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1-The global death toll from the new coronavirus surpassed 21,000 on Wednesday

2-number of confirmed COVID-19 infections worldwide climbed to almost 471,000, according to Johns Hopkins University

3-In the U.S., more than 68,500 people have tested positive and over 1,000 have died of the disease

https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/coronavirus-disease-covid-19-latest-news-deaths-2020-03-25/

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17 years old, Wolf Cukier discovers a new planet three days into his NASA internship.
1. Wolf is a junior from Scarsdale, New York
2. He made the discovery in the US Space Agency
3. Further research was calculated by a team of scientists from Goddard, San Deigo.

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17-year-old Wolf Cukier discovered a new planet, 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Pictor, on the third day of his NASA internship (Credit: Wolf Cukier)

When 17-year-old Wolf Cukier accepted an internship at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, last summer, he expected to be challenged and gain insights into pursuing a career in astrophysics. Instead, the high school junior from Scarsdale, New York, attained worldwide fame for an achievement that eludes most astronomers - finding a new planet! Even more impressive, Cukier made the discovery on the third day of his two-month-long internship at the US Space Agency.

The teenager came across the distant world while examining images of the variations in star brightness captured by NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) and uploaded to Planet Hunters TESS by amateur citizen astronomers. "I was looking through the data for everything the volunteers had flagged as an eclipsing binary, a system where two stars circle around each other and from our view eclipse each other every orbit," Cukier said. "About three days into my internship, I saw a signal from a system called TOI 1338. At first, I thought it was a stellar eclipse [an eclipse of one star by another in a binary system] but the timing was wrong. It turned out to be a planet."

Artist's rendition of TOI 1338 b (depicted as the black dot) and the two stars it orbits (Credit: NASA.gov)

And it was no ordinary planet either. Further research by Cukier and a team of scientists from Goddard, San Diego State University, the University of Chicago, and other institutions revealed that TOI 1338 b, as it is now called, is a rare circumbinary planet - a world orbiting two stars. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope and K2 missions have only been able to detect two dozen such planets since 1993. Even more exciting, TOI 1338 b is the first circumbinary world discovered by the TESS mission, which was launched in April 2018 to seek out exoplanets using the transit method.

The researchers, who unveiled their findings on January 6, 2020 at the 235th American Astronomical Society meeting in Honolulu, Hawaii, believe that TOI 1338 b is about 6.9 times larger than Earth, or between the sizes of Neptune and Saturn. It is also the only planet in the TOI 1338 system, which lies 1,300 light-years away from Earth in the constellation Pictor. The experts assert that TOI 1338 b's two stars, which orbit each other every 15 days, vary in size. One is about 10 percent bigger than our Sun, while the other is cooler, dimmer, and measures just one-third our Sun's mass.

Launched in April 2018, NASA's TESS mission aims to discover new Earths-sized planets and super-Earths in the solar neighborhood (Credit: NASA.gov)

Cukier, an avid Star Wars fan, likens his discovery to Luke Skywalker's fictional home, Tatooine, in the epic movie franchise. "It's very much like Tatooine, at least how the stars would appear in the sky," he says. "So, it would also have a double sunset." Unfortunately, the real-life "Tatooine" is made entirely of gas and is most likely too hot to be habitable.

Not surprisingly, the Scarsdale High School senior is looking to pursue a career in physics and astrophysics. When asked of his plans to seek out a job at NASA after his discovery, the youngster quipped, "I've no idea about NASA's hiring practices but it can't hurt! It's a good thing to have on my CV." He adds, "A career in space research is appealing."

Resources: NASA.gov, BBC.com

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High School Student Discovers New Planet Three Days Into His NASA Internship

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When 17-year-old Wolf Cukier accepted an internship at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, last summer, he expected to be challenged and gain insights into pursuing a career in astrophysics. Instead, the high school junior from Scarsdale, New York, attained worldwide fame for an achievement that eludes most astronomers - finding a new planet!

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-Ninety-five percent of people who are in prison will get out,” Ken Burns, executive producer of the PBS film, told USA TODAY.
-the roughly 300 students taking classes free of charge at the elite college are the exception. Most incarcerated individuals cannot afford a college education – and all are banned from applying for federal grants.
- Stacks of books are organized meticulously by genre amid the chaos of a maximum security prison. A makeshift desk made from cardboard is placed over a sink in a cramped cell.

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PHILADELPHIA - Stacks of books are organized meticulously by genre amid the chaos of a maximum security prison. A makeshift desk made from cardboard is placed over a sink in a cramped cell. A chalkboard is filled with Chinese symbols in a room filled with eager students in green jumpsuits. Late night studying.

