Is mainstreaming the proper approach?

Schools and teachers have continuously struggled throughout time with the idea of how to best assimilate special needs students, as well as students of different nationalities, races and income levels into a single classroom.  The preferred approach for multicultural education, according to McNergney, for years has been mainstreaming.  In context with the idea of a multicultural education, the approach of mainstreaming aims to assimilate new immigrants into the regular classroom, with the implication that they should learn as they go.  But is this strategy really working?

Of course a student who is a recent immigrant and does not know English would most likely be taken out of class for intervals of the day to help them learn the language, but it is my belief that initial mainstreaming for even half the day is not the right approach to take with a child who speaks so little English that they would not benefit from being in the classroom at all.  It really depends on the individuals situation, but I witnessed a few cases in which mainstreaming did not seem to help the child while I was in Elementary and Middle school.  When I was in third grade, there were two boys who came into our class sometime in the middle of the school year.  One boy had come from Russia, the other from Portugal, and neither one of the students knew even a little English.  They were each taken out of the class for an hour or so throughout the day, but for the most part, they were with the class for the whole day.  The poor kids sat there and looked confused for months on end, and the teacher was unable to communicate with them at all without drawing pictures, and that became very time consuming.  I don't think she knew how to handle the situation either.  Clearly, for these boys, mainstreaming did not help at all, and they probably should have been learning English with a different teacher before getting thrown into the classroom.  Socially, the concept of mainstreaming for immigrants is a positive one because it is supposed to help them meet people sooner, but it is difficult to make friends in the first place if you can't talk to anyone.  I am sure that it made them feel left out, and probably didn't help their confidence either, as I am sure they became frustrated and felt like they didn't know anything. In a situation where a child knows at least a minimal amount of English, this approach may work better if they are able to learn through observation, but it is my opinion that each case should be looked upon in an individual basis.  Mainstreaming is not always the best option.