With more students than ever identified as English Language Learners in the United States, language expert and Stanford education Professor Kenji Hakuta is leading a national initiative to provide teachers with resources to meet these students' educational needs.

By Robin Migdol

Schoolchildren struggling to learn English in American public schools, and the educators responsible for teaching the language to them, will soon have resources to help ensure they meet the nationwide Common Core State Standards, in an initiative led by Stanford education Professor Kenji Hakuta.

"This initiative is really to give access to the standards to a growing group of the student population which are English Language Learners – usually what happens is they're sort of an afterthought," said Hakuta, the Lee L. Jacks Professor of Education. "Let's try to better understand what the language needs are that are foundational to these content standards and try to be much more explicitly systematic in making that available to English Language Learners."

The Common Core State Standards are content-based standards for kindergarten through high school coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers. The standards, which have been adopted by all except six states, are designed to introduce students to rigorous, consistent material that will prepare them for college and the workforce.

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