The Internationals Network for Public Schools: Educating Our Immigrant English Language Learners Well

Is there a better education model for English learners in the United States?

The Internationals Network for Public Schools (the Network) now supports 21

schools and six academies in seven states as well as Washington, DC. They are

open only to immigrants who have been living in the United States for less than

four years and who score in the lowest brackets of their state’s English exam. The

Internationals serve students from more than 90 countries who speak more than 55

different languages.

The Internationals model greatly increases the number of recent immigrant ELs who

stay in high school, graduate, and attend and complete college. The Internationals

successfully teach and assess ELs and also, individually and as a collective, train

mainstream teachers to teach ELs and to support other schools with EL populations.

What is the secret to the Internationals’ success? How do they organize instruction,

develop the curriculum, support language learning, and develop teachers? How do

they create bridges for recent immigrants to their new society and to their futures?

And how have the schools been able to replicate success from one school to the next?

This study seeks to answer these questions. It describes how the Network has

achieved such marked success with immigrant youth entering the United States in

their high school years. We discuss the curriculum, classroom instruction, assessment,

professional learning, and governance practices that contribute to this success,

and we take a close look at a number of classrooms to provide a glimpse of how

teachers and students teach and learn together. Documenting the Internationals’

approach provides insights into what characteristics enable schools to increase

recent immigrant ELs’ achievement and close the achievement gap between ELs and

native English speakers.