This article attempts to address the need for African American students to receive the same level of support that most schools in Texas provide for English language learners due to the underperformance of many African American students on various literacy measures. The intent is to provide readers with the phonological and grammatical features of African American English (AAE) and for the readers to understand that AAE differs from the language that is required to be formerly spoken and written in schools. It is estimated that AAE is spoken by roughly 80 percent of African Americans and is often considered to be a source of reading failure for some African American students. Literacy strategies such as contrastive analysis and modeling, which are used to support English language learners, will be examined and explained as methods for assisting African American students with code-switching from AAE to academic English.