Refugees will freeze to death, warn EU head - Telegraph

Refugees will freeze to death, warn EU head - Telegraph:

By Matthew Holehouse, in Brussels and Melanie Hall in Berlin

Migrants crossing the Balkans will begin freezing to death as winter approaches, the head of European Union has said, as leaders warned the continent was "falling apart" trying to deal with the biggest humanitarian crisis since the Second World War.

As leaders of eastern European countries turned on each other at a foul-tempered emergency summit in Brussels, they said the Schengen visa-free zone and even the European Union itself could be pulled apart as states threw up borders to halt the influx.

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, said a solution was urgently needed or thousands of refugee families facing winter temperature on the hillsides and freezing river-banks of Eastern Europe, would die.

"Every day counts," he said. "Otherwise we will soon see families in cold rivers in the Balkans perish miserably."

Pre-K Literacy Key to English-Language Learner Reclassification, Study Finds - Learning the Language - Education Week

Pre-K Literacy Key to English-Language Learner Reclassification, Study Finds - Learning the Language - Education Week:

English language-learners who enter kindergarten with a basic grasp of academic language, "either in their primary language or in English," are more likely over time to be reclassified as former ELLs, a new analysis from Oregon State University has found.

Karen Thompson, an assistant professor of cultural and linguistic diversity in Oregon State University's College of Education, reviewed nine years of student data from the Los Angeles Unified schools to gauge how long it takes students to develop English proficiency.

Most research indicates that it takes students at least four years to become fluent in academic English, language that allows students to retell story or understand mathematical word problems.

Once students are reclassified as former ELLS, they no longer receive specific aid to support their English-language development.

Thompson's analysis shows that students who don't reach proficiency in that typical window, generally by the time they reach upper elementary, are less likely to ever do so. Those students share a common characteristic: they enter kindergarten with a limited command of academic language.

Students who aren't reclassified are more likely to score lower on academic tests and graduate high school at lower rates than their peers.

"This study shows that building literacy skills, in English or the child's native language, prior to kindergarten can be helpful," Thompson said in a release announcing the survey results. The ability, "is likely going to set them on a path to success," she said.

About 25 percent of students do not master English after nine years in L.A. Unified schools, Thompson found. Of those students, about 30 percent are in special education programs.

The Los Angeles Times has written about the L.A. Unified effort to support these long-term English-learners, students who have attended California schools for seven years or more and are still not fluent in English.

Roughly a third of students in the Los Angeles, the nation's second-largest school district, are ELLs

Russian Presence Near Undersea Cables Concerns U.S. - The New York Times

Russian Presence Near Undersea Cables Concerns U.S. - The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — Russian submarines and spy ships are aggressively operating near the vital undersea cables that carry almost all global Internet communications, raising concerns among some American military and intelligence officials that the Russians might be planning to attack those lines in times of tension or conflict.

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The issue goes beyond old Cold War worries that the Russians would tap into the cables — a task American intelligence agencies also mastered decades ago. The alarm today is deeper: The ultimate Russian hack on the United States could involve severing the fiber-optic cables at some of their hardest-to-access locations to halt the instant communications on which the West’s governments, economies and citizens have grown dependent.

While there is no evidence yet of any cable cutting, the concern is part of a growing wariness among senior American and allied military and intelligence officials over the accelerated activity by the Russian armed forces around the globe. At the same time, the internal debate in Washington illustrates how the United States is increasingly viewing every Russian move through a lens of deep distrust, reminiscent of the Cold War.