being caught at the border without documentation. According to BuzzFeed News, “JGCA said she didn’t understand what was happening around her because the entire hearing was conducted in Spanish, not Jacaltec. She only understood when someone asked her what her name was or where she lived. Beyond that, nothing made sense.”

Bilingualism No Problem for Children with Down Syndrome

Children with Down syndrome can and do become bilingual. Initial findings of a research study at Bangor University suggest that speaking two languages is not in any way detrimental to the language development of children with Down syndrome. Bangor University is working with the Down’s Syndrome Association in Wales to examine language in Welsh–English bilingual children with Down syndrome and children exposed to English only. Researchers tested expressive and receptive language skills, as well as phonological awareness, the ability to manipulate speech sounds, in both languages. The English of the two groups was found to be at the same level.


Rebecca Ward, postgraduate researcher working on the project, explains: “We are finding that there are no differences between the English of the bilingual children and the English of the monolingual children with Down syndrome. In addition, their Welsh skills are in line with the skills of typically developing children of the same developmental age.” The research team is led by Dr. Eirini Sanoudaki, who is senior lecturer in language acquisition at Bangor University and has been researching language in children with Down syndrome for over ten years. Dr. Sanoudaki explains: “These are exciting findings and an important step towards supporting bilingual families. Parents of children with Down syndrome have been traditionally advised against exposing their children to two languages, for fear that the children would not be able to cope. We are now seeing that there is no basis for such fears. The children are making excellent progress in both languages.


“Children with Down syndrome can speak two languages. We are happy to be able to provide information which can support and empower families in their decisions.”

Have Fun Learning

If kids are having fun while learning a language, it is much more likely they will enjoy it and want to keep learning. One language-learning startup that takes this to heart is Linguacious, an award-winning company started in 2017 by two multicultural and multilingual parents raising their kids trilingually, using the OPOL method (One Parent One Language). The father, Dr. Victor D.O. Santos, is a PhD applied linguist and language learning expert who, in addition to being at the forefront of Linguacious, is also a data and assessment manager for Avant Assessment. Linguacious develops research-based and innovative physical vocabulary flashcard games for children in several languages, including Hebrew, Turkish, Mandarin, Arabic, Russian, Portuguese, Polish, and others. Children can play over ten different games with the cards to learn and practice vocabulary, quiz themselves independently across all four language skills, and hear a native speaker pronounce the word in each flashcard by scanning the QR code on each card with the Linguacious app. The company’s dream and goal, in Dr. Santos’ words is: “We want to publish our vocabulary card games in as many languages as our lifetime will allow. We want kids to be proud of their linguistic heritage and appreciate the linguistic heritage of others”. www.linguacious.net

Personalize Literacy and Language Instruction with OverDrive E-Books and Audiobooks

OverDrive offers teachers an ever-growing collection of tools for literacy and language instruction and access to an extensive digital library of e-books and audiobooks. The digital library offers teachers a way to personalize materials for a variety of student needs. According to the International Literacy Association’s What’s Hot in Literacy 2018 Report, 62% of U.S. educators and 71% of international educators call mother-tongue literacy very important. The diverse catalog of English language arts materials such as novels and offers engaging titles for students of all ages and interests to keep them reading.

While most titles in the OverDrive Education catalog are in English, 20,000 titles are offered in languages such as Spanish, French, Arabic, and Chinese, giving students reading options in their mother tongues. Literacy is more than reading, a fact especially obvious for K–12 English learners. The 5 million ELs in the U.S. face challenges linked not only to their ability but to their language limitations. Learning to speak, understand, and read English improves learning outcomes. Digital gives ELs the fastest and easiest entry to reading, whether in their native languages or English, with embedded auxiliary learning tools.

Varied formats like audiobooks and read-alongs expand their reading opportunities even further. Read-alongs offer a distinct multisensory reading experience that enhances language learning. While typically serving younger readers, read-alongs provide engaging visual story cues and professional narration which accelerate literacy in English for anyone new to the language. Audiobooks offer pronunciation, syntax, and conversational flow that the written word cannot match.


