For this report, the researchers sought to gather more information on the success of mainstreamed ELL students from both exited students and their content teachers. The researchers\u27 aim was to see how teachers assessed these students’ academic needs, how these students felt about the accommodations executed by their teachers, and where these mainstreamed students were finding success. Furthermore, researchers wanted to gain information on the perceptions of the teachers working with these students. Information was gathered at two different high schools within the same district by interviewing and surveying both mainstreamed ELLs and their content teachers. Student transcripts were also utilized to gain more information about mainstreamed ELLs’ academic success. Results indicated that some classes, specifically those that required frequent memorization of content, were cited by students as more challenging and were classes in which more students were struggling to demonstrate proficiency, as indicated by their grades. Furthermore, results of teacher surveys and interviews highlighted a lack of comfort in understanding how to communicate with families of these students and how best to meet the academic needs of this population of learners. From these results, researchers drew the need for additional classroom-based and school-wide research.
Keywords: ELL, sheltered instruction, mainstream, exite