NCELA Newsletter Header
September 20, 2022
Announcements
New Fact Sheet: English Learners (ELs) in College Credit-Bearing Courses
Credits earned through dual enrollment courses and/or Advanced Placement exams may reduce students’ postsecondary course load or shorten their time to earn a degree. OELA’s newest fact sheet explores data from the 2017–18 Civil Rights Data Collection about dual enrollment and Advanced Placement exam participation for students enrolled in Grades 9 to 12.
 
Approximately one out of every four students in Grades 9 to 12 attends a school that does not offer dual enrollment. Across all states, fewer than one in 20 high school ELs (4%) enrolled in dual enrollment courses when they were available compared to slightly more than two in 20 students in the total population (11%). Challenges for ELs may lie in scheduling language instruction courses along with a full academic course load and/or from prerequisites that ELs may not have had an opportunity to complete. Over time, obstacles can accumulate and hinder ELs’ opportunities to be prepared for dual enrollment courses when they are available.
Information ELevated: English Learners’ (ELs) Access to Educators and Other Support Staff
A new episode of Information ELevated looks at ELs and their access to educators and other support staff based on the analyses of two large federal datasets: the Civil Rights Data Collection and the Common Core of Data.

Educators and support staff in schools include teachers, school counselors, school psychologists, social workers, school-based law enforcement officers, librarians, and media specialists.
 Highlights:
  • Percentage of First-Year Teachers: Schools that ELs attend have a higher percentage of teachers in their first year of teaching than schools generally.
  • Counselor/Student Ratio: The median EL is enrolled in a district with a ratio of approximately one counselor to every 465 students.
  • Psychologist/Student Ratio: The median EL attends a school with the ratio of one psychologist for every 3,504 students.
  • Social Worker/Student Ratio: Only about 1 percent of ELs and students overall attend a school with the recommended social worker/student ratio.
  • Percentage of Students in Schools Without Law Enforcement Officers: About 75 percent of ELs are enrolled in districts without law enforcement officers.
  • Librarian Media Specialist/Student Ratio: The median EL is in a school with one librarian or media specialist for every 1,700 students.

Check out the full episode to learn more!
NPD Grantee Spotlight: Inside HELPERS Professional Learning 
Educators with the National Professional Development (NPD) program HELPERS grant at The Ohio State University connected for professional learning in Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, this past August. The weeklong training focused on harnessing the collective momentum of their experiences and expertise to generate better outcomes for their MLs and the community.
 
Sessions covered language, literacy, evidence-based reading comprehension strategies, literacy-rich learning environments, word walls, and cognate walls. The learning experience also included multiple connections with local education partners. The educators greeted 3,000 first-year university students during their orientation week and engaged in exercises with staff from Alcides Figueroa Bilingual School on advancing reading and comprehension skills for students in Grades 6–12. The HELPERS team ended the learning experience focused on their plan for Year 2 professional hybrid learning, which they themed: “I do. We do. You do.”
Upcoming Events
September 23–24
Conference 
The Mid-America Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (MIDTESOL) conference is the premier regional event for English language educators from Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas. This year’s conference will be held in Kansas City, MO, and the theme is “Emerging Stronger: Leading Positive Change in ELT Education.”
Join the National Association of English Learner Program Administrators to unpack and discuss the information provided at the OELA webinar Effective Literacy Instruction for Multilingual Learners: What It Is and What It Looks Like. This event is a participant-driven gathering that allows for meaningful peer-to-peer collaboration.
The full conference schedule for the 9th Annual Community-Based Heritage Language Schools Conference is now available! This year’s keynote speaker is Ofelia García, Ph.D., Professor Emerita, Graduate Center of the City University of New York, who will present on Translanguaging Pedagogy in Community-Based Language Schools. Anyone involved with a community-based school teaching languages should participate in the conference. There will be a variety of workshops highly relevant to teachers and administrators. The conference will be held both on site at American University in Washington, D.C., and online. The 2022 conference theme is “The Power and Sustainability of Multilingualism.”
October 18–19
Online Event
Join primary and secondary English language professionals at TESOL Elevate, a highly engaging and interactive online event with in-depth workshops led by top English language teaching (ELT) experts. Explore critical areas of the field, such as student-centered learning, family engagement, and trauma-informed practices. 
November 2–5
Hybrid Conference
This November, come together at La Cosecha Dual Language Conference 2022 in Santa Fe, NM, to share current theory, best practices, and resources — and build networks to fuel community efforts for a better future for our children! This national conference brings together the largest gathering of educators, parents, researchers, and practitioners supporting dual language, two-way immersion, one-way developmental bilingual, and one-way heritage language immersion programs from across the United States.

