Week 13 discussion post - CLDE 5030
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Feb 20, 2024
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Uploaded by marisol321
Week 13, Nov 17
This week’s readings were about students who are labeled has being both emerging bilingual and
as having learning deficits. All of the articles advocate for teachers who are in special education
general education or content area, and bilingual educators to work together to better serve
students. The articles also address MTSS instruction, although in my experience students who
are on an IEP are rarely also placed on an MTSS plan, and their IEP is just modified to meet
their needs. Thompson (2015) as cited by Schissel & Kangas (2018) stated that “roughly one in
every three L-TELs in one district have identified disabilities” (p. 568), but that Emerging
Bilinguals on a national scale “are under-represented in special education in comparison to those
from homes where English is the primary language” (Morgan et al, 2015, as cited by Ortiz,
Fránquiz, & Lara, 2020, p. 245). The numbers vary greatly from state to state and by district but
in urban districts in California Emerging Bilinguals were “significantly over-represented in the
upper grades” (Schissel & Kangas, 2018, p. 245). All three articles sight the overlap between
these twice-identified or intersectional students, and since their labels are often based on
students’ performance on standardized tests that are not created to measure emerging bilingual
student’s skills in language because of their monolingual focus or cultural bias. Schissel & Kangas (2018) focused on the process of testing out of the ELL label and how
difficult that is for twice-identified students because “emergent bilinguals with disabilities were
unable to meet reclassification criteria” (p. 568). This inability to shirk their ELL label is based
on a system that doesn’t properly measure their skills because of the misuse or over-reliance of
standardized assessments in which “few appropriate accommodations have been found to be
beneficial for emergent bilinguals” (Schissel & Kangas, 2018, p. 572). Since the tests cannot
accurately measure what students can do, they continue to receive pull-out instruction in both
special education and for English language learning classes, meaning they receive fewer
opportunities to learn deep and rich lessons that would encourage the kind of cognitive,
intellectual growth, and thereby “their collective experience of historic and systemic
disadvantage is profound as reclassification policies and structures often ignore or fail to account
for their distinct education needs as assets” (Schissel & Kangas, 2018, p. 574). As a result,
LTELS are “prone to higher rates of dropping out and limited opportunity in attending post-
secondary education (U.S. Department of Education, 2016; Olsen, 2014, as cited by(Schissel &
Kangas, 2018, p. 582). For these reasons, Schissel & Kangas (2018) advocate for more a
change in reclassification criteria away from standardized assessments.
Emerging bilinguals in general are struggling to find success and catch up with their English-
only speaking peers in a general education classroom because “while 39% of native English
speakers score at or above proficient in reading in the 12
th
grade, 4% of emergent bilingual
students reach this threshold. [while EM students who are on an IEP only ] 8% of the 12
th
graders are at or above proficient in reading” (Golloher, Whitenack, Simpson, & Sacco, 2018, p.
128). While all students with learning disabilities are struggling, and all students who are
Emerging Bilinguals are struggling, students who are both Emerging Bilinguals with learning
disabilities struggle even more. This is partially true because identifying students accurately and
in a timely fashion is difficult. Emerging Bilingual students are more likely to be inaccurately
identified as needing special education because learning English can delay students’ academic
performance in the same ways that those students with a learning disability. Conversely, some
students with an actual learning disability are likely to be missed and their intellectual disabilities
are blamed on the fact that they are just learning English, instead of being accurately diagnosed.
“under-identification would suggest that emergent bilingual students it learning disability may
not be receiving the types of interventions that would address their learning needs […]. At the
same, by the secondary level those students who were currently identified as English learners
were over-represented in special education” (Golloher, Whitenack, Simpson, & Sacco, 2018, p.
129). For these reasons Golloher, Whitenack, Simpson, & Sacco (2018) focused on providing
more MTSS instructional practices for twice-identified students since special education services
do not always meet the unique needs of students who do not speak English as a first language.
