Teaching English language learners: A proposal for effective service delivery through collaboration and co-teaching

The growing number of students enrolled in public schools whose native lang uage is not English has led to increasing attention to bilingual education. Although bilingual education programs have existed in the United States si nce the late 19th century, since the 1960s they have been characterized pri marily by controversy and shifting federal policy. Currently, 3 models of b ilingual education prevail-transitional, developmental, and 2-way; however, each of these models has serious shortcomings. A promising alternative is to apply knowledge and best practices from the field of special education t o bilingual programs, specifically by implementing a model of co-teaching b ased on collaboration. In this article, we outline the fundamental elements of this type of service delivery, present the advantages of this model for educating diverse language learners and the strategies for combining it wi th existing bilingual models, and explore issues related to implementation.