The Fine Line Between Helpful and Hurtful:

English Language Learners and Unnecessary

Special Education Placement.

Jenny Bayer
M.Ed Candidate- Reading, Literacy and Learning
 What is an EL student?

 English Learning Student

 ELL
 ESOL
 LEP
 ESL
 DLL (Gambrell, 2015)
 No universal definition
 A student coming from a home where English was not, and still may not be, the primary
language spoken during formative literary years.

Gambrell, L. B., & Morrow, L. M. (2015). Best Practices for Teaching Dual Language Learners. In Best Practices in Literacy Instruction (5th ed., pp. 127-
148). New York: Guilford Press.
 A Closer Look:

 English Language students are the fastest growing demographic group in the country (Sullivan,
2011).
 In the past decade, we have seen a 60% increase in the number of EL students enrolled in our schools.
Compare that to a 7% overall increase in student enrollment. (Grantmaking, 2013)
 Nationally:
 10.7 percent of enrolled students in the United States are EL students
 5.3 million students
 Predicted 50% enrollment rate by 2020 (Grantmaking, 2013)
 Predicted 1 in 4 by 2025 (Gambrell, 2015)
 Locally:
 2.3% of students in Norfolk in 2010
 4.3% of students in Richmond in 2010
 9.6% of students in the District of Columbia in 2010 (Uro, 2013)
Grantmakers for Education (2013) Educating English Language Learners: Grantmaking Strategies for Closing America’s Other Achievement Gap.
Uro, G., & Barrio, A. (2013). English Language Learners in America's Great City Schools: Demographics, Achievement and Staffing.
At the state level, students identified as
ELs are increasingly overrepresented in
special education.
Sullivan, A. L. (2011). Disproportionality in Special Education Identification and Placement of English Language Learners. Exceptional Children, 77(3), 317-334.
 Why?

 There is a fine line between EL and SPED classification with

students.
 EL students and students with Special Needs often exhibit similar
behaviors.
 Students with learning disabilities and ELL students have more
difficulty with test items that have unfamiliar words and/or a
complex linguistic structure.
 EL students are often misdiagnosed into Special Education
under “Learning Disabled” (Abedi, 2006)
 A 2011 study in Arizona found that overrepresentation was highest in “Specific Learning
Disabilities” (SLD) and “Mild Mental Retardation” (MMR) (Sullivan, 2011)

Abedi, J. (2006). Psychometric Issues in the ELL Assessment and Special Education Eligibility. Teachers College Record, 108(11), 2282-2303.
So…. What’s the deal?
 Current Assessment Practices

 IDEA requires that ALL students be assessed for all national and state assessments in effort to hold all
students to the same high standards (Abedi, 2006)
 Assessments are not given in the native language of the student.
 These standard assessments are conducted in English.
 Assessments are made using ”Academic English”, a more complex structure of the English language
(Goldenberg, 2008)
 The results of these assessments are used with placement and classification of students
 “Poor performance on an English reading test does not mean that an ELL student is a struggling reader.
(Gunning, 2013) ”

Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English Language Learners. American Educator, 8-44.

First Language Assessment...Why does it matter?
 Linguistic Factors that affect assessment:

 Relative clauses *
 Unfamiliar words
 “A bag that contains 25 marbles “
 Idioms
 That, who, which
 Slang words
 Prepositional phrases
 Phrasal verbs
 Common sayings  Abstract presentation of problem
 “The weight of two objects were measured.”
 Long Phrases in questions
 Passive voice
 Complex sentences
 “The officer gave him a ticket.”
 Logical connectors: conditional/adverbial clauses
 Negation
 “While he was listening to music, he did his homework.”
 Sentences with negations are harder to comprehend
 “If one pint will fill 2 cups, how many cups can be filled from 8
pints?”  No, not, none, never
 Long noun phrases  Proper double negative
 pie chart, bar graph, high school diploma, long-term  “Not all the workers at the factory are not male.”
investment

Abedi, J. (2006). Psychometric Issues in the ELL Assessment and Special Education Eligibility. Teachers College Record, 108(11), 2282-2303.
 Why Use First Language Assessment?

 Literacy is still literacy.. No matter the language.

 Oftentimes, knowledge of the first language means that students possess linguistic skills that can
assist them in mastering literacy tasks in the second language (Lenski, 2006)
 No matter the subject, when assessing EL students in English, we are not
able to get the full picture of their ability.
 The linguistic difficulties of assessments that we give EL students has a
significant impact on their scores.
 The results of English based assessments hold a level of invalidity
(Albedi, 2006)
 When skills are delivered to students in a proposed context-free
environment, diverse learners become marginalized when their home
literacy practices are socio-culturally different from what is considered
normative. (Piazza, 2015)
 PALs Español

 For Spanish-speaking students

 Aligned with PALs English
assessment
 NOT a translation
 K and 1-3 assessment
 Goal: To provide Spanish-speaking
children in the United States equal
access to an effective, research-
based literacy assessment and
intervention.
 Potential Assessment:

