A middle school student struggles regularly while reading aloud in class. Does the quality of instruction need improvement? Is the child socially adjusted?
Or is she showing signs of a learning disability?
These questions are tricky. But when the student has only been speaking English for a few years, the challenges of identifying learning disabilities are daunting. Factors such as cultural differences, quality of services provided to students, length of exposure to English, and the teacher’s training level in working with English language learners (ELLs) compound the difficulty.
A report by EDC’s Regional Educational Laboratory Northeast and Islands (REL-NEI) about the challenges of identifying learning disabilities in ELLs in three mid-sized New York school districts reveals just how difficult.
“How do you know if students are struggling because of regular issues of developing a new language or because the students have other difficulties or disabilities?” asks EDC’s María Teresa Sánchez. “The issue is so nuanced, and there is not much research out there.”
REL-NEI’s mission is to conduct and analyze research to inform policymakers and educators. Funded by the Institute of Education Sciences at the U.S. Department of Education, REL-NEI is 1 of 10 laboratories in a nationwide network that provides educators and policymakers with access to education research.
Working with the New York State Education Department (NYSED), Sánchez, along with EDC colleagues Caroline Parker and Anna McTigue, discovered that middle school and district personnel need second language and learning disabilities professional development before they are qualified to decide whether ELLs have a learning disability. The report identified the challenges of determining learning difficulties among ELLs and was presented at events by staff from EDC and NYSED to New York teachers and administrators from other school districts.
“Acquiring a second language isn’t an easy process. Many teachers don’t know how to work with English language learners, especially if they have 30 students in the classroom with different levels of English proficiency and prior school experiences,” says Sánchez. “This population is a challenge to work with.”
“Right now we have segregated services for the general education population, the special education population, and the ESL population,” says one New York teacher interviewed for the report. “But what are we going to do when these groups are not mutually exclusive, and there are overlaps?”
New York isn’t the only state working to improve ELL services. This population is now on the radar of educators for a variety of reasons.
Between 1995 and 2005, the number of public school students who were ELLs grew by nearly 60 percent to more than 5 million, according to the National Clearinghouse for English Language Acquisition.
Meanwhile, new high-stakes federal standards call for both ELLs and special education students to be held to the same high standards as any other student.
“Districts have a lot of stress in terms of meeting the demands of No Child Left Behind,” says Sánchez. “If a school has a population of ELLs, that stress is intensified. No Child Left Behind is forcing schools to be aware of those students and how they can better serve them.”
Of the three New York districts in the report, only one was able to hire counselors and general education teachers with a background in second language development. Despite efforts to address the needs of ELLs, districts struggle to provide adequate services. “We also found there are not enough valid tests that can help identify a learning disability in English and a student’s native language,” says Sánchez.
In the end, the report revealed that educators should carefully evaluate the quality of their instruction to ELLs before deciding whether their students have learning disabilities.
Originally published on April 29, 2011