It Takes a Village...

We have all heard the term, “it takes a village,” at one point in our lives. This simple phrase really conveys the number of people and support it takes to accomplish challenging tasks. This article has me reflecting on how much input and thought is needed to really understand and support every student individually. 

This blog post is a review of the journal article "Evaluating Special Education Services for Learners From Ethnically Diverse Groups: Getting It Right" as published by Bilingual Research Journal, in 2011, Vol. 34, No. 3, pg. 316-333.

The authors of the article interpret data from research completed in 2005-2006 on English Language Learners who were also receiving special education services. It was determined from this study that it was challenging for educational professionals to distinguish academic learning problems that were present because of a language barrier, or because of a learning disability. There data and files were then interpreted by professionals with expertise in the special education and ELL population of students. Results of the study did provide evidence that 18 out of the 44 students probably had a disability, and that their primary disability for 7 of those students was Speech and Language Impairment and 7 for Other Health Impairment (pg. 324) This study definitely helped shine a light on public school’s referral and evaluation system for Special Education. 

The article begins with a brief summary of how ELL students are twice as likely to be reading below grade level than English proficient peers. Since these students have low academic achievement, most teacher’s express concerns for students to be in special education (pg. 317). This article continues to discuss how the interpretation of the study’s results show that Response to Intervention (RTI) can be an appropriate strategy for supporting ELL students (pg 317).

Something from the article that was very interesting to me is it stated that, 56% of ELL students in special education are categorized under having a Learning Disability (LD). The article continues, calling the category of LD a “judgmental” disability category, since educators can place this disability category on a student without a medical diagnosis. (pg. 318). From my experience I can relate that the Learning Disability category has requirements, however interpretation of a student’s data can be debatable. The article continues to provoke thoughts on why so many ELL students are put into this category, and is it a result of poor interpretation of student data (pg. 318). This almost sounds like specialists know there is a factor that is preventing them from learning at the same rate as their peers, but not considering any of those factors to be something different than special education related. The article then continues to go through suggestions for acquiring accurate and reliable data on ELL students.  

As I think of my own personal experience, a lot of teachers do not know how to support their ELL students who have really low academics. The special education team is a very supportive team in our building and when teachers are struggling, our teachers seek advice and council from the special education team. Part of me wonders if general education teachers have the resources they need to support the needs of our ELL population. Working in a school district with 16% of our staff being of a minority group, but working with a population of 51% of our students being in the minority, there needs to be support in educating staff members.

The question becomes, who is supporting the ELL students in your school that have low academic achievement? Is there enough ELL support in your school to support students and teachers? It really does take a village to support a student with so many different factors. An interesting conversation the article brings up is also giving special education training to ELL teachers to have more participation in in the evaluation process to help support decisions. ELL teachers also have access to all ELL students and are able to compare similar peers to the growth of students with comparable histories (pg. 327). In my experience, a general rule of thumb for identifying students to be referred in special education is how different they are from their peers. The main concern is that students who are learning English as second language should not be compared to all of the students in their class, but rather peers who have the same background.

The more I research the topic, the more I realize how critical it is for communication and collaboration is necessary to truly identify ELL students with having a disability. Now the question is, what systems need to be in place for this communication to happen to identify ELL students for having a learning disability accurately? I will be collecting data on systems already in place in other schools that appear to be successful.