Limited English (and Spanish) Proficiency

The National Council of La Raza's Annual Conference starts tomorrow at the Los Angeles Convention Center. It kicks off with a morning speech from Bill Clinton and since it's in L.A., it's only fitting that conference-goers will also hear from Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa (for the Gadfly, that's veeya-RAI-gosa and c'mon, take a class).

The workshops are free and open to the public so they usually attract a pretty interesting crowd of people. If you're in L.A., drop in and check out the workshop on Sunday morning on ELL students in public schools. It should be a good one since the issue of how to educate ELL students (inaccurately perceived to be an entirely immigrant population) is only getting bigger. The ELL population is rising in nearly every state and most schools still don't know what to do to meet the NCLB requirements for these students. Even with added “flexibility” provisions, states are hard-pressed to develop decent assessments and to demonstrate improvement. With a serious shortage of teachers qualified to teach ELL students, pressure is mounting and there is a high demand for teacher training programs across the country.