 Welcome to Learning English, a daily 30-minute program from the Voice of America. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak. This program is designed for English learners, so we speak a little slower, and we use words and phrases, especially written for people learning English. Coming up on the program, Katie Weaver reports on the resignation of Haiti's Prime Minister. Dan Friedel has a story on the threat of mass choral bleaching. I have the education reports on a study that looks at how 15-year-olds learn English. Later, John Russell presents the lesson of the day. But first, Haitian Prime Minister Arielle Henri announced early Tuesday that he would resign once a transitional council is created. The move followed international pressure to save the country from violent criminal groups. Henri announced the decision hours after meeting with leaders of neighboring Caribbean nations and American Secretary of State Antony Blinken. The group met in Jamaica to discuss a solution to Haiti's crisis. They agreed to a joint proposal to establish a transitional council. The government that I'm running cannot remain insensitive in front of this situation. There is no sacrifice that is too big for our country. Henri said in a videotaped statement. The government I'm running will remove itself immediately after the installation of the council. After the announcement, Haitians celebrated in the streets of the capital, Hordo Prince, and playing music Reuters news agency reported based on videos posted on Haitian social media. Henri took power in 2021 following the murder of President Jovenel Moise. Under Henri's administration, armed criminal groups called gangs grew in wealth and power. In late February, Henri traveled to Kenya to secure its support for a United Nations-backed security mission to help Haitian police. However, the violence greatly increased in his absence. It led to the closing of the country's main international airports. Armed gangs have burned police stations and raided two of the country's biggest prisons. The raids resulted in the release of more than 4,000 prisoners. Many Haitians have been killed and more than 15,000 are homeless after fleeing neighborhoods raided by gangs. The doors are running out of goods. Food and water are lacking. The main port in the capital city is closed, keeping supplies away. Henri arrived in Puerto Rico a week ago after being barred from landing in the Dominican Republic, Haiti's neighbor. Dominican officials also closed the airspace to flights to and from Haiti. On Monday, Secretary Blinken said the new council would be responsible for meeting the immediate needs of Haitians. They include the deployment of an international security mission to help police fight armed criminals. The U.S. would also provide an additional $100 million to this mission and $33 million in humanitarian aid, bringing the U.S. total promise to $300 million. A UN spokesman said that as of Monday, less than $11 million had been provided to the UN's account for the mission. No financial contributions have arrived since Haiti declared its state of emergency on March 3. As Haiti prepares for new leadership, some experts question the role of armed gangs that control 80% of Port-au-Prince. Even if you have a different kind of government, the reality is that you need to talk to the gangs, said Robert Faton, a Haitian politics expert at the University of Virginia. Faton said officials will still have to deal with the armed groups and try to convince them to give up their weapons, but what would be their concessions? The United Nations estimates over 362,000 people have been internally displaced in Haiti. The organization says thousands have been killed in the conflict overall, with widespread reports of rape, torture and kidnappings since 2021. I'm Katie Weaver. The American agency that follows the risk of coral bleaching around the world says the worst bleaching event in the history of the planet may come soon. Those are the words of Derek Manzello, head of NOAA's Coral Reef Watch. NOAA is the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Manzello said the entirety of the Southern Hemisphere is probably going to bleach this year. The Southern Hemisphere is currently in summer and suffering from record-breaking water temperatures. Experts say climate change and the El Nino weather pattern are to blame for the warmer water. Corals are small marine organisms that attach to mineral deposits in the ocean. Collections of the animals form ocean structures that support many kinds of sea life. Bleaching is the term used by experts who see the once colorful coral turn white when water temperatures rise. It is a sign the animals are dying. If corals die or go dormant, they can hurt fishing and tourism industries. The last large coral bleaching event around the world took place from 2014 to 2017. At the time, the Great Barrier Reef off Australia lost nearly one-third of its coral. Overall, the world lost 15% of its coral. Corals get their color from small plants called algae that live inside them. The high temperatures stress the coral and cause them to expel the algae. When that happens, the corals lose their color. The algae help the coral stay healthy and without it, the corals face increasing risk of disease. Observers are concerned that 2024's bleaching will be even worse than the last time. Scientists reported the worst coral bleaching on record in the Caribbean late last year. Manzello said there is coral bleaching all over the place in the southern hemisphere. He said all of the Great Barrier Reef is bleaching as are reefs in the territory of American Samoa. The El Nino weather pattern always brings warmer ocean temperatures. However, the world just experienced one of the warmest 12 month periods on record. In 2023, temperatures were 1.5 degrees Celsius higher than during pre-industrial times. Scientists say a longer period of high temperatures could cause the deaths of 90% of the world's coral. Manzello noted that scientists must look at coral in all three major oceans, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian, to call a bleaching event global. Scientists use sea surface temperature data and examine satellite imagery of reefs to measure for bleaching. Based on studies so far, Manzello said the world is already there. A similar study of Indian ocean coral is continuing. Joanne Manning is a spokesperson for the Australian Institute of Marine Science. Manning said the organization has documented extensive bleaching in the Keppels area and Capricorn bunker groups. She said the group's research continues. I'm Dan Friedel. Today's English students have a lot of exposure to the language outside of the classroom. By using the internet, social media and other digital technologies, they can watch videos, hear music and play video games in English. But teachers are not so sure that digital exposure results in better English speaking abilities. That is the finding of a new study on how teenagers learn English. