Article: Supporting Schools to Improve the Educational Outcomes of Emergent Bilinguals

From http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vanessa-perez/supporting-schools-to-imp_b_3104993.html

Supporting Schools to Improve the Educational Outcomes of Emergent Bilinguals
by Vanessa Perez with Laura Ascenzi-Moreno
April 18, 2013

There is a shift across all levels of bilingual education -- state-wide, district-wide and school-wide -- to view the home language as vital for the academic development of bilingual students. The CUNY-NYSIEB project is one force that supports this shift from seeing bilingualism as a barrier to academic achievement to using students' bilingualism as the essential element in their academic success.

The primary focus of the CUNY-NYSIEB project is to improve the educational outcomes for emergent bilinguals -- students who are in the process of learning one or more languages. The term emergent bilinguals places bilingualism at the center and therefore, is preferred over the more widely used term English Language Learners, which highlights students' lack of proficiency. The CUNY-NYSIEB stance is that for schools to be successful at meeting the needs of emergent bilingual students they must develop ecologies of bilingualism that build the home language practices of their students.

Read more about this project at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/vanessa-perez/supporting-schools-to-imp_b_3104993.html