This isn't the picture most Americans have of prison.

More often than not, violence, isolation and anger are what come to mind. But these scenes from a PBS documentary airing this month show viewers a different kind of prison life - the rigorous pursuit of higher education.

"College Behind Bars" follows students in the Bard Prison Initiative, a privately funded college program that began in 2001 in New York state prisons. For now, the roughly 300 students taking classes free of charge at the elite college are the exception. Most incarcerated individuals cannot afford a college education - and all are banned from applying for federal grants.

It wasn't always this way. For decades, college prison programs flourished across the country. After the passage of the 1994 Crime Bill, Pell Grants were banned for those who are incarcerated.

For the first time in more than two decades, a push to lift this ban is sparking bipartisan support. Last month, Congress introduced bills that would reinstate Pell Grant eligibility for those incarcerated as part of wider college affordability legislation.

For formerly incarcerated individuals, educational experts and advocates, it's about time. They argue that post-secondary education behind bars will lower the likelihood that an individual returns to prison and that it will benefit society as whole.

"Ninety-five percent of people who are in prison will get out," Ken Burns, executive producer of the PBS film, told USA TODAY. "Do you want them as responsible, taxpaying citizens or people who have used their time in prison to hone their criminal skills?"

'College Behind Bars'

Incarcerated at 17, Jule Hall spent more than 20 years in prison and is one of the main figures in the PBS documentary, which airs Monday and Tuesday.

The film trails Hall, a 2011 Bard Prison Initiative graduate who earned a bachelor's degree in German studies, as he navigates the parole process, is released from prison and enters the workforce.

Hall works at the Ford Foundation analyzing the impact of social justice grants - an experience he describes as "another Bard" because of the experts and cutting-edge ideas.

"What BPI has achieved is exceptional, but I think it's only a small part of what can be done if we get serious about this," Hall said. "I want people to walk away from this film understanding that there are many more people who want to be involved in programs like this that are incarcerated, but they don't have the access or the possibility of doing so."

Access to education is at the heart of filmmaker Lynn Novick and producer Sarah Botstein's vision. When the two screened one of their films at a BPI class at Eastern Correctional Facility in New York, the engaging conversation they had with the inmates encouraged them to expose the program to more people.

"After that one experience in the classroom, we walked out and just felt like, 'Oh my gosh, this is something everybody needs to know is happening,' " Novick said.

BPI students are felons serving long sentences for serious crimes. Botstein said the filmmakers challenge viewers to rethink their views of felons by not immediately revealing the BPI students' crimes, unlike most other films and books on the subject of college in prison.

In the program, the inmates memorize the opening section of "Moby Dick," participate in classroom discussion on the ethics of stem cells and vigorously weigh the benefits of NATO as part of a viral debate team. To earn their bachelor's degree, students must write a lengthy research paper that is comparable to graduate-level coursework.

This high standard of education - BPI is taught at the same level as Bard College, the liberal arts school in New York - is crucial to Hall's hope of Pell Grant expansion.

"We need to be careful to make sure that the level of quality that we received with our education is kept intact," Hall said. "When you provide education that's high quality, it's not just a benefit for the individual, but it's a benefit for society."

Shawnta Montgomery, another BPI alum, works as a peer recovery coach at the Fortune Society, a New York City nonprofit group focused on integrating formerly incarcerated individuals back into society. She said the film is meant to challenge the public's perception of who deserves access to education.

"Should people in prison get this education?" Montgomery said. "Look what it does for people, look at the doors that are open, look at recidivism rates - you see the transformation."

Numbers show benefits of college in prison

Education experts argue the benefit of expanding college prison programs is both personal and fiscal. Incarcerated individuals see their lives turned around by education, and the economy receives a boost from more productive citizens and reduced recidivism rates.

Lifting the ban on Pell Grants for those in prison may save more than $365 million, according to a study this year by the Vera Institute of Justice and the Georgetown Center on Poverty and Inequality.

The study projected large benefits to reinstating Pell Grant access to incarcerated individuals, finding that inmates leaving prison will get jobs, contribute to the economy and will be less likely to go back to prison.

Nationally, about 68% of inmates released from state prisons were rearrested within three years of release, according to a Justice Department study. In New York, where BPI operates, 42.6% of state prisoners released in 2012 returned to prison in the following three years, the state reported.

For BPI's more than 550 graduates, the recidivism rate is 2.5%, the institute said. It's not just BPI: A RAND study in 2013 found that inmates who took part in educational programs were 43% less likely to return to prison compared with those who did not participate.

