• Do One-Size-Fits-All Literacy Programs Serve English Learners?

    My teaching experience in a bilingual school versus a dual immersion school couldn’t be more different, although they shared one commonality: the balance between engaging and overburdening English learners (ELs) was hard to strike. 

    In the bilingual school, language barriers impeded my classroom daily. Although our lessons were taught bilingually, my co-teacher and I struggled to understand each other and often dealt with miscommunications. The administration mandated that state tested subjects be taught in English exclusively, implying that bilingual aims were on the backburner to test scores. Our EL students were constantly on call to translate for the non-Spanish speakers who didn’t understand the content, which distracted them from focusing on their coursework and put improper pressure on them to synthesize and interpret lessons. 

    But in the dual immersion (DLI) school, I struggled to get my EL students involved at all. I didn't even know which of my students were enrolled in the DLI program, but I wrongly assumed that because I taught almost all the ELs in my school that many of them would be enrolled to take advantage of its academic benefits. In the DLI program, students were eligible to receive a certification in bilingualism which could be leveraged for college and career advancement. I was shocked to find that despite the DLI program offering their native language, only a few of my 250 students were enrolled. The program marketed bilingualism as a career investment: but one aimed at English-dominant students acquiring a second language, not at students who were already bilingual and had the most to gain from formal recognition of that skill.

    These experiences reflect a broader pattern in how state policy has approached English learners: investing in programs that promise inclusion while rarely centering the students those programs are meant to serve. The data reveals this gap, as 50% of ELs who are in the U.S. school system since kindergarten fail to reach proficiency within 6 years.

  • Voter Suppression Will Not Have the Last Word

    Our guest author is Reverend Dr. Cassandra Gould the national political director of the Faith in Action National Network.

    Democracy aka governance by the people depends on full and equal civic participation. Free and fair elections are its foundation, ensuring that citizens choose their representatives, not the other way around. At its core, democracy rests on a simple but powerful principle: every vote carries equal weight, regardless of a person’s race, income, education, or social standing.

    Yet, for Black Americans, that principle has always been contested.

    From Reconstruction to Jim Crow to the present day, Black political participation has been met with coordinated resistance through law, policy, and violence. Yet, it has also been Black political action organizing, strategizing, marching, litigating, and voting that has repeatedly forced this nation closer to its democratic ideals.