ABSTRACT
Schools today are faced with greater diversity in the student population than ever before and yet few have stepped up to the challenge of how best to educate students for whom Standard English is not the home language. What is pedagogically “best” practice for educating non-English speakers? Does it matter if the home language is a language like Spanish with an established place in America and the global society versus one of the thousands of low incidence languages? The decision is not only pedagogical-deciding what methods are most effective-but it is also value laden. It takes place in a context that is charged with competing political and pedagogical agendas and ever greater competition for shrinking resources.
