Urban Students Acquiring English and Learning Mathematics in the Context of Reform

Abstract

Urban schools face a dilemma. Should their efforts at reforming school mathematics specifically address the status of students acquiring English? Or should urban schools assume that these students' needs will be addressed under the broader aegis of reform? This article provides a rationale as to why educators should choose the former: the danger of re-creating stratification of opportunity to learn mathematics is simply too great to ignore the status of students acquiring English. The bilingual education literature that is related to mathematics teaching fails to address critical mathematics reform issues. Yet, bilingual education research provides a foundation on which to build efforts that combine attention to bilingual education and mathematics reform. This article ends with an elaboration of ways to think about the bilingual learner of mathematics, curriculum, teaching, assessment, and evaluation where collaboration between mathematics reformers and bilingual educators could be productive.