"It's not that often that you see such a clear narrative of this policy change," said Casey Goldvale, who co-wrote the study. "It will impact thousands of people's lives, millions over time, and it also makes fiscal sense. It's the best of all worlds."

When the Pell Grant program started, it didn't matter whether an individual was in prison - everybody had access until the 1994 Crime Bill, said Cara Brumfield, who co-wrote the study. When that access was revoked, nobody in prison could afford the college prison programs, and they dried up.

Lawmakers argued at the time that Pell Grants, a form of federal student aid for high-need college students, should not be spent on convicts.

Unlike other forms of student aid, Pell Grants are not loans and do not need to be repaid. For the 2019-20 award year, the maximum Pell Grant amount is $6,195.

"This isn't about giving people in prison something new," Brumfield said. "This is about restoring access to something that already existed and that was successful when the Pell program first started. This is about undoing a mistake."

Before the ban on Pell Grants in 1994, there were more than 300 college programs in prisons, said Tiffany Jones, director of higher education policy at the Education Trust. In 2005, more than a decade after the ban, there were just 12.

Jones hopes change will come as policymakers realize tough-on-crime policies that exclude incarcerated individuals from opportunities don't work.

"We are here because of the compelling stories of those that have been impacted and the fact that their stories of transformations and impacts aren't exceptions, they are the norm," Jones said. "There is this opportunity to convert compassion and concern into action. This is one of the very few issues where Republicans and Democrats are agreeing that action is necessary."

Goldvale said the study found many at the local and state level are intrigued by the expansion of Pell Grants to prisons.

Asnuntuck Community College in northern Connecticut, for example, is feeling the effects of expanding Pell Grants to prisoners. The school admitted 320 incarcerated students in its fall 2016 class after receiving funding from President Barack Obama's Second Chance Pell program, said Jennifer Anilowski, the college's interim director of admissions.

Many students earn certificates in manufacturing that are in high demand in the state, leading graduates to find work and immediately contribute to the economy. The funding continues under the Trump administration - and Asnuntuck officials said they are happy to continue as long as the federal government allows them to.
'You don't know what you did for me':Released from prison by Obama, now on the dean's list
'It empowered me to realize I wasn't a stupid kid'

Aaron Kinzel, a University of Michigan-Dearborn criminology lecturer, knows firsthand the significance of college education in prison.

As a child, Kinzel said, he was violent and constantly exposed to illegal activities. Nearly killed by his stepfather, he turned to crime, and by 18, he was in prison after shooting at a police officer during a traffic stop.

While incarcerated, Kinzel cobbled together college courses as part of a Maine state program. One psychology class changed his outlook on life.

"That was the first time in my life that I really was empowered and felt kind of proud of myself," Kinzel said. "For the longest time, I really didn't understand the value of education. It empowered me to realize I wasn't a stupid kid."

Kinzel brings his students to prisons to humanize the criminal justice system. When it comes to education behind bars, Kinzel said the debate boils down to a simple question.

"If I have someone coming home on parole, who do you want living next to you?" Kinzel said. "Do you want the guy that got education inside and is likely to get a job? Or do you want the guy that comes home with no job?"

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'Undoing a mistake': Ken Burns film looks inside the push to bring college education back to prison

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PHILADELPHIA - Stacks of books are organized meticulously by genre amid the chaos of a maximum security prison. A makeshift desk made from cardboard is placed over a sink in a cramped cell. A chalkboard is filled with Chinese symbols in a room filled with eager students in green jumpsuits.

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Latino students are trying to get their degree without struggling to pay the price.
-Over the past four years Hispanic undergraduate enrollment has had the largest increase
-Hispanic students usually come from a completely different background compared to the rest of the American citizens and nearly half of the Latino students are the first in their families to make it to college.
-Lots of Latinos are not born here so it is harder for them to adapt quick enough to make enough money to provide for themselves, their families, and pay for college.
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/nation/2020/01/06/more-hispanic-students-than-ever-go-college-but-cost-high/2520646001/

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Latino students are trying to get their degree without struggling to pay the price.

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Northeastern University student from Iran has been removed from the US. Attorney says he has a visa.
-Mohammad Shahab Dehghani Hossein, 24, was refused entry into the US on his student visa and was deported Monday night, attorney Kerry Doyle said.
-The deportation happened despite an emergency stay granted by a Massachusetts district court judge,
-

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Teenage bullies accused of breaking mom's nose in vicious beating.
1. A California mother states that she was beaten bloody and left with a broken broken nose by a group of teenage girls who had been bullying her daughter.
2.

