Data-Driven Education Insights

The Study of Language (6 th eds.) George Yule (2017) Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press Pp xi + 356 ISBN 978-1316606759 (paper) $30.30 U.S. The remarkable shift in the United States’ K-12 School demographic in last two decades required all teachers to be able to support EL’s language, literacy, and content learning in English by educating themselves with the characteristics of discourse and text (Nutta, Mokhtari, & Strebel, 2012, p. 10). Applied linguistics is one of the courses required to be mastered by the teachers of ELs (Nutta, Mokhtari, & Strebel, 2012). The Study of language (6 th ed.) is a comprehensive resource for in-service teachers, teacher candidates, and teacher trainers alike. Informed and trained by his years of experience in the field of applied linguistics and teacher education, Yule’s intention is to afford a clear introduction of various topics in engaging manner. Recently edited based on the comprehensive survey of instructors throug

The United States Census Bureau reports that approximately 16.3% of the total population is of Hispanic/Latino descent, and 13.2% were other foreign-born populations in the year 2010 (Census, 2010).  One out of every four K-12 students in the United States comes from these immigrant families who speak English as a second language (Camera, 2016). Recent data show that the Adjusted Cohort Graduation Rate (ACGR) of migrant children is much lower than native English speakers in the year 2013, and the dropout rates of language learners is more than double than that of native English-speaking Americans (i.e., total dropout rate-6.8%, White dropout rate- 4.4%, English learners dropout rate-12.7%) ( Stark, Noel, 2015). Studies in this direction show that the dropout rates are likely to be much higher among students who face the reality of a poor home-school relationship. Many researchers, academicians, and veteran teachers believe that regular and positive parent-teacher communication has the

[The] “No Child Left Behind Act (2001) clearly highlighted that the states that receive Federal funding need to adhere to set directives for including parents in their children’s education.” -           Gonzalez-DeHass, Willems, & Holbein, 2005, para. 1 Family and School Partnership for Student Achievement Act demands that every school board, school district superintendent, and teacher require to completely buttress and collaborate to carry out a well-planned, inclusive, and comprehensive arrangement to assist parents and families in productively engaging in their child’s education.   - The Florida Senate (2016 Florida Statutes) A student is an entity that binds parents and teachers together. The concept of good school, good teacher, and good parent does not emerge from a vacuum, but from the hard work of everyone working together on various issues. The parent-teacher communication among teachers is a necessary condition for better student achievement. The parents and

English language learners possess limited language proficiency, which directly affects their learning, and causes them to perform below average on various assessments. Elementary school English learners, whose first language is not fully developed, face more challenges in everyday mainstream classrooms because they bear the intense pressure to learn subject-specific content knowledge and perform to meet state standards while acquiring both their native and target languages ( Francis, Lesaux, Kieffer, & Rivera, 2006) . Without being able to fully understand the academic language, it is hard for students of any age to gain academic success. It takes rigorous effort, and continuous practice to learn the various nuances (e.g., sentence structures, phonological awareness, multiple meanings, pragmatics, academic discourse, etc.) of academic language (Franke, & Kazemi, 2001). Academic language is a key to mathematics because English learners are expected to complete word problems