For example, in a special education setting “[s]ight-word instruction is often delivered out of
context […] For emergent bilinguals, this can be especially challenging and be in conflict with
instructional methods that call for the teaching of vocabulary in context of the story, lesson, or
activity for emergent bilinguals” (Golloher, Whitenack, Simpson, & Sacco, 2018, p. 136). This
article suggests that these students would be best served if teachers collaborated more including
general, special, and ELD. This sounds like a good idea, but it means that regular content area
teachers, and more specifically English Language Arts teachers will need to do more
modifications, get guidance from both SPED and ELD teachers for instructional techniques and
scaffolds to help students. “As a corollary to this recommendation, we should note that ensuring
that general educators, special educators, and bilingual specialists have adequate time and space
to engage in collaboration suggests a need for administrative support as well” (Golloher,
Whitenack, Simpson, & Sacco, 2018, p. 138). This collaboration sounds lovely, but maybe I am
in an extra cynical mood, but that also seems like the general classroom teacher is being asked to
do more with less, again. Everyone agrees that the goal is to avoid doing “potential harm to
students from their being removed from the general education environment” (Golloher,
Whitenack, Simpson, & Sacco, 2018, p. 140). The process this article suggests for teaching
students from their introductory education classes in college and throughout their academic
teaching careers of not segregating the different teaching specialties seems like a great idea, but
also necessitates a systemic change that seems dauntingly big and challenging, though arguably
necessary. Still, I would say, as a high school English language arts teacher, the onus is often on
me to do all the documenting, modifications, scaffolding, accommodations, etc. and the special
education teacher or ELD teacher, who has never been in my classroom, may come to me after a
unit is completed to tell me what I could have or should have done to help a student, or suggest
time-consuming modifications/ adaptations without really knowing which modifications/
adaptations have already been made. So the general education teacher does all of the planning,
grading, documenting, adjusting, and reassessing while the student, SPED and ELD teacher do
all the second-guessing. I am sure I sound more cynical than I truly feel, but this seems to be
where we are right now – and I have a good relationship and enjoy working with our SPED and
ELD team. I prefer the method of the co-taught class, where the core teacher takes care of the
core instruction, and the SPED or ELD co-teacher takes care of modifications / adaptations, can
help in the grading and documenting, and their expertise can be more readily utilized in planning
and direct instruction as well as for daily, instructional supports. This also has the added benefit
of giving the student of all of the benefits of being in a general education class (with some
modifications), but with the added bonus of more attention, lower teacher-to-student ratios, and
more time in small groups.
If, as Ortiz, Fránquiz, & Lara (2020) state, about 77% of emerging bilingual students are
incorrectly identified as having a learning disability (p. 246), this is a significant number and
requires more attention as “inaccurate identification and/or classification has serious
consequences for EB’s including lowering teachers’ expectations for student performance,
regardless of their actual academic performance (Kangas, 2020, as cited by Ortiz, Fránquiz, &
Lara, 2020, p., 246). This article also suggests teachers who collaboratively to plan, modify,
document, assess, and implement instruction specific to the needs of these twice-identified
students. It seems that the biggest hurdle addressed in all three of these articles is that many
teachers and all if not most assessments do not understand the needs and abilities of emerging
bilingual students and often for special needs students and how those are exponentially different
when both needs and abilities intersect in a single student.
My questions for my peers: how many emergent bilingual students have you had who you
suspect are have special needs who are not identified as such? How many emergent bilingual
students have you had who you are identified as having special needs who you believe have been
misidentified because of their English language skills? When do you have students in one or
both of these categories, who does the planning, instruction, modification / accommodations,
grading, and documenting for the students?
References
Golloher, A., Whitenack, D., Simpson, L., & Sacco, D. (2018) From the ground up: Providing
support to emergent bilinguals to distinguish language difference from disability
. Insights
into Learning Disabilities
, 15(2), p. 127-147. Ortiz, A., Fránquiz, M., & Lara, G. (2020) The education of emergent bilinguals with
disabilities: state of practice. Bilingual Research Journal
, 43(3), p. 245-252.
https://10.1080/ 15235882.2020.1823734.
Schissel, J., & Kangas, S. (2018) Reclassification of emergent bilinguals with disabilities: The
intersectionality
of
probabilities.
Language
Policy
,
17,
p.
567-589.
https://doi.org/10.1007 /s10993-018-9476-4.
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