Teaching English Learners With Special Needs
One of the most challenging aspects of ESL is teaching a foreign language, a truly demanding academic subject, to students who represent both ends and the middle of the bell curve. Yes, there are truly bilingual students with IQs in the 60s. As you might expect, such students exhibit delayed language development in both languages, their progress is much slower than that of their peers, and they struggle with reading and writing, but they learn to communicate effectively in two languages. Many become truly balanced bilinguals who handle one language as well as the other. Some English learners who experience only mild learning disabilities overcome or learn to compensate for them and go on to master English and succeed in their academic studies.
There was a time when schools that lacked programs for English learners placed recent immigrants in special education classes, not to meet their educational needs but to keep them away from the general population. I know people who immigrated to the United States in the 1940s and 1950s who spent their first few years in American schools copying, cutting, pasting, and coloring alongside mentally challenged native speakers of English simply because they could not speak the language of their teachers. This practice appears to be much rarer now than in the past.
It is a common misconception that in this day and age all minorities are overrepresented in special education. While it is true that the overall percentage of minority students enrolled in special education is slightly higher than that of the general population, the percentage of Hispanics and Asians, the two groups most likely to be served in bilingual or ESL programs, is not. According to the National Research Council Panel Report entitled “Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education,” 11% of Hispanic students and 5% of Asian students are placed in special education, as opposed to 12% of non-Hispanic white students. Having politically correct numbers, however, does not mean that all is well.
IDENTIFYING STUDENTS WITH SPECIAL NEEDS
As with ESL, effective special education begins with appropriate placement. Whether, when, and how to place students in special education classes are indeed important and difficult questions. There are those who feel that one label is enough, and that, because students receive specialized instruction through their bilingual or ESL programs, placement in special education would be redundant. In a perfect world where funding and teachers’ knowledge were without limit, this might be true. In the real world, we face limitations. Sooner or later you will have students who will benefit from special education teachers’ expertise and the special education department’s resources.
Before being placed in special education, most students will be tested by a psychologist or an educational diagnostician. Unlike the students in ESL or bilingual classes, special education students cannot be placed based on teacher-given tests. Students who do not speak English must be tested in their native language. Those who are bilingual but weak in English must be tested in both languages. The student must then qualify in both languages in order to receive special education services. If your district has no diagnostician who speaks the student’s language, one must be contracted. This is expensive and inconvenient, so do not refer English learners frivolously. If a student is having problems in the first few months, take a wait-and-see attitude, unless it appears that there is a severe handicap. When it becomes clear that a student is having problems beyond those related to language learning, and you feel that he or she could benefit from special services, consider making a referral. Before doing so, however, you need to consider some special circumstances.
PRIOR EDUCATION, SEMILINGUALISM, AND LEARNING DISABILITIES
Students who are severely mentally challenged will be easy to identify, whatever the language issues. They can be identified with nonverbal tests or through observation in self-care situations. Those with learning disabilities, however, are another matter. This matter is complicated by the definitions of learning disability. The 2002 edition of Wrightslaw: Special Education Law states: “If a child has a disability that adversely affects educational performance . . . and is not negatively affected by environmental, cultural, or economic disadvantages, the child has a learning disability” (p. 30). Your students clearly are not disadvantaged by their culture, but there are some environmental and linguistic factors that might create the false impression that a student is learning disabled.
The exact legal definition of learning disability varies from state to state. At the time of this writing, in many states students are considered to be learning disabled if a significant discrepancy exists between IQ and academic performance.
Two issues must be considered when deciding whether a student who is struggling to learn English has a learning disability. First, some of your students may not have attended as much school as their classmates. Because many schools place immigrant students according to age rather than previous educational achievement, the sixteen-year-old who seems to be learning disabled may have attended only elementary school. Be certain that you know the student’s level of prior schooling before making a special education referral. This is not to say that it is impossible for such students to be learning disabled, but if their skills are appropriate for the amount of schooling they have received, they probably are not. Your school, one hopes, will have resources to provide extra help for students who lack years of education in their native land.
A student who is semilingual may falsely appear to be learning disabled. Semilingualism occurs when a language learner speaks two languages but with a limited command of both. Few people are semilingual for a lifetime. Most either become dominant in one language or else eventually learn both well. It is not uncommon, however, for young people to experience a period of semilingualism while they are immersed and educated in a new language. A Spanish-speaking five-year-old in an English language kindergarten might know the colors as rojo, blue, verde and gray. An older child might be more familiar with household and church-related vocabulary in Spanish but know scientific vocabulary only in English, the language of the textbooks. Some students who understand oral Spanish better than English read English better than Spanish. This is not a serious problem, just a temporary speed bump on the road to full mastery of English. Students tested while in this transitional state, however, will likely score lower in both English and in their home language than would students of similar ability who employ only one language.