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the article is about more US schools teaching spanish but not helping enough.

1.) Roughly 3.8 million students in U.S. schools are native Spanish-speakers
2.)Sixty-seven percent of students with limited English skills graduated high school after four years in 2016.
3.)From 2000 to 2015, the percentage of Latino students enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools swelled from 16% to 26%.

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Leer en español The USA TODAY Network is launching a series on the Latino community in the USA called Hecho en USA, or made in America. Roughly 80% of all Latinos living in the USA are American citizens, but media coverage of Hispanics tends to focus on immigration and crime, instead of how Latino families live, work and learn in their hometowns. Hecho en USA tells the stories of the nation's 59.9 million Latinos - a growing economic and cultural force, many of whom are born in the USA.
LOS ANGELES - Preschool teacher Rosa Ramirez has a special way of asking her students to line up for playtime outside.

"Pueden pararse si llevan puesto algo de color amarillo, como una abeja," she tells them.

In English, Ramirez would say, "You can stand up if you are wearing yellow - like a bee." But this is the half of the school day in which she teaches exclusively in Spanish.

Her students are not confused by her language choice. Most of the 4-year-olds wearing even a smidgen of yellow stand up as instructed.

The preschool dual-language program at Gates Street Early Education Center in Lincoln Heights, one of Los Angeles' oldest neighborhoods with dense populations of Latino and Asian residents, is part of a growing number of bilingual education models taking root in California and across the country. Many of them are designed to serve students from Spanish-speaking families, as well as students from other cultures, under mounting evidence that learning two languages can help people from all backgrounds become stronger students.

Roughly 3.8 million students in U.S. schools are native Spanish-speakers who are not proficient in English. They make up the bulk of the approximately 5 million students nationwide identified as English language learners, the fastest-growing demographic in schools - and the lowest-performing, as judged by achievement tests and graduation rates.

Sixty-seven percent of students with limited English skills graduated high school after four years in 2016, compared with 84% of all students, according to federal data.

Language experts recommend how to improve those outcomes: More high-quality, long-term dual-language programs can close the achievement gap in literacy between English learners and native English speakers after five to six years, according to research.

The programs can be tough to implement. Hurdles include a debate over the best way to teach English learners, public hostility against those who speak a native language other than English, shortages of bilingual teachers and even the fact that dual-language programs often grow fastest in areas where upper-income parents ask for them. That's good for children who participate, but it worries advocates who want to see language-minority students have equal access.

Pressure is mounting in states where numbers of Latino English learners have surged. Mississippi, South Carolina, Kentucky, Kansas and Maryland have seen the number of English learners more than double from 2005 to 2015, according to federal data.

"If we can make children feel more whole and more ready and more accepted and welcomed and validate their prior knowledge and prior learning experiences, then we've gone a long way to making them ready to learn over the course of a lifetime," says Tara Fortune, immersion program director at the University of Minnesota's Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition.

What's the best way to teach language skills to students?

From 2000 to 2015, the percentage of Latino students enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools swelled from 16% to 26%. The percentage of white students fell from 61% to 49%, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Federal law requires districts to identify students with limited English skills and to serve them with an equitable, research-based program. Practices vary widely between states and districts.

Some schools use transitional bilingual programs, which teach academics such as science, math and social studies in Spanish for a few years before transitioning students to mainstream classes.

Many use English as a Second Language instruction, a set of methods and techniques originally developed to teach English to foreign diplomats and university students. Instruction happens in English, and teachers have to be certified.

Then there are "English-only" models, which call for separating language-minority children and having them learn all subjects only in English.

"It's very political because the public doesn't really understand the process of second language acquisition," says Maria Coady, an associate professor of bilingual education at the University of Florida, a state where almost 300,000 students are learning English.

"But the research is really clear on what works," she says. "Students learning English benefit from high-quality, long-term bilingual instruction programs."

Nationwide, there were about 3,000 dual-language programs as of 2015, says Santiago Wood, executive director of the National Association for Bilingual Education. That's a big increase over about 300 operating around 2001, he says, but not enough to help the surging numbers of English learners.

In some districts, the popularity of dual-language programs has led to concerns that English learners, who often come from lower-income families, will be pushed out by native English speakers from more affluent families.

At Oyster-Adams Bilingual School in Washington, for example, just 24% of students are English learners, according to school data.

Oyster's program was created to serve the Latino population, but gentrification over the past 40 years drove low-income families from the neighborhood, says Vanessa Bertelli, co-founder of a grassroots organization that advocates for more dual-language programs.