In 2016, OverDrive entered into a partnership with Simon and Schuster’s Pimsleur Language Programs. ELs benefit from programs in 14 languages, including Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic, Italian, Russian, German, and Japanese. These digital resources extend instruction, offering private and personalized learning opportunities outside typical classroom time to meet the needs of each student. To learn more about OverDrive Education, visit www.overdrive.com/schools.

A Time for Reflection

Ingrid T. Colón argues that self-examination is critical for dual-language educators

Historically, in the U.S., deficit perspectives about linguistically diverse students have dominated the conversation. Fortunately, the rise of dual-language (DL) programs is helping to reframe the dominant narrative. These programs center on helping students become bilingual, biliterate, and culturally competent. Because of these goals, DL teachers must not only know about strategies and practicesthat promote bilingualism and biliteracy but also how to think about their own perspectives and teaching practices that will influence the way they prepare students for success in a global economy and society. 

A new article published online in the Revista de Sociología de la Educación explores the importance of DL teacher preparation and professional development to explicitly address self-examination—the process of reflecting on one’s own actions and motivations—in shaping the curriculum and instructional processes. In this article, Dr. Cristina Alfaroand Dr. Ana Hernándezdescribe the role of the four tenets for self-examination—ideology, pedagogy, access, and equity (IPAE)—and what they mean for DL teachers. Moreover, the authors have developed a guide with questions on the four tenets of self-examination.

Ideology

The authors argue that DL teachers must understand the ideologies that control their classroom practices, such as the dominance of the English language in instruction. This is important because assimilationist environments in schools prioritize monolingual—only in English—teaching practices. Practices like this one are why DL teachers need to constantly self-examine and reflect on their own ideologies. DL teachers can ask themselves important questions like:

What beliefs, values, and theories of knowledge influence my thoughts?

What kind of teacher do I want to be?

What kind of changes do I need to implement in my teaching practices to promote my students’ bicultural, bilingual, and biliterate identities?

Pedagogy

It is critical to have a pedagogical perspective that focuses on recognizing the knowledge that both students and teachers contribute in the classroom. In other words, DL teachers who have a clear understanding of their ideologies and engage in critical reflection create intentional, student-centered teaching practices. DL teachers can engage in this critical reflection about their teaching practices by asking questions like:

What kinds of values and research dictate my teaching practices?

How do I show respect toward the cultural and linguistic richness of my students?

Have I created an environment open for dialog inside my classroom or do I only transmit knowledge to my students?

Access

It is fundamental for DL teachers to examine student access to high-quality curricula, teaching, and resources. This means that DL teachers need additional and authentic resources in Spanish––not just literal translations from English––and training to develop effective teaching strategies that ensure access to academic opportunities for all students, particularly those who are most vulnerable. DL teachers can reflect on these issues by asking questions like: 

Which students do I choose first to answer learning questions?

Am I strategically creating access for all of my students? 

Do I apply rigor and high expectations for all of my students? 

Equity

It is necessary to create equitable environments that provide opportunities for all students to meet their goals in DL classrooms. For instance, research shows that school events and practices conducted only in English send the message to students that the English language is superior to the Spanish language. 

DL teachers who use an equity lens in their classrooms create democratic, safe classrooms and elevate the status of the Spanish language during instruction. DL teachers can examine equity in their classroom practices by asking themselves the following questions:

How do I navigate the status of culture and language in my classroom?

How do my students perceive the English language?

In what way does the dominant language or group influence the activities in the classroom and school? 

Taken together, DL programs strive to foster an environment of cross-cultural exchange. It is difficult for DL teachers to enhance the status of the Spanish language in their classrooms due to the way the English language is viewed in this country––as the language of power. 

