TALAS E-newsletter – April 11

The Texas Education Agency is working to determine how to make changes to match the new law on teaching “critical race theory.” Last year, Gov. Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 3 into law adding provisions to the state’s Education Code and changing how certain topics such as race are explored and discussed in the classroom.

However, the National Association for Chicana and Chicano Studies (NACCS) Tejas Foco Committee on Mexican American Studies is concerned about what and whose history gets left out of the curriculum. They say if certain historical figures are eliminated students will miss out.

On Wednesday, Governor Greg Abbott made the same pilgrimage he’s made dozens of times in the past two years, traveling from Austin down to the Rio Grande Valley to stir fears about unrestricted immigration. Abbott had a new occasion to rail against President Joe Biden after White House officials announced last week that the administration would end its use of an emergency provision called Title 42. Like the Trump administration, Biden has used the federal statute—which gives the executive branch the power to close the border during a public health crisis such as the coronavirus pandemic—to expel millions of migrants without a deportation trial. The governor for months has decried what he calls Biden’s “catastrophic open border policies.” Now, in Weslaco, twenty minutes east of McAllen, he sought to raise the level of alarm even higher and explain how Biden’s supposedly open borders will somehow get even more open.

More than a quarter of America’s superintendents plan to leave their posts imminently — and hundreds more are unsure they want to keep balancing pandemic-era 67-hour work weeks and staffing challenges, a new RAND survey of over 350 district leaders has found. 

While RAND’s early look at 2021 departure rates suggests the “big quit” has yet to play out among superintendents, an emerging trend raised concern: Urban school district superintendents are leaving in higher numbers than their suburban and rural counterparts. And that churn could further damage the districts, composed predominantly of students of color who were disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. 

The number of Spanish immersion schools and dual-language programs in the U.S. has skyrocketed in the past decade.

Why it matters: The growing number of these programs shows not only the cultural impact recently arrived Latinos have had in the U.S., but also how families are embracing multilingualism after decades of rejecting it.

Driving the news: Several studies have found that speaking more than one language makes people smarter.

Positive student-teacher relationships not only help students but benefit teachers in an interesting way — by leading them to use more challenging instructional techniques, which in turn improves students’ academic achievement, according to research from the University of Missouri.

Using “prosocial classroom behaviors” like showing kindness and compassion increased teachers’ motivation and confidence, research from the University of Missouri shows. It also led teachers to use more challenging instructional techniques that make lessons interesting and relevant to students, said Christi Bergin, a research professor at Mizzou and co-author of the study, which will be published in the journal Learning and Instruction. 

Illinois school districts are reporting a shortage of bilingual education teachers with as many as 100 vacancies, as of October.

To help fill the void, the Illinois State Board of Education announced the launch of a $4 million grant to cover tuition costs for teachers interested in becoming licensed to teach English-language learners.

It could make all the difference for the youngest learners. A study from the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research shows that getting bilingual education support to English learners early pays off in the long term.