The U.S. Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) administers the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), with the mission to increase food security and reduce hunger. The study summarized here seeks to understand how the 53 SNAP State agencies -- 50 States, District of Columbia (DC), Guam, the U.S. Virgin…

Private educational activities designed to enhance student outcomes outside the formal schooling system are increasingly referred to as shadow education. In Japan, shadow education traditionally consists of for-profit cram schools or "juku." "Juku" take many forms in Japan, yet their primary function is to offer students extra…

Communities of practice have taken a firm foothold in the second language teaching profession due to their promise of enabling participants to self determine their professional development needs and, through peer mentoring, achieve their goals. This article provides a rationale as to why the model is particularly well suited to teacher…

Whereas the Interagency Language Roundtable Language Skill Level Descriptions broke new ground for assessing proficiency in foreign languages, the need for user-oriented (rather than assessment-oriented) proficiency scales has led, especially in Europe, to the creation of scales consisting of positively formulated "can-do" statements,…

The Biden Administration expects to resettle 95,000 Afghan evacuees in communities across the United States by September 2022. Some evacuees come to the United States with strong English proficiency and years of experience working as entrepreneurs or community leaders or for the United States military. Others, especially women, have had limited…

The purpose of this report is to propose a theory of action for the development of an alternate English language proficiency assessment (AELPA) system to support the integrated instruction and assessment for English learners with significant cognitive disabilities (ELSCDs). This theory of action examines the purposes of an ELP assessment system…

The International Research and Studies Program supports surveys, studies, and instructional materials development to improve and strengthen instruction in modern foreign languages, area studies, and other international fields. The purpose of the program is to improve and strengthen instruction in modern foreign languages, area studies and other…

Collaboration is tough even in ideal circumstances. How do you begin to effect change when nearly half of the families in a district speak a language other than English in the home, but traditional education models rarely emphasize the strengths of cultural or linguistic diversity? Or when nearly all students live in low-income families and face…

The United States is faced with a serious shortage of linguistically and culturally competent students to meet the needs of our global population and economy. In order to address this deficiency, the US government has funded several initiatives to increase our nation's capacity to train teachers and students in critical languages. The Office of…

This document describes how professionals representing the Indianapolis public school system, Goodwill Industries, Indy Reads (a literacy advocacy group), and an English-as-a-Second-Language (ESL) professional development consultant designed a comprehensive ESL education and social service system in metropolitan Indianapolis. The document…

Educational leadership in Sweden has reached a turning point. There is now a widespread acceptance of the fact that Sweden increasingly has many citizens whose origins and/or upbringing are non-European. In turn, the school has become a multicultural meeting place where previous assumptions about curriculum consensus and cultural order have been…

There are many thousands of people who are in a position to exert great influence in the work of Americanization, through their leadership or membership in State legislatures, State bureaus and departments, and State organizations, official and voluntary. The primary purpose of this book is to lay before that body of men and women some concrete…

In France, the 1882 Compulsory Education Act includes both French and foreign children. Since then, the need to go further than this general principle of non-discrimination and to undertake specific action for immigrants, both adults and children, has been recognized. Since 1970, the Ministry of Education has been directly responsible for this…

The report of the Interagency Language Roundtable's invitational symposium on language aptitude testing consists of a description of the project and appendixes which include the following: (1) the symposium program and abstracts of papers; (2) a list of participants; and (3) summaries of the discussions of three working groups (on applications,…

In 1995, the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO) launched the High-Poverty Schools Initiative. It focuses on building the capacity of state education agency officials and their local partners to implement various federal education programs aimed at improving outcomes for students in high-poverty schools. The overall initiative goal is…