As a teacher in the doe, many schools are pushing literacy and many schools including mine have had had many new English language learning students. My school went from a 14% ELL student rate last year to 38% this year. This creates a need for teachers to start from the bottom and scaffold up.

Many non ELL students in my classes have complained about their ELA classes because they’re going over grammar and syntax; things they learned years ago but the ELL students haven’t learned it. Many teachers also differentiate, meaning that within one class you’ll have different levels of learners. Differentiating would be providing additional help or more appropriate work for students that haven’t scored well or that need the extra help.

edit: and while many times I disagree with this current approach of lowering standards instead of lifting (all) students up to meet and surpass standards I can see where their argument lies and I’m glad it’s being brought to light.

Edit 2: by taking a look at the worksheet in the article, the class is taught by two teachers meaning that it is an ICT class with half of the students being special Ed.