Research indicates that during Spanish instruction, students spend most of the time speaking in English rather than Spanish. This is a cause for concern because when English takes priority in bilingual programs it diminishes the status of Spanish, thus negatively affecting and undermining the linguistic richness that native Spanish-speaking students bring to DL classrooms. 

To implement linguistic equity in their classrooms, DL teachers need to be conscious of the preference that has been given to the English language in this country. It is not enough for students to work on projects in Spanish (e.g., group work) if these assignments are not intentionally planned for students to communicate academically in Spanish. Therefore, DL teachers need to internalize the value and purpose of learning the Spanish language in their classrooms first before being able to motivate their students to communicate in Spanish. 

The authors of this article address very important issues. As DL programs keep growing across the nation and the gentrification of bilingual education persists, it is worth emphasizing that DL teachers will need to know more than technical and biliteracy methodology. DL teachers also need to know how to critically reflect on what they do, what they believe, and what influences their teaching practices. This is pivotal because DL teachers serve linguistically and culturally diverse students in their classrooms who are not white, do not speak English as their first language, and/or do not benefit from a high socioeconomic status (SES). 

Reflection is an increasingly fundamental part of teaching. Although it can be difficult for teachers to find the time to critically reflect on their classroom practices, school leaders can advocate for opportunities that are intentionally offered for teachers to engage in reflection, such as professional learning communities (PLCs). Certainly, reflection can become part of teachers’ routine when it is already embedded in the curriculum, instruction, evaluation, and preparation time for teachers. Eventually, critically reflecting on teaching becomes more natural and habitual as teachers gain more experience in their classrooms. 

Ingrid T. Colón is a researcher in the area of English learner education for New America’s Education Policy program. As a proud immigrant from El Salvador and an English learner herself, Colón focuses her research on the experiences of recently arrived immigrant families and their children in public schools, English learners, linguistically and culturally responsive classrooms, and dual-language education. 

References: 

https://www.newamerica.org/education-policy/edcentral/interview-karen-beeman-part-one/

https://ojs.uv.es/index.php/RASE/article/view/13088/12128

https://ojs.uv.es/index.php/RASE/index

http://go.sdsu.edu/education/dle/calfaro.aspx

https://www.csusm.edu/soe/certificates/multicultural/faculty.html

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/b93b/4593506b1ade89ab1b75c3ab595fb4b66b6c.pdf

http://www.shankerinstitute.org/sites/shanker/files/de%20Jong%20(2013)%20policy%20discourses.pdf

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.0026-7902.2004.00219.x

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/are-dual-language-programs-in-urban-schools-a-sign-of-gentrification/2018/07/03/926c4a42-68c2-11e8-9e38-24e693b38637_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.ae14ac8f04d3

http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may04/vol61/num08/What-Is-a-Professional-Learning-Community%C2%A2.aspx

http://www.cal.org/resource-center/publications-products/guiding-principles-3

L.A. Set for First Teachers’ Strike in 30 Years

VENICE, CA – JANUARY 10: Teachers, retired teachers and parents show their support for UTLA in front of Venice High School in Venice, Calif., on Jan. 10, 2019. (Photo by Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)

United Teachers of Los Angeles (UTLA), which has about 35,000 members in second largest K-12 district in the nation, has set January 10 as the start date of their first strike in 30 years if contract talks between the union and the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) do not resolve the current stalemate over funding issues, including pay rises, class sizes, and the “charterization” of the District’s schools—about 20% of Los Angeles students are enrolled in charter schools, more than any other district in the nation.


LAUSD enrolls more than 650,000 students at over 900 schools, over 710 square miles. The ethnic composition of the LAUSD student population is primarily Latino (73.4%); the remainder are African American (10.0%), White (8.8%), Asian (3.9%), Filipino (2.2%), Pacific Islander (.04%), American Indian (.04%) and two or more races, not Latino, (1%). In all, 92 languages other than English are spoken in LAUSD schools. The District has over 160,000 English language learner students. Their primary languages are Spanish (93.4%), Korean (1.1%), and Armenian (1.1%) with Tagalog, Cantonese, Arabic, Vietnamese and Russian each accounting for less than 1% of the total.


