Reading Aid Seen to Lag in English Language Learners Focus

This article focused on the Reading First program, funded by No Child Left behind, which was created to help early English language readers only. The Reading First program was designed through scientifically based reading research to help students become successful readers early on. Now, educations systems are realizing the problem this presents to children that have English as their second language. It’s no wonder that this program is faulty when the insufficient No Child Left Behind program created it; The children that are being left behind, so to speak, are second language English students. According to the article, the Reading First program is lagging in consideration for these students. The problems with the Reading First program has recently reached legislation and will be reauthorized to be “linguistically appropriate”. This change will extend the program to meet the needs of English language learners, but it also presents some conflict with teachers who now will have to acquire certain training to teach with this program. The article also brings up the discussion of applying English only laws to the readjusted program. The question of whether or not to teach English learners in their native language is another controversial matter, which seems to pose more problems for teachers. Teaching English in the native language of students doesn’t seem to be a realistic approach to the problem because most teachers aren’t capable of this. I think the best approach would be to have specialized classrooms that can devote their attention primarily to bilingual students.