Response to COVID-19 Pandemic:
Resources for Educating English Learners Online
The mass closing of schools across the county due to the COVID-19 "Coronavirus" has resulted in a significant move to online/virtual learning at the K-12 level. Educating ELs online is a significant challenge that many educators are finding difficult to address. NAELPA is collecting Resources For Educating ELs Online and providing links to these resources on a separate webpage under the Resources page of the website (naelpa.org). The NAELPA Executive Board and membership are committed to doing all we can to assist in the education of ELs during this unprecedented time in the history of education in our country.
The U.S. Congress has passed several Coronavirus relief funding bills over the past year. Each of these bills include funding for K-12 education and each bill includes statements of how these funds are to be used. Those statements include explicit wording that these funds can be used to address the unique needs of English learners (ELs) (a.k.a. multilingual learners) as one of the eligible 'at-risk' student populations that should be targeted, however, details of exactly how these funds can be used to support multilingual learners is not included in these funding bill. In order to help answer the question of "How to use the COVID-19 relief funds to support multilingual learners?" NAELPA has prepared a short paper, using ESSER, ESSER II, and ESSER III funds to Support EL Education.
Read on to learn a little more about the three funding bills that have provided nearly $200 billion for K-12 COVID-19 relief. For more information, check out the NAELPA Blog on this topic.
NAELPA's Advisory Board Members
The National Association for English Learner Program Administrators engages experts in the education of ELs to provide guidance, suggestions, and practical solutions to issues faced by NAELPA and by EL educators. Advisory Board Members may serve for three consecutive years and must take at least one year off before being able to serve as an advisory board member again. The current NAELPA Advisory Board Members are:
Joel Gomez, Center for Applied Linguistics
David Nieto, Northern Illinois University
Carol Salva, Siedlitz Education
Soyoung Park, Stanford University, CA
Jesse Markow, Independent Consultant
Morgan Cox, Colorado Department of Education
(Past President)
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