Princeton, N.J.

Educators and policy-makers answered the call to attend a two-day conference convened by Educational Testing Service and the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) to assess progress in educating students who are not proficient in English when they enter American schools and to discuss research on potential solutions.

The hosts noted that English-language learners are the fastest-growing segment of the student population in U.S. public schools and that the No Child Left Behind law mandates that each state account for the instruction and performance of students learning English and demonstrate that progress is being made.

However, educators have been struggling to find the most effective ways to teach English skills and help immigrant students progress in their academic subjects. Many students who are not proficient in English fall behind in other subjects as well.

The conference “Addressing Achievement Gaps: The Language Acquisition and Education Achievement of English-Language Learners,” was held earlier this week. It attracted 320 participants, including teachers from throughout New Jersey, nearby states and elsewhere, as well as college administrators and other education officials from around the nation.

Dr. Michael Nettles, senior vice president of the policy evaluation and research center for ETS, said organizers were pleased that the conference attracted some of the “leading thinkers in our nation who have devoted many years of their lives to studying, writing and advocating” for students learning English. He noted that it was the eighth conference ETS has held on achievement gap issues.

Kurt Landgraf, president and CEO of ETS, told attendees that teaching English-language learners, ELL, students, “is extremely important, because the statistics are overwhelming.”

“We are no longer talking about dealing with a minority part of our population,” he said, but with a segment that is very quickly becoming a majority in schools and in the U.S. population.