Special Education and ELL students
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Understanding Language Learners with Special Needs
Hannah Julia Paredes Kilnoski
MTML
Moreland University
Dr. Maysoon Almazyed
Aug 18, 2021
Introduction
The literature surrounding multilingual learners in Special education is pretty thin and well-concealed. At first I wanted to look at and focus on early childhood education but I realized soon that most of the research recognizes that there is a significant information gap in early childhood education. Generally, this literature review focuses on kindergarten and primary school aged bilingual and multilingual students. I look at the problems with identifying English learners as Special Education needs students and why there is so much discourse about English learners being over or underrepresented in special education. Part of this problem is caused by lack of knowledge and training for both administrators and teachers, but there are also few guidelines and strategies or policies that can help to regulate these numbers. All of the literature I reviewed is set in the United States as the educational policies, procedures and data are not publically or readily accessible for China where I live.
Special Education literature is in a small niche that needs to be publicized more and given trainings about to every teacher. I think once the existing literature is more broadly shared and extensive and continual training are given to educators and school administrators, the issues the multilingual ESL learners face in special education can be quickly addressed and significantly reduced. Many of the issues surrounding the identification and misidentification of these students stems from a lack of knowledge, training and understanding by teachers and school administrators. Speaking from my own experience, prior to this master’s and even this unit, I didn’t know much about special education at all. I have never received training on special education outside of one meeting I had with a special education specialist from the United States where we discussed strategies to help with a student I was taking over who has high-functioning autism. SiInce that meeting, I have taught 2 autistic students privately in one- on- one classes and a further 5 in group classes, and I have used the knowledge and strategies from that one meeting to create methods in my classes to best support my students.
Another monumental issue is that there is little as far as enforced policy that helps to support educators and students when identifying and supporting ESL students with special needs. Part of the problem with lack of teacher or administrator knowledge and training is that there isn’t much federal or state guidance that is enforced to support these conversations and provide frameworks for appropriately assessing students and creating the support systems they need to succeed. Even though there are policies that state guidelines and supports need to be created, only a few states and small organizations have taken concrete steps towards making truly useful materials, guidelines and best practice examples to work on solving this issue.
Besides the issues of under and over representation of English language learners in special education, there is also the question of equity within special education and specifically for ELLsEnglish Language learners. These students are not assessed fairly, thoroughly understood or even given much of a chance for improvement. Many of the literature sources identify a lack of knowledge, policy and training in all tiers of educators which has led to problems with equal opportunity and access to helpful resources and services. Race, ethnicity and native language unfortunately deeply impact the accessibility to student services and supports for special needs students. These barriers are then further multiplied when the student in question is a new ELL.
There are also considerations that need to be taken into account to ensure that families are being frequently and well informed on their students’ situation and progress. These partially include providing translators to help communicate the information into the families’ L1 appropriately but also includes in depth explanations of school systems and special education in general, as these concepts and procedures are often complex and may not be perceived in the same way in home cultures. This communication with families requires a team of educators and needs to be consistent and considerate to the needs of the family members as well.
Once a student has been identified as being ESL and a special needs learner, the most important next step is to consider what teachers, administrators and policy makers can do for the future growth and service towards students and families in special education. Some of the suggestions and tips in the literature are big picture fixes that require a move on the educational policy makers to ensure fair, equitable and supportive guidelines and frameworks that can support the educators in servicing their students. While educators can lobby and push for these actions to take place and policies to be created, individual administrators and teachers can make a huge difference on their own as well.
Misidentification
One of the biggest challenges forin ESL learners in special education is how they are identified. Throughout the existing literature, there are points that support both the ideas that ESL learners are being over-identified for special education and that they are underidentified and lack the support systems they need to succeed. In fact, one study showed that emergent bilingual students were 30% more likely to be misidentified as special education students in elementary school and that percentage increased in middle school and further increased in high school (Lopes-Murphy, 2020).
One of the potential reasons that students who are ESL learners can be over-identified is because there is a lack of understanding of the language acquisition process by the teachers. The steps of language acquisition are pre-production, early emergent, speech-emergent, beginning fluency, intermediate fluency, and advanced fluency. According to Solange A. Lopes-Murphy in her 2020 article ContentionContension Between English as a Second Language and Special Education Services for Emergent Bilinguals with Disabilities, these steps are easily confused as signs of disability (Lopes-Murphy, 2020). These students are then misidentified as special education students.
