The Best Ways to Teach Young Newcomers (New York Times)

http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/11/the-best-ways-to-teach-young-newcomers/?hp

March 11, 2009
By the editors of the NY Times - part of the "Room for Debate" blog

First of all, this is an interesting (albeit problematic) interactive map of immigration in the US - my home-county of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, for example, had a total population of 750,096 in 2000; 52,131 were foreign-born (about 7%) and of that 7%, the largest foreign-born group was "Asia, Middle East." Right. Still, you can look at "number of residents" vs. "percent of population" across time, which gives the data an interesting visualization.

Here, you can also look at the demographics of any individual school district in the US. My school district was incredibly white and nondiverse but seems to be (slowly) changing.

The blog entry itself tackles the question: should "the children of immigrants, and who don’t speak English well" be segregated "to give them intensive support"? There are several interesting points made, and if you need further proof of how screwed up the "No Child Left Behind" act is, look no further.

For now, I'm looking forward to future installments "on how the latest wave of immigrants is affecting other American institutions."