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD, a group that studies economic activities in large economies, supported the study. The study is called How 15 Year Olds Learn English. It provides case studies of teaching teenagers English from five countries – Finland, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands and Portugal. The researchers gathered information by visiting schools and observing English lessons in each country. They also interviewed teachers, students and school administrators. The study findings will be used to support the OECD's 2025 Program for International Student Assessment, PISA, said Katalina Kovacevich. She was one of the study's main researchers. PISA studies the school systems of about 90 countries by measuring the performance of 15 year olds in reading, writing and math. In 2025, PISA will aim to measure 22 of those country's English language skills for the first time. It's an obvious statement that English transcends classroom walls, Krista Rockins told VOA. She was another one of the researchers for the study. Teens spoke about the ways they used English with people on those sorts of social networking sites and other media. But it was rarer that they were talking about sitting down to learn English via those platforms. Some students in Greece said it is easier to search for English language information on the Internet because more of it is available. In the Netherlands, 15 year olds described watching English YouTube videos. In a written opinion study, half of students in the Netherlands reported always using English when using digital tools. Teachers, however, are unsure whether digital tools are improving students' English knowledge. While teachers said using English platforms might increase students' motivation to learn and help them get used to the language, the platforms are not necessarily teaching them English, Rockins said. One teacher in Finland, for example, said students might get the false idea that they do not need to study English because of how often they use English outside of school. They think they know it better than I do because they use it in computer games and it's present in their lives all the time, the teacher said. They think they don't have to listen to me in English classes. I feel that is a challenge. Rockins said there is a slight disconnect between the kind of English students are learning outside of school and the kind of English they're being asked to learn and study in classrooms. Students might feel that studying English at school is just about studying grammar, whereas outside of school they can communicate and interact in the language, the report said. A large part of OECD's work with PISA, the researchers said, is examining inequities in education. Rockins said there can be large inequities that arise from the kinds of out of school exposure kids get to English. Kids from wealthy families are able to travel to English speaking countries or attend summer camps where they can speak English to international friends, for example. Some students can pay for private lessons. Kids living in cities were more likely to be using English out and about in their daily lives compared to their counterparts in more rural areas, Rockins added. There has been a big change in how students are exposed to English outside of school, but within the classroom things hadn't really changed. The report noted how digital technologies are used within the classroom, but traditional teaching methods like textbooks were still used in every school observed. Teachers in all five countries said their students struggled the most with writing and speaking English rather than in reading and listening. Researchers noted that students might feel a lack of self-confidence when it comes to speaking. They might also be less likely to speak and write English outside of school. Outside school they're doing a lot of reading and listening to English because that's what the majority of their exposure is, particularly when it comes to digital technologies, Rockins said. They're not doing so much speaking or writing. Hi Dan, interesting story on how 15 year olds learn English. Hi Jill, thanks for joining me. So the study you wrote about was from OECD and it focused on 15 year olds. Why that age group? So this study helps support a larger assessment from OECD called the Program for International Student Assessment, better known as PISA. PISA measures reading, writing and math of 15 year olds in about 90 different countries. For the first time in 2025, PISA will be measuring English skills. And to prepare for this change, researchers are hoping to gather more information ahead of the assessment in 2025. The actual data won't come out until 2027, the researchers say. What are the main goals of PISA? The main goal is to examine education systems worldwide by testing 15 year olds. It examines student progress, teacher concerns, how schools and school systems are organized. It also looks at education inequities. It's a very wide ranging report. Can you explain what an inequity is? So equity refers to fairness. That is not to be confused with equality. The two terms often get confused. So in an education context, education equality would mean that all students get the same resources divided equally. But equity would be giving more resources to students in need or those from underprivileged backgrounds. That would make education more fair overall. An example of an education inequity would be fewer amounts of government funding going to schools in poorer