Daniel Ward sets Multilingual Learners at the center of efforts to improve reading scores Despite the administration’s arguments to the contrary, ensuring that multilingual learners (MLs) are central to the success of national literacy efforts may become more difficult now that the controversial structural changes to the Department of Education are set for implementation next month. The most obvious change is that the Office of English Language Acquisition (OELA) will be dissolved and its functions will be redistributed across the Office of Elementary and Secondary Education (OESE), already undermined by mass firings last October in the midst of a government shutdown. The reasoning behind its closure is that a standalone office is no longer “needed.” Such a rationale can only be based on the belief that minority learner groups are catered for adequately and fairly by the public school systems operated by the states, so English learners do not need specialist attention to succeed.…