The Gadsden Independent School District in New Mexico has joined the growing list of school districts with a policy that ALL new teacher hires must be endorsed to teach English-language learners. An endorsement in TESOL will be required of all teachers hired at the start of the 2013-14 school year.
Arizona, California, and Florida have requirements for mainstream teachers to receive training to work with ELLs, but most states do not. A number of school districts have put such requirements in place even if their states don’t have them.
The Gadsden requirement won’t go into effect for a while. But 200 teachers have already signed up this school year for the training, according to Art Ruiloba, a spokesman for the district. I talked with him by telephone after reading about the new policy in the Las Cruces Sun-News.