In the News
EdSource
More than 100 students in Lodi Unified School District in California spent part of the summer running relays and braiding jump ropes from plastic bags, all while learning more complex writing and reading skills in English. This program is designed to strengthen English language skills for elementary and middle school students who speak another language at home. The program also aimed to give the 16 teachers who participated the skills to support these students throughout the school year. This course was designed by Karin Linn-Nieves, director of the county office’s language and literacy department, who is a former teacher with 36 years of experience working with ELs.
KQED
This article explores the advantages of valuing EL native and heritage languages and the consequences of native and heritage language loss. There are nearly 5.1 million ELs enrolled in public schools, with many ELs receiving language assistance services in English only. The article provides firsthand accounts of the cognitive and social and emotional benefits of heritage language maintenance. 
Institute of Education Sciences
This study examined how attaining English proficiency and being reclassified as fluent English proficient affected achievement in English language arts and math in the first year after reclassification for New Mexico students in Grades 3–8. The study was conducted after the WIDA consortium performed a standards setting process in 2016 to better align the ACCESS assessment’s proficiency scoring scale with college- and career-ready standards. Using EL student achievement data from 2014/15–2018/19, the study found no effects of reclassification on student achievement before or after the WIDA standards-setting process. In addition, the study found no effect of reclassification on next-year English language arts and math achievement among most groups of students with different characteristics and among most districts in the study.
The Nation’s Report Card
In 2022, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted a special administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) long-term trend reading and mathematics assessments for 9-year-old students to examine achievement during the COVID-19 pandemic. Average scores for 9-year-old students in 2022 declined 5 points in reading and 7 points in mathematics compared to 2020. This is the largest average score decline in reading since 1990, and the first ever score decline in mathematics. This resource allows readers to explore data by several categories including EL status, regions of the country, gender, grade, and others.
Professional Learning
The Online Professional English Network Program offers free MOOCs, which are open to an unlimited number of participants. Some MOOCs are 5 weeks, some are longer, and each is preceded by an optional orientation module. Courses include English for Media Literacy for Educators (facilitated); Teaching English to Young Learners (self-paced); English for Career Development (self-paced); English for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) (self-paced); English for Journalism (self-paced); English for Business and Entrepreneurship (self-paced); and English for Media Literacy (self-paced).
The Eco-Synergistic Connections Program seeks to connect multiple environments (school, classroom, and home) to effectively support the teaching and learning of emergent bilinguals (e.g., ELs). One key activity is the Education Summit for pre- and in-service teachers and other educators (e.g., specialists, coaches, school leaders). This year’s summit, Synergy in Education: Reigniting the Passion for Teaching and Learning, is now open and available until September 30. The summit will provide educators with high-quality virtual professional learning to better serve their emergent bilingual students in the classroom or at the campus level. Participants will acquire tools to reignite the passion for teaching and learning by transforming their instruction through the integration of researched-based strategies. 
This comprehensive and interactive institute is designed to help participants develop and deliver Sheltered Instruction Observation Protocol (SIOP) Model professional development as facilitators in their school or district.
NABE is now accepting submissions for the 2023 Student Essay Competition, Bilingual Teacher of the Year Award, Bilingual Teacher Scholarship, and the Outstanding Dissertation Award. The dissertation competition is open to those who have completed a dissertation in the field of bilingual education between May 1, 2021, and August 31, 2022.
Job Opportunities
California State Polytechnic University at Pomona
Pomona, CA
The University of Texas at Arlington
Arlington, TX
Connect With NCELA
Listen Now: Top 3 OELA Podcasts
Join us in celebrating International Podcast Day with a look back at our top three podcasts with the most listens in the past year.
 
 
 
 
Visit NCELA to listen to all of our podcasts that highlight promising practices related to STEM, language instruction educational programs, teacher preparation, and early childhood instruction.
Subscribe to NCELA Nexus
Did you receive the Nexus from a colleague? You can subscribe here.
Submit Your News
Do you have news to share with the Nexus community?
Send your alerts, upcoming events, resources, and job postings to AskNCELA
by Tuesday, September 27 for inclusion in the next edition of Nexus.
National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition (NCELA)
Disclaimer: NCELA Nexus is intended to share information that can be of use to educators, parents, learners, leaders, and other stakeholders in their efforts to ensure that every student, including ELs, is provided with the highest quality education and expanded opportunities to succeed. The information and materials presented on NCELA Nexus do not necessarily constitute or imply its endorsement, recommendation, or favoring by NCELA, the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA), or the U.S. Department of Education.