Another problem that leads to misidentification are the assessments used to diagnose or categorize students as having special needs. Christina A. Samuels wrote What We (Don’t) Know About English Learners and Special Education in 2015 where. Here, she notes that there is frequently a problem where test scores are one of, if not the only, criteria for identifying students as special education learners (Samuels, 2015). Corey Mitchell in his 2017 article, Evaluating English Learners for special education is a Challenge, suggests that students should be assessed to determine special needs using standardized tests along with attendance records and classroom observations (Mitchell, 2017). Meanwhile, Lopes-Murphy identifies one of the major issues with the identification of special education students is with the standardized testing itself (Lopes-Murphy, 2020). These tests can be complex and in a language students may have had little to no exposure to;, the test in itself is flawed. Compared to Mitchell's list, she omits standardized testing and suggests that determining students’ need for special education programs should include a review of their home environment and language, the students’ level of literacy in their L1, their readiness for academic work and finally, in agreement with Mitchell, classroom observation by teachers (Lopes-Murphy, 2020). This type of holistic overview of the students can include a survey where general conditions are assessed. These conditions include the student’s level of education, their families' level of education, native language education, even home environment conditions. The classroom observations as a factor to assess students brings us back to teachers being ill prepared or not prepared at all to identify or assess students for special education, especially students who are also ELLs. The training that many teachers have had, if any, is not frequently given in a continuous way or in a way that focuses on the strategies that can be introduced to the classroom to best support these students, rather Mitchell in his 2019 article, Overlooked: How teacher Training falls short for English-learners and students with ieps, notes that these trainings given to teachers are more of an overview of different disability names and common symptoms. These kinds of misleading or non-specific trainings can lead to even further misidentification of students for special education (Mitchell, 2019). If teachers and administrators are only focused on disability labels, there is an unfortunate chance to overlook the actual needs of the student and just focus on the described problems associated with that disability label and symptoms that aren’t very helpful in the long run for both the student or the teacher.
Another detrimental factor in the misidentification process of ELL special education students is the lack of enforcement of federal policies to help special education. Further enforcement of federal guidelines to provide guidance and support for specifically ELL special education would facilitate general special education procedures, support ESL special education students, accurately identify ESL special education students and guide teachers on what signs to look for when identifying students as special education or more importantly, how to help those students and their families. In Corey Mitchell’s article Evaluating English-Learners for special education is a Challenge. HERE'S HELP, written in 2019, he points out that only 9 states have legislative policies designed to support teachers in identifying and supporting ESL special education learners despite that in 2016, there was a federal policy that required states to create policy to distinguish ESL students from students with disabilities requiring special education, that these two demographics are not equal (Mitchell, 2019). This policy outlines that each state should create legislative actions that differentiate the special education identification process for ELLs from those of their English-speaking peers (U.S Department of Education, 2016). Due to the lack of local legislation and action on these policies, students are sometimes being over-identified for special education. Debbie Zacarian notes that educators having an understanding of their students' cultural and linguistic backgrounds can help to reduce the amount of inaccurate over-identification of ELL students for special education in an article from a larger book in 2011 entitled The over- AND under-identification of ells in special education. Frequently, students who are not learning English fast enough or are seen as different from their teachers are being treated as having a disability and are therefore misplaced into the special education system even if they are in fact not students with disabilities but rather students who are misunderstood by their educators (Zacarian 2016).
In contrast to the over-identification problem, there is also, almost ironically, a problem with under-representation. The literature generally attributes the source of the under-identification problem as beginning with school administrators who lack action called Response to Intervention (RTI). Response to Intervention can be seen as an approach to intervene and help students who need help before their situation becomes worse. Zacarian (2011) states that the RTI process must be initiated and practiced by school administrators in order to hold real value and do the most good for supporting special education ELL students as soon as possible (Zacarian, 2011). The opposite approach to RTI is a “Wait until they fail” approach. This approach is highly preventable and unfortunately can result in the students' whole educational experience being messed up. This flawed view may be the reason why so many students are missed especially in elementary schools. Alongside racial disproportionality, ESL learners are less likely to receive special education classes and services according to Christina Samuels’ 2017 article, Minority students missing out on speech and language services, study finds. Samuels explains that some states’ laws and policies not only leave gaps for under-identifying students, but also that some states including Texas, have an almost systematic method of under-identifying students. This is because Texas does not consider ESL a disability (Samuels, 2017). While this sounds good and unprejudiced, the result is that ESL students who may be special education learners are then given the “Wait until they fail” treatment. There isn’t an RTI response to help these students as early as possible because they are passed off without being fully investigated.