"There are more than 10,000 students learning English in D.C., and even if every one of those students enrolled in a dual-immersion school, there wouldn't be enough seats for them," says Bertelli of the DC Language Immersion Project.

"There's a lot of energy wasted on trying to allocate the pie, when what we should be doing is making more pies," she says.

Learning 'English by osmosis' does not work for most students

The USA has a complicated history when it comes to Spanish in public schools.

The country does not have an official language, but for many decades, some states made English the law of their land by embracing practices that restricted or punished children for speaking a language other than English in schools.

"The idea was time on task: put 'em in there, and they'll learn English by osmosis," Coady says. "Sometimes that works for very young kids. But for a 10th grader coming into high school only speaking Mandarin who needs to graduate in three years? There's no way that child has equitable access."

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, a focus on English-only instruction became more pronounced as a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment led to ballot initiatives in several states that effectively outlawed teaching in multiple languages.

California voters approved a ban on bilingual education in public schools in 1998. Known as the policy barred many children of Latino immigrants and Latino immigrant children from bilingual education, says Proposition 227, Ramon Martinez, an assistant professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Education in California.

Led by California businessman Ron Unz and supported by the lobbying group ProEnglish, which favors English-only classes and the adoption of English as the official language of state and national government, similar restrictive bans passed in Arizona and Massachusetts.

Ramirez, the Gates Early Learning preschool teacher, was a student in East Los Angeles during the ban in California. She was taught in Spanish and English through second grade before Proposition 227 went into effect when she was about 8. After that, she struggled.

"I remember my third grade, I just kind of shut down because I had an idea and comprehended English, but I didn't feel confident to speak it," Ramirez says, holding back tears. "Now coming back and working where I grew up, I feel like many years ago I was where my kids are now. I want to make sure they don't go through the lack of confidence I faced because of the language."

California voters repealed the state's ban on bilingual education in 2016. Massachusetts overturned its English-only instruction law in 2017. Arizona officials, many of whom fought fervently for years to keep Spanish instruction out of public schools, are watering down its law, in part because outcomes for English learners there have been dismal.

At last count by the federal Department of Education, Arizona had the lowest graduation rate for English learners of all states: In 2016, only 32% of them graduated in four years.

"Our English language learner population was performing worse on tests than our special education population," says Republican state Sen. Paul Boyer, a part-time teacher who supported efforts to change the law to help students learning English.

English learners make progress

The city of Vineland, New Jersey, about an hour south of Philadelphia, represents changing U.S. demographics. More than 60% of the 11,000 students in Vineland Public Schools are Latino, reflecting a long-standing Puerto Rican community and a swell of migrants from Central America in recent years. Many of those new arrivals are teens who came without their parents and have no recent history of attending school.

Some of the school's parents work in the surrounding eggplant and cauliflower fields during the day. Some are highly transient, migrating with the seasons wherever the work is.

Like many districts in New Jersey, Vineland hosts a transitional bilingual program for students who arrive with limited English skills. This year, about 800 students are enrolled. They learn their core academics in Spanish - often right next door to classes where the same content is taught in English - but they have time built into the day for speaking, reading and writing in English.

More: Vineland ESL, bilingual programs win state honors

During the first week of school this fall at Vineland High School, students in a 10th grade bilingual algebra class solved problems written on the board while their teacher wandered around, greeting students and checking their homework.

"Did you finish them all, Rafael?" she asked one student in English.

She turned and saw that another had neglected to carry a negative number through an equation. She tapped the student's answer: "Y un negativo, no?" she said.

Vineland's bilingual program has been bolstered by JoAnne Negrin, supervisor of bilingual education. Since she was hired seven years ago, she made sure that all new textbook purchases were available in both Spanish and English, so students in the bilingual program could learn at the same pace as their English-speaking peers.

She made sure bilingual teachers in the lower grades weren't delivering the same lessons in both languages over the course of the day.

"If you're repeating lessons every day, you're never going to help these children make progress," Negrin says.

Vineland's English learners show some of the highest academic improvement scores in the district, she says. Last year, the students met all the targets outlined on the state report cards.

"People sometimes question, 'How are students going to learn English if they spend the whole day learning in Spanish?' " Negrin says. "Well, our data shows that proficiency in literacy in the child's first language is a very good indicator of how well that child is going to eventually learn English."

Other small victories are happening. Kevin Sanchez, 17, who arrived from the Dominican Republic last year with limited English, won first place in a regional science fair after investigating how windmills worked and building a model of one.

Sanchez almost backed out from the fair when he learned that participants were required to make an oral presentation to the judges. Encouraged by his bilingual science teacher, Sanchez enlisted a friend to translate for him.