 Group of researchers developed a Spanish language screening measure

 Used three literary tasks to assess students and their ability:
 Rapid Automatized Naming
 Using common objects and colors familiar to young Spanish Speaking students

 Sentence Repetition
 Assesses working memory and linguistic knowledge of syntax and morphology

 Morphological Cloze Task

 Demonstrated grammatical errors
 Picture support task
 Sentence completion task

Restrepo, M. A., Gorin, J. S., Gray, S., Morgan, G. P., Barona, N., & Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness, (2010). Development of a Language Impairment Screener
for Spanish Speaking Children--SSLIC: Phase 1--Task Development.
 Goldenberg Supports

 There are three main points when it comes to EL instruction

 Teaching students to read in their first language promotes higher levels of reading achievement in
English;
 What we know about good instruction and curriculum in general holds true for English learners as
well; but
 When instructing English learners in English, teachers must modify instruction to take into account
students’ language limitations.
 Why does it work?
 “transfer”
 Transfer is one of the most venerable and important concepts in education.

Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English Language Learners. American Educator, 8-44.

 What Can Teachers Do?

 View your EL students as capable

 Adapt a Culturally Responsive Teaching model
 Connect to the student
 Allow connections between students and their own cultures, experiences, and world-views
 Students strengths > weaknesses
 Advocate for your EL students- culturally
responsive assessment!
 Vocabulary instruction is essential.
(Goldenberg, 2008)
 Mainstream Classroom Assessment

 Predictability Log
 understand their students’ prior literacy experiences and the factors that helped shape them
 Give the assessment purpose and make it known
 Conduct multiple forms of assessment using various authentic tools
 anecdotal records, checklists, rating scales, portfolios
 Alternative assessments for progress monitoring
 Modify traditional tests to gain a better understanding
student content knowledge
 ELLs generally perform lower than non-ELLs on content-based
assessments such as math, science, and social sciences
(Adebi, 2006)
Lenski, S. D., Ehlers-Zavala, F., Daniel, M. C., & Sun-Irminger, X. (2006). Assessing English-Language Learners in Mainstream Classrooms. Reading
Teacher, 60(1), 24-34.
 Research Implications

 There are studies that support the assumption that special education may be
inappropriately used to remedy the decreased support created by the lack of language
programming.
 Serious attention needs to be given to the current assessment and classification system for
English language learners and students with disabilities because:
 Misidentifying EL students may have serious consequences in their academic futures
 Students misidentified will receive inappropriate intervention and curriculum
 All teachers can combat the achievement gap with EL students.
 The need for research in this field is high.
 It is glaringly obvious that, even though we speak to the importance of treating EL students
fairly in academic ventures, we are not effective. We still have a long way to go before
we are able to really reach these students on a regular basis.
Citations

Abedi, J. (2006). Psychometric Issues in the ELL Assessment and Special Education Eligibility. Teachers College
Record, 108(11), 2282-2303.
Escamilla, K., & Literacy Coaching Clearinghouse, (2007). Considerations for Literacy Coaches in Classrooms
with English Language Learners.
Gambrell, L. B., & Morrow, L. M. (2015). Best Practices for Teaching Dual Language Learners. In Best
Practices in Literacy Instruction (5th ed., pp. 127-148). New York: Guilford Press.
Goldenberg, C. (2008). Teaching English Language Learners. American Educator, 8-44.
Grantmakers for Education (2013) Educating English Language Learners: Grantmaking Strategies for Closing
America’s Other Achievement Gap.
Gunning, T. (2013). Introduction to Literacy Difficulties in Assessing and Correcting Reading and Writing
Difficulties (5th ed., pp. 1-17). New York, NY: Pearson. ISBN: 9780132838108
Lenski, S. D., Ehlers-Zavala, F., Daniel, M. C., & Sun-Irminger, X. (2006). Assessing English-Language Learners in
Mainstream Classrooms. Reading Teacher, 60(1), 24-34.
Piazza, S. V., Rao, S., & Protacio, M. S. (2015). Converging Recommendations for Culturally Responsive
Literacy Practices: Students with Learning Disabilities, English Language Learners, and Socioculturally
Diverse Learners. International Journal Of Multicultural Education, 17(3), 1-20.
Restrepo, M. A., Gorin, J. S., Gray, S., Morgan, G. P., Barona, N., & Society for Research on Educational
Effectiveness, (2010). Development of a Language Impairment Screener for Spanish Speaking
Children--SSLIC: Phase 1--Task Development.
Sullivan, A. L. (2011). Disproportionality in Special Education Identification and Placement of English
Language Learners. Exceptional Children, 77(3), 317-334.
Uro, G., & Barrio, A. (2013). English Language Learners in America's Great City Schools: Demographics,
Achievement and Staffing.
Questions?
Jenny Bayer
Longwood University
M.Ed. in Reading and Literacy
Learning
jmbayer55@gmail.com or
jenny.bayer@live.longwood.edu