communities. Less funding may mean less pay for teachers, resulting in less skilled teachers in those areas. That would be another inequity. That's a really good point. Thanks for answering my questions, Dan. You're welcome, Joe, and thanks for joining me on the show. VOA Learning English has launched a new program for children. It is called Let's Learn English with Anna. The new course aims to teach children American English through asking and answering questions and experiencing fun situations. For more information, visit our website, learningenglish.voanews.com. In this next report, you will hear about electric school buses in the United States. You will learn a little bit about the past and future of electric school buses across the country. Pay careful attention to the term school district. We will talk more about it after the report. The first electric school buses in the United States began operating about ten years ago in California. Fewer than 1% of the 489,000 school buses in the U.S. were electric at the end of 2023. However, the number of electric school buses currently operating, or that have been ordered from a manufacturer, has more than tripled in the last two years. That information comes from the Electric School Bus Initiative of the Non-Profit World Resources Institute, or WRI, based in Washington, D.C. The WRI said that increase means ten times as many students now ride electric school buses from around 20,000 in 2020 to 200,000 three years later. The number of states with electric bus laws or goals also grew from two to fourteen between 2020 and last year. People and organizations that want electric school buses can find it difficult to get local officials to find ways to pay for them. It's just a matter of breaking down these barriers, said Alicia Cox. She is a mother of two in Jackson, Wyoming. Her state is the only one that does not have a single school district with an electric bus operating or on order. Cox's son, a second grader, often rides a diesel bus to school. Parents and local officials say one of the biggest problems with electric school buses is their cost. Even with the fuel and maintenance savings of an electric bus, they cost two to three times more than diesel-fueled buses. The Environmental Protection Agency says it has a five billion dollar program for zero emissions buses. The money comes from an infrastructure law passed by the U.S. Congress under the administration of President Joe Biden in 2021. Nearly 440 grants and rebates totaling about $1.8 billion have already been released. The goal of the federal money is to replace thousands of buses across several hundred school districts in the U.S. Demand for the money has been heartening, said Christine Coaster. She is a director for the Clean School Bus Program at the EPA. In addition to federal money, supporters have successfully pushed to use other money. That includes money from federal government legal cases, like the Volkswagen emissions settlement. In that case, the U.S. government brought legal action against the German car maker for having a system that gave false car emissions results. For school districts that are not receiving federal money, there are other possibilities. These include leasing buses from companies that supply the buses and the equipment needed. This method spreads costs out over time. Dearborn Public Schools is a Detroit area school district in the Midwestern state of Michigan. 70% of families in the district are poor. Communications Director David Mastonen said the district was interested in new technology when it began operating its first electric bus in December 2022. The district bought an electric school bus with a $300,000 federal grant. The bus has been operational only about three of the 12 months since then. That is because of maintenance needs and learning about the device. That is not discouraging Dearborn from moving forward with adding 18 additional electric school buses. But those problems represent a risk other school districts may not want to take. There are other problems slowing the change to electric buses. School districts sometimes take a long time to approve electric buses. Manufacturing of the buses can be delayed and electric buses require special electrical connections for charging. And of course electricity costs money too. Wyoming refused federal money from the EPA because of concerns about how far the buses could travel. There were also concerns about cold temperatures. Wyoming is a very large western state where travel distances are big and in the winter temperatures can get very cold. Electric battery performance decreases in cold temperatures. Even though diesel is not as clean it's getting the job done. Cox said schools and fleet managers tell her. I'm John Russell. Before the report I asked you to pay careful attention to the term school district. Can you remember when you heard it? You heard the term several times in the report. Let's listen to the first example again. It's just a matter of breaking down these barriers said Alicia Cox. She is a mother of two in Jackson, Wyoming. Her state is the only one that does not have a single school district with an electric bus operating or on order. School district consists of two words. School and district. We spell school like this. S C H O O L We spell district like this. D I S T R I C T What is a school district? It is an area established by a local government for the administration of public schools. School districts have budgets and are supervised by local government officials. When you learn about the United States you might hear terms such as states, counties, cities, and so on. School districts are yet another way that the country is divided. School districts do not necessarily line up with other kinds of divisions. For example, one county might have several school districts within it. The reason today's lesson explores the term school district is because it is a central term to understanding the American education system. Almost any U.S. education discussion will involve the term school district. And that's the lesson of the day. I'm John Russell. And that's our program for today. Join us again tomorrow to keep learning English through stories from around the world. I'm Ashley Thompson. And I'm Dan Novak.