"It felt really good that a student like me could win in a fair like that," Sanchez says in Spanish.

Negrin, who grew up as a bilingual child abroad, translates for him.

"So often people look at bilingual programs as remedial programs," she says as Sanchez returns to his English as a Second Language class. "But here you have a kid winning a science fair. There's nothing remedial about that."

Bilingual teachers in short supply, high demand

Another major barrier to starting or expanding dual-language programs is the critical shortage nationwide of teachers who can speak and teach in Spanish and English.

More than 30 states reported critical shortages in English as a Second Language teachers and world language teachers.

As a result, more districts groom their bilingual teachers, either by helping staff achieve the necessary certifications or by encouraging former bilingual students to come back and teach.

In Texas' Rio Grande Valley, close to the U.S.-Mexican border, one district and a nearby university tried to bolster the pipeline of bilingual students becoming bilingual educators.

The Pharr-San Juan-Alamo Independent School District serves a nearly all-Latino population of 32,000 students. The district has long supported a dual-language, Spanish-English program in all its elementary schools, which has helped close the gap in the early grades for those who are learning English. Students can choose to continue in the bilingual program in high school.

After students graduate, they can continue their bilingual studies in Spanish and English at the University of Texas-Rio Grande Valley.

The university added a minor in bilingual secondary education, says Janine Schall, chair of the bilingual and literacy studies department.

"Most of our students come from the local community and plan to return to teach in local K-12 schools after graduation," Schall said.

The university can't expand fast enough, she says. Would-be bilingual teachers often face challenges such as the cost of their education and the tests they have to take to become certified in bilingual education.

"We know that there's a greater need for bilingual education teachers than we can meet right now," Schall says.

Dual-language programs grow in Los Angeles

About 15,000 students were enrolled in the Los Angeles public schools' Spanish/English dual-language programs last year. About two-thirds of those students came from Spanish-speaking households, the others were native English speakers, according to district data.

Nearby, the University of California, Los Angeles' Lab School has hosted its dual-language immersion progr am since 2013. As a private school operated by the university's Graduate School of Education, the Lab School wasn't beholden to California's law that banned bilingual instruction in public schools.

About 40% of students in the program speak Spanish at home.

Elena Perez, a bilingual preschool teacher there, says immersing Spanish-speaking children in their native language empowers them and helps them excel past their regular education peers academically, socially and emotionally.

Her classroom features a gigantic world map, and strings and pins link students to the countries from which their families immigrated, such as Guatemala, Mexico and Peru. One morning, the class sang and swayed to the Spanish folk song "De colores."

Outside learning spaces designed to instill cultural pride, Latino students face a world full of structural barriers and racial inequalities, language experts say. They want lawmakers to pay attention to the research and make policy changes that better position English learners to succeed.

"People talk about closing the achievement gap, but it's more closing the opportunity gap," Perez says. "It's important that we come back to the original purpose of dual language, which is to serve the marginalized population."
Contributing: USA TODAY intern Jared Weber Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.

$1 for 3 months.

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More US schools teach in English and Spanish, but not enough to help Latino kids

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Leer en español The USA TODAY Network is launching a series on the Latino community in the USA called Hecho en USA, or made in America. Roughly 80% of all Latinos living in the USA are American citizens, but media coverage of Hispanics tends to focus on immigration and crime, instead of how Latino families live, work and learn in their hometowns.

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st.louis sudbury flips the script on traditional education
st.louis sudbury is an aged mixed group alternative school
gives all students the complete freedom to pursue their own dreams/studies

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Read the latest education, school district and university news from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch & STLtoday.com

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Why the US has a student loan debt crisis?
Over the years, student loans have groan because of the inability to pay off the loans & it is a debt of about 1.6 trillion and is still rising. This is the second most debt in the US. There have been methods put out to help slower the dept rate. There are about 29,200 dollars on average being borrowed which becomes dept.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/19/us/student-loan-slow-repayment-moodys-trnd/index.html

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Single mom Kendra Espinoza made the difficult decision to pull her children out of public school in their home of  Montana.Her oldest daughter was being bullied and her youngest daughter was struggling academically. Kendra transferred them to a private Christian school and took on a second job cleaning houses to pay for the tuition. Kendra spent sleepless nights worrying about how she’d make the next tuition payment. Kendra thought her prayers were answered when the Montana Legislature enacted a scholarship for low income families, But then the state Department of Revenue told her not to bother applying.

