The 170 students at the international school are just the tip of AISD’s Titanic-sized bilingual iceberg. Roughly 17,000 of AISD’s 78,000 students – more than one in five – are classified as limited-English proficient, requiring some form of English as a Second Language class, sheltered instruction, or other accommodation. As this population grows, many in the district say that meeting these students’ basic instructional needs is one of their greatest challenges.
Like many districts in Texas, AISD currently depends heavily on “alternative certification” programs for instructors to meet this need – more than half of the new bilingual teachers certified last year took the alternative route. These are accelerated programs for college graduates that make it easier for, say, a laid-off tech guy, or a twentysomething who learned his mom was right about the career prospects of an art history B.A., to give teaching a try. Ninety of the 138 bilingual teachers AISD hired last year came from such programs, some of which consist entirely of online classes and as little as two weeks observing a real, live classroom.
This article appears in November 26 • 2004.