Education Week, Volume 26, Issue 14 (12/6/2006). pp. 26-29.
Language:
English
Abstract:
In the St. Paul, Minnesota public schools, "pullout" teaching is frowned upon. Instead, "collaboration" is the favored method when it comes to teaching English-language learners. For three of the past four years, the district has made adequate yearly progress for its English-language learners under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It has done so with a population that is primarily Hmong, a Laotian ethnic group that was first resettled in the Twin Cities in the late 1970s after the Vietnam War. The St. Paul district is "amongst the best" of 65 urban school systems in nearly closing the achievement gap between English-language learners and native speakers based on an analysis of state data. Over the past seven years, the district in the Minnesota capital has revamped its programs for elementary students so that inclusion has replaced assigning English-language learners to a full-day English-as-a-second-language track or having an ESL teacher regularly pull them out of class. Now, mainstream and ESL teachers co-teach in the same classroom, which is not a commonly used method. This article describes how teachers team-teach to help English-language learners.