Fact 1 ~ Kendra sued and on Wednesday the Supreme Court will listen to the case. Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue is expected to decide whether the government may bar parents from selecting religious schools as part of otherwise generally available student-aid programs, or whether this prohibition violates the U.S. Constitution’s Free Exercise Clause.

Fact 2 ~ . Currently 29 states operate educational choice programs, which provide financial aid for parents to select the best school — whether religious or secular — for their children.

Fact 3 ~ Blaine Amendments are laws that which prohibit states from using public funds to aid “sectarian” or religious schools.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/01/20/protect-religious-freedom-supreme-court-rule-school-choice-column/4470184002/

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In Albion, NY, The parents have packed the middle school auditorium in the evening full of fear and anger about school safety in their village  of 6,000 people.  They'd been told a school shooting plot had been thwarted and three middle schoolers arrested.
Fact 1 -  Students had plot to kill and injure at school using explosives and guns.
Fact 2 -  Three teenage boys facing charges of second-degree conspiracy to commit murder at their middle school.
Fact 3 -  The plot, which police say was discussed on an online communication platform called Discord, became known in early November. A student who received a threat from another student reported it to a teacher, who reported it to an administrator, who reported it to the district and to the school resource officer.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/12/02/school-shooting-violence-prevention-suicide-bullying-statistics-red-flag-law/4254199002/

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Texas School District  loses money from a phishing scam. FBI currently do not know if the district will be able to recover the money back to the district.
Fact 1- Manor Independent School District in Texas lost $2.3 million in an email phishing scam.
Fact 2- Three separate transactions occurred in November, which a district employee discovered and reported in January.
Fact 3- The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Manor Police Department are investigating the incident. While the district said there are "strong leads," it's unclear whether it will recover the money.

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Dive Brief:

Manor Independent School District in Texas lost $2.3 million in an email phishing scam, according to a district press release.

Three separate transactions occurred in November, which a district employee discovered and reported in December, according to a report by CBS Austin.​

The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Manor Police Department are investigating the incident. While the district said there are "strong leads," it's unclear whether it will recover the money. Experts say that the FBI sometimes recovers partial amounts, but in most cases, the money cannot be fully recovered.

Dive Insight:

While schools are increasingly becoming victim to cybercrime, scams involving this large amount of money is not something Doug Levin, a K-12 cybersecurity expert, said he "sees everyday." However, Levin points out that the nature of this specific phishing attack "has been repeated at school districts across the country and has been ongoing for years."

"It has resulted in some of the single largest-dollar-value scams affecting school districts," Levin told Education Dive, adding he has recorded at least a dozen similar attacks in his database since 2016, including a recent $3.7 million scam targeting Scott County Schools in Kentucky. "The pattern seems nearly identical."

In those cases, large deals between school districts and vendors were targeted by scams specifically engineered to change bank routing information.

In 2018, the Levin's K-12 Cybersecurity Resource Center logged 122 publicly disclosed cybersecurity incidents that affected 119 public school agencies in 38 states, or about one incident every three days. The most common type involved data breaches, with a little over half carried out or caused by staff or students and a little less than a quarter including a loss of control of K-12 data by school vendors or partners.

Student data was included in 60% of K-12 data breaches in 2018, while 46% included staff information, according to the center.

​Other recent incidents include a scam in November 2018​ targeting ​ Crowley Independent School District, also in Texas, which lost nearly $2 million. A man who posed as an accountant for a district construction company vendor was caught and is facing charges, but the school has only recovered an unspecified portion of the money.

Confirming large transactions with vendors through different channels, Levin said, could prevent these kinds of incidents.

Other methods used to target districts include ransomware attacks, where school systems are asked to pay a ransom amount in exchange for stolen information, and identity theft. In addition to money lost, students often lose time from school as districts recovery. Recently an attack on the Houston County School District in Alabama delayed the start of schools for its 6,400 students.

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Texas district loses $2.3M to phishing scam

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Manor Independent School District in Texas lost $2.3 million in an email phishing scam, according to a district press release. Three separate transactions occurred in November, which a district employee discovered and reported in December, according to a report by CBS Austin.​ The Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the Manor Police Department are investigating the incident.

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what does big tech want from schools (its not money)

Our recent, nationally representative survey of teachers echoes those concerns. It found that 60 percent of teachers think Big Tech has too much influence in K-12 schools

Children may get used to using say, an iPad, in school and beg their parents for Apple products. Or they may get so accustomed to Google’s interface that they’ll turn to the company for years to come—and urge their employers to adopt their products, too

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Franklin College president fired after arrest for sex crimes

Franklin College fired President Thomas over the weekend following his arrest in Wisconsin for sex crimes, and is launching an investigation into his behavior while at the Indiana school.

