Text by MIYA WHITELEY and MELODY XU Photo by MIYA WHITELEY
DE-FACTO LANING?
CONCERNS ABOUT CO-TAUGHT CLASSROOMS
W
ITHIN PALO ALTO year, is concerned about. separate English 9 and 9A lanes into the sinHigh School’s freshman “You end up with a higher percentage gle English 9A course for all freshmen (doEnglish classrooms, there of students who need more support in those ing the same with its respective 10th grade are four co-taught periods sections of ninth grade English course). and nine non-co-taught periods. Out of English than all the Our department is baTokheim atall historically underrepresented students other sections,” said tributed this decision in the freshman class — students of Black, Reardon, lamenting sically reverting back to a noticeable lack of Latino and Pacific Islander heritage — over what he said in these to the laning that we diversity; there was half are on co-taught rosters. Out of 36 stu- classes was a reduced a disproportionate dents with Individualized Education Pro- “diversity in the range worked so hard to get number of students grams, 28 are on co-taught rosters. of abilities or a range of rid of.” of color in lower In Paly’s co-taught English classrooms, ways of looking at and lanes, she said. How— SHIRLEY TOKHEIM, instructional ever, this year, she has one teacher holds a State of California perceiving the world.” leader credential in teaching English while the He continued: noticed that out of 40 second is trained in serving students with “It’s not good for the historically underrepIEPs: legal documents detailing a student’s students who are in the classes who need resented students enrolled in English 9A, mandatory accommodations — such as co- more support. It’s not good for the students 23 are in just four co-taught periods, while taught minutes — for who are missing the 17 are in the remaining nine periods. success. perspectives and the “Our department is basically reverting When Paly ad- You end up with a experiences of other back to the laning that we worked so hard ministrators place higher percentage people in their class- to get rid of, because it tends to segregate by such IEP students into es.” race and class,” Tokheim said. a limited number of of students who need For English inIEPs in the Palo Alto Unified School English 9A and 10A more support in those structional leader District skew toward students of color. periods, the result is a Shirley Tokheim, the Black and Latino students consisted of the small number of class- sections of ninthhigh concentration highest percentage of students with classirooms with a higher grade English than all of students with IEPs fied learning disabilities as of May 2021. relative concentration in certain English pe“The reality is that in this district, it is of IEP students while the other sections.” riods and not others more likely that a student who is not white leaving the rest with seems like a sign of or Asian is going to have an IEP,” Reardon — HUNTER REARDON, English teacher little to no IEP stuthe department’s past said. “It’s not a 100% correlation, but it’s dents. This difference segregation problem just a tendency. … The result then is in cois something that English teacher Hunter resurfacing. A decade ago, the English taught classes if we have too many students Reardon, who teaches three of four co- Department effectively eliminated abili- with IEPs crowded into classes, then you taught English 9A classrooms this school ty-based laning by merging the previously start getting into segregation: more stu-
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18 FEBRUARY 2022
