Education Secretary Arne Duncan is a man on a mission: to hear what teachers, students and parents in at least 15 states think about the No Child Left Behind law. President Obama has pledged to overhaul the law, but he has been vague about how far he would go, or whether he would scrap it altogether.

"I don't know if 'scrap' is the word," Duncan told reporters last week. "Where things make sense, we're going to keep them. Where things didn't make sense, we're going to change them." Duncan gives the law credit for shining a spotlight on kids who need the most help. "Forevermore in our country, we can't sweep those huge disparities with outcomes between white children and Latino children and African-American children, we can't sweep those under the rug ever again," he said.
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New York City Rolls Out First Diagnostic Test for ELLs with Interrupted Formal Education.

The New York City school district has rolled out what is believed to be the first academic diagnostic test in the country designed solely for English language learners who have missed years of schooling. The test is described as a tool for identifying students with interrupted formal education (SIFE) when such children enter the school system. It will provide teachers with more information about each student and shape the instructional services these students receive.
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Placement Has Negative Effect

In schools with a small number of English language learners, first-generation immigrant students do better academically if they aren't placed in English as a Second Language classes, according to a study published in the March issue of Educational Policy Journal. Their counterparts in mainstream classes without ESL do better academically than students who are put in ESL classes; this finding is true only in schools with a low number of ELLs.
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Obama Targets Failing Schools

President Barack Obama intends to use $5 billion to prod local officials to close failing schools and reopen them with new teachers and principals. The goal is to turn around 5,000 failing schools in the next five years, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said. Obama doesn't have authority to close and reopen schools himself. That power rests with local school districts and states. But he has an incentive in the economic stimulus law, which requires states to help failing schools improve. Duncan said that might mean firing an entire staff and bringing in a new one, replacing a principal or turning a school over to a charter school operator. The point, he said, is to take bold action in persistently low-achieving schools. "If we turn around just the bottom 1 percent, the bottom thousand schools per year for the next five years, we could really move the needle, lift the bottom and change the lives of tens of millions of underserved children," Duncan said.
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Large Districts to Use Stimulus for ELL Support

At least four large urban school districts (Boston, New York City, St. Paul and Seattle) plan to spend a significant amount of their federal economic stimulus money to support or improve programs for English language learners. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act includes up to $100 billion for education programs, but doesn’t specifically mention ELLs.

The ELL Working Group, a panel formed this year to discuss reauthorization of the No Child Left Behind Act, has tried to fill the gap with its own ideas for using stimulus funds effectively for ELL programs. The group’s 22-page document spells out how schools can tap various funding streams within the stimulus act for ELLs, addressing, in particular, Title I funds.
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Special Sauce for ESL: English Under the Arches

While English as a Second Language courses are offered nationwide by various public and private entities, many businesses that hire non-English speaking employees report that those workers can't or won't enroll, and that, as a result, their opportunities for advancement are limited by the current system. Betsy McKay, director of bilingual leadership for McDonald's Corporation, says: "These are folks with two full-time jobs. They can’t go to a class on Tuesday night. We needed a design that was going to come to them.”

Over the last two years, McDonald's has worked to pioneer English Under the Arches, which the company hopes will provide an innovative model for success. McDonald's is taking English Under the Arches national, recruiting community colleges to set up branches of the program. Data from early testing of program results show that participant's saw significant gains in English language skills. Some educators involved hope that the program might also produce new students for community colleges.
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