Equity
Is there a correlation between the students being identified as special education and ESL learners who aren’t special education? Yes. Are non-English speakers being given the same access to special education resources and services when compared to English speaking special education students they may benefit from? No. Christina Samuels in her 2016 article, Racial Bias in Special Education: Learning About Disproportionality mentions that even though there is a direct correlation between ESL students being misplaced in special education, there is federal legislation on avoiding this problem (Samuels, 2016). In fact, the Obama administration made special education regulations a priority in the ‘My Brother’s Keeper’ movement. Many other articles mentioned in this literature review such as the articles by Samuels, Mitchell and Zacarian, outline that there are policies and legislation to help create equitable and fair processes and services to students who need special education and that there is a need for differentiated processes for ELL students to ensure a more fair assessment process that is more holistic and accurate. This legislation was partially created so that states can individually assess and address the disproportionality of ELL students in their respective special education programs (Samuels, 2017). However, as mentioned by Mitchell in 2019’s Evaluating English-Learners for special education is a Challenge. HERE'S HELP, only nine states actually have sufficient or supporting legislation that adequately addresses these federal mandates (Mitchell, 2019). Despairingly, to bottleneck the access to special education research and resources, of these 9 states that have detailed guides and policies, only 3 states publish manuals to the public on helpful information and best practices (Samuels, 2015). So even though there are federal laws stating individual states need to differentiate and write these guidelines, why aren’t they happening and why aren’t they enforced and most importantly, why aren’t they working?
As mentioned previously by Zacarian (2011), many ESL students are placed into special education programs solely based on if they are learning English fast enough as deemed by teachers who do not necessarily understand the process of language acquisition making this a completely biased and subjective form of referring students (Zacarian, 2011). Furthermore, schools are frequently given ratios of special education likeliness that is a percentage of each racial demographic and then given a “risk ratio” that then determines likelihood for special education and can calculate over representation of minorities for example (Samuels 2016). There also exist weighted ratios that even out the disproportionality of minority students but this means that in federal data, even though this is a huge issue throughout the research and literature, only 2% of school districts are reporting disproportionality in minorities in special education (U.S. Department of Education, 2016).
This systematic way of hiding the true numbers of ELL students being misidentified is shocking. Not only are ELL students not given a fair platform for being assessed, they are also being held against a statistic quota, their misidentification is being hidden in federal data and this doesn’t even take into consideration the effects of racism in these processes or the additional inequalities these students may face while entering special education. Christina Samuels 2016 article, Racial Bias in Special Education: Learning About Disproportionality, suggests that part of the reason why the federal data is misleading is that the numbers of minority students placed in special education is a way to further opress these populations, have them in lower academic standard situations and gives reason to expel these students from school (Samuels, 2016). Additionally, when the government released regulations about how to fix and adjust these ratios, many districts and states were reluctant to change policies as these policies were projected to cost $48-87 million and that these policies would mandate the transfer of near $300-$553 million to program specializing in early intervention for the advocacy of minority (including ELL) students in special education (Samuels, 2016). These numbers give a grim depiction of how difficult the new policies make the betterment of the special education referral system.
Legislation and policy aside, ELL students face tons of barriers in inequity. As aforementioned, the standardized testing to be referred into special education is unfair to ELL learners who may not be at the language proficiency level in which the test is written (Lopes-Murphy, 2020). Even if the test is given in the students’ L1, there may be a chance that the student may not have received formal education in their L1, this does not mean that the student has a disability, this simply reminds us that every student has a different background and as educators, it is our duty to support them. This support includes creating the best IEP possible for every student. Part of the way we can help promote helpful, holistic and supportive IEPs is by working with other teachers and special education specialist teachers during the process (Mitchell, 2019). Another key part of providing educational equity for ELLs and their families in the IEP process is by collaborating with a translator. In the family meeting, the translator needs to not only translate into the L1 (Mitchell, 2019) but they also need to be able to give explanations of the procedures, processes and general changes and meanings for their students’ education. My mother who frequently serves as a translator in IEP meetings, explained that in many of the situations she has encountered, she not only translates into Spanish but much of the terminology used in IEP meetings and forms is complex and may not be understood by many people in English with a working understanding of special education in the United States but, for people new to the United States, some of the concepts and terminology in these forms and policies may not exist in the same way. Therefore, the translator also serves to explain and help educate the families about special education, their student and strategies for supporting their students’ growth. Mitchell and Smauels also mirror this experience of my mom’s (Mitchell, 2019) (Samuels, 2017).
