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Past Extra Credits October 23 All issues

"The Easton Area School District will increase its efforts to help students who speak English as a second language thanks to a six-year No Child Left Behind grant from the state. 'We always had ESL (English as a second language) programs, but now there's grant money to go above and beyond what we were doing before,' said Davene Heckman, the district's reading supervisor."

"The district has used the grant money to train all teachers in reading, speaking, listening and writing techniques for limited-English proficiency children. This training will assist regular classroom teachers in catering their lessons to limited-English proficiency students. 'Any kind of new, innovative programs you want to do, you have to train people first,' Heckman said."

"Limited-English proficiency students are among the subgroups that have to make the same adequate yearly progress as the general population in order for a school to make adequate yearly progress in federal performance standards. In the Easton Area School District, the group has failed to make that progress but Heckman said she hopes the grant will help remedy that issue. With the additional money next year, the district will create more training sessions and implement after-school programs for limited-English proficiency students."