Study on Rise of ELLs

English-language-learner enrollment in K-12 schools has increased by more than 1 million students since 2000, according to a new report. There are now an estimated 4.9 million children in U.S. public schools learning the English language. These students are in classrooms in most school systems—and enrollment is surging in states across the South and Midwest that had almost no English-learners at the turn of the century. California has the greatest number and percentage: 20.2%.
Office of English Language Acquisition. (2020). English learners: Demographic trends. Washington, DC: US Department of Education.
https://ncela.ed.gov/files/fast_facts/19-0193_Del4.4_ELDemographicTrends_021220_508.pdf 
and
U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Common Core of Data (CCD), "Local Education Agency Universe Survey," 2000–01 through 2016–17. Retrieved from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d18/tables/dt18_204.20.asp?current=yes

Predicting Student Achievement Study

Students' third-grade reading and math tests have an 80% likelihood of predicting outcomes in 10th grade, according to a recent study. Data from students across six states also link students' academic mobility to socioeconomic factors.
A student's ranking in his state's 3rd grade reading and math tests was 80 percent predictive of his 10th grade performance, after controlling for errors in state test measurements, the researchers found. That meant a student struggling in the bottom quarter of 3rd graders in her state was very likely to end up performing in the lowest 25 percent of 8th graders—and to end up in the same percentile in 10th grade. If a school district provided academic mobility one standard deviation higher than the average of districts in its state, its struggling 3rd graders on average improved nearly 6 percentile points on the state rankings by grade 8 and became nearly 8 percentage points more likely to graduate high school on time.
While the vast majority of students graduated high school, students' 3rd-grade achievement was still 25 percent to 35 percent predictive of whether they earned a diploma in four or five years. Urban students who struggled in 3rd grade were much less likely to graduate than those who attended rural or suburban schools. It is surprising at how little chance low-performing students had of changing their academic ranking within any of the districts across all six states.
Goldhaber, D. (2020). National Center for the Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.
http://blogs.edweek.org/edweek/inside-school-research/2020/02/Academic_mobility_low.html

High school students' emotions study

When researchers  asked more than 21,678 U.S. high school students to say how they typically felt at school, nearly 75 percent of their answers were negative. "Tired" topped the list, followed by "bored" and "stressed," with positive words like "happy" distantly following.Students reported feeling boredom and stressed, but in the moment they reported feeling calm, happy, and relaxed even more often. What didn't change was the one "feeling" the researchers hadn't expected at all: Students overwhelmingly reported feeling tired. It was the only feeling consistently named by more than half of the students. The study also found that boys and girls tended to experience school differently. Girls reported more negative feelings than boys overall, and in the moment, girls were much more likely to say they were stressed. As of 2016 the National Sleep Foundation found that 87 percent of high school students in the United States sleep significantly less than the recommended 8 to 10 hours per night. And on the heels of the Yale study, another in the journal Molecular Psychiatry also found that even preteen students who got insufficient sleep had higher rates of anxiety, depression, impulsive behavior, and poor cognitive performance. 
Moeller, J. et al.  (2020).  High school students' feelings. Learning & Instruction, 66 (April).
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.learninstruc.2019.101301

Group Work Study

Students learn best from one-on-one interaction with an adult, but group work follows as a strong alternative, according to an analysis of 71 studies -- mostly from the US and UK. Data shows that students benefit from working in pairs, as well as in groups of three or four. The ones that produced the strongest learning gains for peer interaction were those where adults gave children clear instructions for what do during their conversations. The instructions force children to debate and negotiate, during which they can clear up misunderstandings and deepen their knowledge.
Tenenbaum, H. R., Winstone, N. E., Leman, P. J., & Avery, R. E. (2019). How effective is peer interaction in facilitating learning? A meta-analysis. Journal of Educational Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000436
https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2019-75000-001?doi=1