The District claims that said that giving in to union demands would bankrupt it and lead to teacher layoffs, while UTLA disagrees, saying that the District is holding on to $1.9 billion in unrestricted reserves that schools desperately need.

Second Edition of New Ways in Teaching Speaking

TESOL Press, the publishing division of TESOL International Association, recently released the much-anticipated second edition of the New Ways in Teaching Speaking. Edited by Julie Vorholt, this latest addition to the popular New Ways series includes more than 100 new activities for all proficiency levels and all ages, with an emphasis on learning how to incorporate technology tools to improve speaking skills while utilizing digital literacy skills. “These tools allow students to create podcasts, film movies, record video or audio clips, time themselves, and more — all to improve their speaking skills while utilizing their digital literacy skills,” said Vorholt.

The second edition also includes new career-focused activities that connect to work in business, law, and other highly sought-after professions, allowing students to strengthen their speaking skills for their daily lives speaking in English. Broken up into five categories, the new activities are organized by developing fluency, accuracy, and pronunciation, as well as speaking in specific contexts, such as using technology. “This book is for anyone who teaches speaking in any classroom around the world. That includes elementary teachers, middle school teachers, and high school teachers. It also includes instructors at Intensive English Programs (IEPs) and other settings,” explained Vorholt.

Books in the New Ways series, including the second edition of New Ways in Teaching Speaking, are available for purchase through the TESOL Press Bookstore in both print and ebook (PDF) formats. More information and sample chapters are also available.

Review copies can be requested from TESOL Press.

Preschool Reading Boosts Language Skills by Eight Months

Eight months is a big difference in language skills when you are looking at children aged under five.

A new review of existing research finds that receptive language skills—the ability to understand information – are improved by the equivalent of eight months of development when preschool youngsters read with someone who cares for them.

Led by James Law, professor of Speech and Language Sciences at the UK’s Newcastle University, a team of experts carried out a systematic review of reading intervention studies from the past 40 years, using either a book or electronic readers, and where reading was carried out with a parent or carer.

Researchers were looking for effects on receptive language (understanding), expressive language (where a child puts their thoughts into words such as vocabulary and grammar), and pre-reading skills (such as how words are structured). The results were positive for each category but the biggest difference was with receptive language skills. The review showed socially-disadvantaged children experienced slightly more benefit than others.

Professor Law said: “While we already knew reading with young children is beneficial to their development and later academic performance, the eight-month advantage this review identified was striking. Eight months is a big difference in language skills when you are looking at children aged under five.

“The fact we saw an effect with receptive language skills is very important. This ability to understand information is predictive of later social and educational difficulties. And research suggests it is these language skills which are hardest to change.”

The average age of the children involved in the 16 studies included in the review, was 39 months and the review looked at studies from five countries: the U.S., South Africa, Canada, Israel, and China.

Numerous research studies have shown that children with delayed language development do worse at school and have poorer outcomes later in life.

The experts are now calling for public health authorities to promote book reading to parents.

“There have been lots of initiatives over the years to get books into the homes of young children,” said Professor Law. “What we’re saying is that’s not enough. Reading with small children has a powerful effect. For this reason, it should be promoted through people like health visitors and other public health professionals as this simple act has the potential to make a real difference.”

“Parent-child reading to improve language-development and school readiness – A systematic review and meta-analysis,” was written by James Law, Jenna Charlton, Cristina McKean, Fiona Beyer, Cristina Fernandez-Garcia, Atefeh Mashayekhi & Robert Rush. Funding was provided by the Nuffield Foundation http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/systematic-review-impact-parent-child-reading and https://eprint.ncl.ac.uk/246226


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LanguageMagazine 2023

Language Magazine