The college was made aware of the "deeply disturbing incident" in an email from the Sturgeon Bay Police Department and the Board of Trustees "acted immediately," according to school officials.

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Detroit Schools to use bottled water due to lead, copper concerns

Detroit public school students will start the year next week with no access to water fountains because of contamination concerns, officials said Wednesday.
According to a statement from Vitti, 10 schools were already using a filtration system as a result of water quality issues.
Eight additional campuses had ongoing issues since 2016, bringing the total number of campuses verified to have water quality problems to 34, Vitti said.

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teen was charged with manslaughter after a deadly school shooting in Texas. DA says it was not intentional

1.) Authorities are still searching for the gun used in the shooting. The suspect brought the weapon to school on Tuesday but it's unclear how it came to be in his possession
2.)"Unfortunately, there's only two people who know what really happened and one of them is not able to speak for himself and the suspect is not cooperating,"
3.) The alleged gunman, identified as a minor boy, was arrested hours after police responded to reports of a shooting at Bellaire High School
https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/15/us/houston-student-shot-on-campus/index.html

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University of Missouri professor, Wayne McDaniel, was presumed dead at the attending of a school Thailand field trip.
1. The death occurred on January, 7,

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A New York village averted a potential school shooting. Parents are still furious.

They'd been told a school shooting plot had been thwarted and three middle schoolers arrested.

1. The details of averted school violence have only recently captured the attention of researchers
2. the three boys remain on suspension, at home under their parents' care, because New York law calls for them to be placed in the least restrictive environment that will ensure their return to court
3. Albion police say the boys were in the logistical stages of a plan to enter the school with explosives, incendiary devices, and firearms
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2019/12/02/school-shooting-violence-prevention-suicide-bullying-statistics-red-flag-law/4254199002/

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Jarvis Murphy tried to get away.

He joined a fleeing crowd, heard gunshots echo on the stadium concourse, felt a bullet pierce the ground a few inches from his left shoe.

He kept running — toward the exit, toward his car, willing himself forward even as he got a jolt in one leg, then the other.

Outside the stadium, Mr. Murphy fell to the ground. When he rolled up his jeans, he found a gunshot wound below each knee. And the worst pain he had experienced in his 18 years.

“I was scared. I was really scared,” said Mr. Murphy, who was one of nine people shot in August after a high school football game in Mobile. He said he had never worried about someone bringing a
Jarvis Murphy tried to get away.

He joined a fleeing crowd, heard gunshots echo on the stadium concourse, felt a bullet pierce the ground a few inches from his left shoe.

He kept running — toward the exit, toward his car, willing himself forward even as he got a jolt in one leg, then the other.

Outside the stadium, Mr. Murphy fell to the ground. When he rolled up his jeans, he found a gunshot wound below each knee. And the worst pain he had experienced in his 18 years.

“I was scared. I was really scared,” said Mr. Murphy, who was one of nine people shot in August after a high school football game in Mobile. He said he had never worried about someone bringing a
Jarvis Murphy tried to get away.

He joined a fleeing crowd, heard gunshots echo on the stadium concourse, felt a bullet pierce the ground a few inches from his left shoe.

He kept running — toward the exit, toward his car, willing himself forward even as he got a jolt in one leg, then the other.

Outside the stadium, Mr. Murphy fell to the ground. When he rolled up his jeans, he found a gunshot wound below each knee. And the worst pain he had experienced in his 18 years.

“I was scared. I was really scared,” said Mr. Murphy, who was one of nine people shot in August after a high school football game in Mobile. He said he had never worried about someone bringing a
Jarvis Murphy tried to get away.

He joined a fleeing crowd, heard gunshots echo on the stadium concourse, felt a bullet pierce the ground a few inches from his left shoe.

He kept running — toward the exit, toward his car, willing himself forward even as he got a jolt in one leg, then the other.

Outside the stadium, Mr. Murphy fell to the ground. When he rolled up his jeans, he found a gunshot wound below each knee. And the worst pain he had experienced in his 18 years.

“I was scared. I was really scared,” said Mr. Murphy, who was one of nine people shot in August after a high school football game in Mobile. He said he had never worried about someone bringing gun to a game.

1.Mr.Murphy became a casualty that evening of an overlooked epidemic of school shooting the kind that happens after class lets out.

2.The kind that draws little attention despite a national push to fortitfy schools and protect children
3.since the start of 2013,at least 19 people have been killed and more than 100 Wounded in shootings with some connection to school sporting events.