New Website/ Two Articles
Iniciativa
Please take a moment to check out our new e-group website at
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Iniciativa_CLEG and give us your
feedback. This website gives us the ability to post articles,
pictures, and flyers, ect. I have also pasted two articles below that
I think are connected to our work.
Sincerely,
Melissa
Estimados miembros de CLEG:
Cuando tenga un momento visite nuestro website
http://groups-beta.google.com/group/Iniciativa_CLEG y dejenos saber que
piensa!
Este nuevo site nos da la capacidad de poner retratos, artículos, y
otros anuncios para el publico. También puse dos interesantes (abajo)
artículos que estan conectado con nuestro trabajo.
Sinceramente,
Melissa
FOR HISPANIC PARENTS: LESSONS ON HELPING WITH THE HOMEWORK Parental
involvement is a buzzword in education, a recommended cure for high
dropout rates, poor test scores and almost everything else that ails
schoolchildren. But for immigrant parents, reports Joseph Berger,
helping their children absorb lessons in an inscrutable language in a
strange country has always been a distinctive challenge. Hispanic
children now make up 18.6 percent of the nation's public and private
school children, and many of those are immigrants or children of
immigrants. Their dropout rates and test scores trouble policy makers,
so educators have been focusing on what parents can do to help their
children thrive in school and what obstacles they face, among other
approaches. It's a huge issue," said Dr. Pedro A. Noguera. "Many
Latino parents are working a lot, so their ability to get involved is
limited. There's the language barrier. In many Latin American
countries there's a tendency to defer to authorities in school, an
assumption that educators know what they're doing." Long-established
middle-class American parents, he said, take for granted that they are
"critical consumers, making sure their kids are getting the right
teachers and the right classes." But, he said, "many immigrants parents
don't understand that this is a role they need to play." When parents
do get involved, the decisions they make can be pivotal - few more so
than whether to put youngsters in bilingual classes or the English as a
second language classes that quickly immerse students in English.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/01/education/01education.html
SUCCESSFUL BILINGUAL SCHOOLS: SIX EFFECTIVE PROGRAMS IN CALIFORNIA The
purpose of this study was to identify schools with successful bilingual
education programs, and to document their success. It is not a
comparative study, and was not intended to support or refute competing
claims about the relative effectiveness of bilingual education compared
to other approaches. Instead, the goal was to illustrate that bilingual
schools are capable of providing opportunities for students to achieve
and sustain high levels of academic excellence even when faced with
challenges such as poverty and a lack of students' English
proficiency upon entering school. The report contains six case studies.
Each describes the bilingual program of a successful elementary school
in California. Located in San Diego, Los Angeles and Ventura counties,
all schools enrolled large numbers of Spanish-speaking English
learners. The case studies were prepared over a two-year period.
Achievement data was taken from state and local databases, and
information was gathered from telephone interviews with principals and
brief site visits. The studies describe each school and summarize
demographic and achievement data. General analysis identified key
implementation strategies and notable instructional and organizational
features, including elements of leadership, the climate of
accountability, teacher qualifications and professional development.
Each school profile was compared to a summary of key organizational and
instructional features identified by the research as contributing to
school success.
http://www.sdcoe.net/lret2/els/pdf/SBS_Report_FINAL.pdf