With a shortfall of up to 100 bilingual teachers in the Chicago area, $4 million has been earmarked by the Illinois State Board of Education to cover the cost of training those teachers interested in becoming licensed to teach English language learners (ELL), as reported by wttw.com
According to Marissa de La Torre, senior research associate and managing director at the University of Chicago Consortium on School Research, it takes between five and seven years to be proficient enough in English “to be successful in the schools”.
“Many Latino students, about two-thirds, begin their education needing services and support in developing their English language,” Rebecca Vonderlack-Navarro, director of education policy and research at the Latino Policy Forum, told wttw.com, “and so most of the English learners in the CPS [Chicago Public School] system and in the state at large are really concentrated in preschool and then the early grades.”
“Attending pre-K programmes in CPS, especially if it is a full day classroom, really (sets) the students on the path to success,” de la Torre adds.