Identification
Once a student has been identified as special education and a student with a disability or who needs special education, wWhat can educators do to best support these students? In Lopes-Murphy 2020, she shares an extensive list of reasonable and realistic suggestions and strategies to best support students with special needs. These include, using an integrated teaching approach in lessons, creating opportunities for differentiated learning that also differentiates for verbal and non-verbal participation, giving students enough time to process and think especially when working in the L2, incorporating visual aids regularly, draw on prior knowledge, “intentional repetition” of words and phrases, using sentence frames or sentence starters, fidget toys or other stress management devices, colored-transparent overlays for student work like reading, printing student work on colored paper/ using color coding systems, using easy to read font styles and formatting and finally incorporating different assistive technologies (Lopes-Murphy 2020). I wanted to write out all of those strategies because that's probably the most useful part of this literature review. What can we as individual teachers do to support our students who may be struggling in class whether or not they are ESL students or special education students but especially if they are?
We recently learned about the importance and value of using an integrative approach in our teaching. This can help students form connections between disciplines but also can help build vocabulary and overall language skills. Differentiated learning provides students with the opportunity to demonstrate knowledge and participate in class content in a way that makes them feel more comfortable, powerful and uses their individual strengths. Thinking time is something every language learner needs at varying levels depending on their level in the language acquisition process, this time needs to be longer for younger students and also students who are learning or processing information in a language that may not be their L1 or potentially even L2. Using visual aids is a strategy most ESL teachers incorporate in their classrooms but this may not be common practice for general or non-ESL teachers; the use of these visual aids can help students to follow along and retain more of the general expectations or contents covered in class. Connecting new information to students' prior knowledge is important because again, students are given the opportunity to make meaningful connections and build upon and grow their general knowledge base. I used the quote for “intentional repetition” of words and phrases because I never thought about the intentionality of repetition. In my own ESL classroom, we repeat words and phrases using flashcard drilling and games but there are some words that students pick up on because it’s been repeated so much but the lack of intentionality means that their understanding of the word might not be quite right. It could just be a coincidental understanding. We also recently learned about the importance of sentence starters and how they can help ESL students to scaffold up to creating their own sentences. This method can also be used in other disciplines. I remember there was a lot of backlash surrounding the effectiveness of fidget spinners and while I think many cases were distracting, I had a student who really benefited from having a fidget cube to release his stress and energy and it helped him to focus and still still for longer periods of time. I didn’t know about the colored transparent overlays before, basically, Lopes-Murphy (date) states that uUsing colored transparent overlays in colors like blue can help students calm down during things like reading assignments. Printing student work on colored paper is also a strategy I hadn’t heard of before. Lopes-Murphy specifically mentions how printing student work on purple paper helped autism students to focus better. Using easy to read fonts and formats can help students who struggle to read or focus to follow text more effectively and I had read about this before which is why I typically use Calibri or Arial fonts though Comic Sans has also gained popularity in this respect. Lastly on Lopes-Murphy’s list is assistive technologies. She also breaks this down into the following technologies, digital voice recorders, electronic spellers, books on tape, digital books, computer programs to read aloud, text-to-speech, language software and apps, translation portals and recording pens (Lopes-Murphy 2020). Another assistive technology that I would add to the list of helpful assistive technologies is speech-to-typing softwares which I am using in part to write this literature review.
Further steps after identification of ELL students into special education besides the manageable strategies mentioned above include working with other teachers as a part of a team, using translators and bilingual liaisons to help reach out to and educate families and give special education students access to services and supports as soon as possible. Corey Mitchell identifies three important people who should be present in all connections with parents. They are the students’ teachers, speech pathologists (I think any specialist can be interchanged here depending on the students' situation and they may need more than one) and specially trained interpreters (Mitchell, 2019). Finally, when the students and their families are informed and entering special education, it is important to ensure that the students and their families be given access to the special education services available to them. This early action can ensure that students are given the best support and opportunity for higher achievement. As a part of these services and a continued effort for the betterment of the students, there needs to be exit criteria to get out of special education once the students are ready (Samuels, 2015).
