Chapter 20: Pulling Away From Pull-Out: Coteaching ELLs in the New Latino South

The scene above comes from a year-long case study of two coteachers in a fourth grade classroom in the southeastern United States, a region that has experienced tremendous growth in its English language learner (ELL) population since the mid-1990s (Hamann & Harklau, 2010). Recent data confirm that southeastern states in the United States continue to experience some of the fastest growth rates of ELLs. For example, South Carolina, the state with the largest percent increase between 1998 and 2008, experienced an increase of more than 800% in its enrollment of ELLs (Batalova & McHugh, 2010). Unfortunately, academic achievement has not paralleled this demographic growth. The National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES) reported that Latino students, who represent the majority of ELLs, have a dropout rate of 27 % compared with 7.3% of their White counterparts (as cited in Kaufman, Alt, & Chapman, 2004).