Illini get grant for bilingual ed

NORMAL, Ill. -- Illinois State University hopes $3 million in federal grants will help bridge the achievement gap for the state's growing number of non-English speaking students.\nThe five-year grants from the U.S. Department of Education will help provide bilingual training for ISU education majors and some current teachers' aides.\nEducators say the lack of such training affects achievement scores and dropout rates among minority students, and only one in four Illinois teachers has adequate bilingual training.\nA $1.7 million grant will provide a streamlined teaching degree for bilingual teachers' aides. ISU expects 20 aides will become certified teachers each year, benefiting more than 500 students annually.\nInitially, ISU will work with four districts north of Chicago that have major shortages -- Waukegan, Zion, North Chicago and Diamond Lake, near Mundelein. The university hopes to expand the program after five years.\nA second, $1.5 million grant will provide English-as-a-second-language training for teachers and education majors who have no foreign language experience. The program, which teaches strategies such as using pictures to teach English, is expected to certify 110 teachers a year.\nISU will initially work with elementary schools in Elgin, where 50 new teachers a year are needed to work with more than 5,000 Hispanic students.\nAbout 150,000 students in Illinois list English as their second language, and 110,000 of those list Spanish as their first.\nThe State Board of Education said Hispanic enrollment at Illinois schools hit a record 16.2 percent in 2001-2002, up from 15.4 percent the year before and 8.3 percent when figures were first tracked in 1987.