Many states push for special education students to be placed in general education classes for as much as possible to help drive students to further achievements, as special education classes can set lower academic standards (Mitchell, 2019). This is a good idea in theory however, it is important to not lose the priorities of the students placed in special education who are also ELLs. Lopes-Murphy (date) notes that frequently once students are placed in special education programs, there is confusion about their educational needs (Llopes-Murphy, 2020). This includes ideas of “Special education trumps ESL needs” or that ELL students placed in special education should be given access to services for ESL or special education but there is frequently a lack of balance for both of these essential components (Lopes-Murphy, 2020).
Conclusion
In conclusion, although there is federal legislation and mandates stating that states should provide equitable and fair assessments and services in special education and differentiated processes for ELL students being assessed. Though much of the literature states that there are in fact disproportionate numbers of ELL students in special education and issues with both under and over identification, even misidentification, because of the risk ratios set by school districts, only 2% of districts are showing this disproportionality in federal data. This low percentage then makes it more difficult to directly address the issue of ELL disproportionality in special education.
Furthermore, in the actual schools, teachers and administrators are not receiving or sharing helpful anor guiding training that can help prepare every teacher to identify and understand the processes and issues facing all special education students but especially those in ESL. The administrators are also only given little training and are not adequately training their staff. To further support all teachers, general education teachers, ESL teachers and special education teachers should be working together not only to design inclusive and effective lessons but also throughout the IEP process. On the administrator’s side, they should be giving multiple and continuous trainings to all staff to help support students’ progress. Thisese trainings should not only focus on the labels of different disabilities but should focus more on signs to identify students who need specialized help and more importantly include ideas on how the teacher can effectively accommodate and support these students as best as possible.
For the special education identification assessment, more signs and background factors should be taken into consideration and the assessments should be fair and only a contributing factor in identifying students for special education. Teacher team should also be carrying out home language surveys and reviewing the student holistically including through observations.
With further education for all educators, the number of under or over represented students and misidentified students in special education can be reduced as a whole.
References
Lopes-Murphy, S. A. (2020). Contention between English as a second language and special education services for emergent bilinguals with disabilities. Latin American Journal of Content & Language Integrated Learning, 13(1), 43-56. https://doi.org/10.5294/laclil.2020.13.1.3
https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1278804.pdf
Gersten, R., & Woodward, J. P. (1994). The language-minority student and special education: issues, trends, and paradoxes. Exceptional Children, 60(4), 310–322.
Mitchell, C. (2020, November 19). Evaluating English-Learners for special education is a Challenge. HERE'S HELP. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/evaluating-english-learners-for-special-education-is-a-challenge-heres-help/2019/06
Mitchell, C. (2019, May 14). Overlooked: How teacher Training falls short for English-learners and students with ieps. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/overlooked-how-teacher-training-falls-short-for-english-learners-and-students-with-ieps/2019/05
Mitchell, C. (2019, January 22). Ways to better serve often-misunderstood english-learners with disabilities. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/ways-to-better-serve-often-misunderstood-english-learners-with-disabilities/2019/07
Samuels, C. A. (2015, July 22). What we (Don't) know About English-learners and special education. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/what-we-dont-know-about-english-learners-and-special-education/2015/07
Samuels, C. A. (2016). Racial bias in special education: Learning about disproportionality. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/racial-bias-in-special-education-learning-about-disproportionality/2016/03
Samuels, C. A. (2017, August 8). Minority students missing out on speech and language services, study finds. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/minority-students-missing-out-on-speech-and-language-services-study-finds/2017/08
U.S. Department of Education. (2016, March 2). Assistance to States for the education of children with Disabilities; Preschool grants for children with disabilities. Federal Register. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/03/02/2016-03938/assistance-to-states-for-the-education-of-children-with-disabilities-preschool-grants-for-children
Zacarian, D. (2011). The over- AND under-identification of ells in special education. Colorín Colorado. https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/over-and-under-identification-ells-special-education
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