This article originally appeared on January 07, 2009 on Nebraska State Paper at http://nebraska.statepaper.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2009/01/07/4964ed90a1326

Education professionals sometimes call them English Language Learners, and increased numbers of ELL students in Nebraska is among the highest in the nation, according to Education Week magazine’s latest edition.

The number of ELL students in the state grew by more than 200 percent between 2000-2005. Only 12 other states reached or exceeded that level. Those numbers compare with a nationwide increase of just 57 percent during the same period.

With a total enrollment of 8,588 students, for example, the Grand Island school district includes 2,300 ELL, the Grand Island Independent reported.

The Education Week nationwide study, reported in a series of articles, included these findings:

Families of school-age English-language learners are consistently more socio-economically disadvantaged than those of their peers. ELL youths are half as likely to have a parent with a two- or four-year college degree and much more likely to live in a low-income household. While two-thirds of ELL youths have a parent who holds a steady job, their parents typically earn much less than those of non-English-language learners.

English-language learners of school age tend to be younger than members of the non-ELL population. That pattern may result from high birth rates among language-minority populations, high immigration rates among the youngest ELL youths, and the tendency to acquire proficiency with the English language over time.

Growth in the ELL population was a direct result of robust immigration through the 1990s and into the early years of the new century. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the number of foreign-born people living in the U.S. in 1995 was 24.5 million. By 2005, that population stood at 35.7 million. In that same decade, the English-language-learner student population nationwide grew by about 57 percent to 5.1 million students, from 3.2 million, according to data from the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition, based in Washington.

Nationwide enrollments of English-language learners increased by 57 percent from 1995 to 2005. Public K-12 schools educated a total of 5.1 million ELL students in the 2005-06 school year. In 20 states, the size of the ELL population has at least doubled over this period, with the greatest percentage increases in Arkansas and South Carolina. However, the numbers of English-language learners declined in nine states