If you speak the students’ language, you may be able to identify such students. If a student can read and easily comprehend grade-level material in English as long as someone translates difficult vocabulary, chances are the supposed learning disability is a language matter. Good special education teachers keep their eyes open for signs that their students are on track to return to regular education. This is especially important for those who may have entered special education classes while still in a semilingual period.
WHAT DOES SPECIAL EDUCATION OFFER YOUR STUDENTS?
Some students, of course, will be best served by a combination of your services and those of the special education department. In a perfect world, schools with English learners would have at least one special education teacher who is knowledgeable in matters of language learning and at least one ESL teacher who is knowledgeable about special needs. If there are such people on your campus, or if you are such a person, your school is blessed. Unfortunately, both ESL/bilingual and special education teachers are currently in short supply, and dually trained teachers are even more rare. Nevertheless, you and the special education teachers can put your heads together and find ways to help the special students who need you both.
Before referring one of your students to special education, evaluate what special education will do and how you and the special education teachers can work together. Chances are you can work out a program that will benefit your English learner with special needs. Still, before making a referral, satisfy yourself that your student will benefit from the special services your school can offer. Remember that most special services are really “instead,” not “extra.” Time spent in special education is time not spent in your class (except in the case of inclusion), so decide whether the substitution is worthwhile.
WHEN THEY NEED A SPECIAL EDUCATION REFERRAL BUT HAVEN’T GOTTEN ONE
It is important to note that students who would benefit from or have great need for special education services sometimes get locked out. Sometimes teachers and administrators are too reluctant to refer English learners to special education. Even on the Texas-Mexico border where I live, even in schools with populations that are almost entirely Hispanic, some bilingual teachers complain that they meet with more resistance than do teachers of all-English language classes when they refer students to special education.
I once worked in a mostly Hispanic middle school where the special education population was disproportionately non-Hispanic. That year, probably a full third of my ESL students were English dominant, and a few barely spoke Spanish at all. Some of them had entered kindergarten speaking only Spanish but had mastered English in the ensuing eight years. Because they continued to be weak academically, they were never exited from ESL classes. Others had been English dominant their entire lives but were placed in ESL based on poor academic performance. One student’s mother told me that she had been persuaded to falsely declare on the home language survey that her family spoke principally Spanish at home. She had been told that this was the only way for her son to get the help he needed to avoid failing.
Many of these students would have been better served in special education, but attempts to refer them met with endless bureaucratic roadblocks. The administration’s philosophy was that students with vowels at the end of their names probably just needed more English, and, year after year, English-dominant but possibly learning-disabled students were placed with recent immigrants.
This philosophy, of course, created disappointing results. Placing learning disabled children in classes designed for English learners is as unethical and harmful as placing English learners in classes meant to serve the learning disabled and mentally challenged. Dealing with a learning disability by reviewing the rudiments of one’s native language is like treating diabetes with chemotherapy.
DETERMINING THE APPROPRIATE PROGRAM
After testing the student, a diagnostician or psychologist will determine if he or she qualifies for special education services. Once a student qualifies, a committee consisting of the child’s parent(s) and school personnel will determine placement. The committee will also write or approve an individual education program. In most states, this is called an IEP (individual education program) committee, although we Texans call it the ARD (admission, review, dismissal) committee. Depending on your state’s rules and whether the student has other teachers, you may or may not be required to participate in this process. Even if you are not required to participate, your student will likely benefit if you do so.
Schools are required to provide a variety of services to students with special needs. Those with only mild learning disabilities might spend all of their class time in regular classes with very little intervention from special education personnel. Others might be served by inclusion teachers. These are itinerant special education teachers who serve mainstreamed students in their regular classrooms. Students might divide their academic day between your classroom and a special education classroom, or they might go to the special education room only when they need extra help. Severely handicapped students might spend the entire school day in a special classroom, in which case you might be the itinerant teacher who comes in to assist. The IEP committee has a great deal of power. Whatever the IEP committee determines, within the limits of the law of course, must be followed.
If the IEP committee so determines, you can offer slower paced instruction, a different kind of instruction, shortened assignments, modified grading, or extra help from special education teachers. In many school districts special education is better funded than is ESL. If there is material or equipment that a dually labeled student needs, it might be easier to fund through special education.
If a student is having difficulty with oral language, the IEP committee may specify an extra dose. You might want to have a student practice oral English in the special education classroom while your other students do more advanced written work, and then move the special student into written English later on, perhaps even in a later year. Controlled conversation (described in Chapter 10) is a good technique when there are small groups of English learners in a special education class or when the special education teacher can give the student one-on-one attention. For severely challenged students, a heavy dose of TPR (Total Physical Response) with a lot of repetition may be appropriate. This technique has proven effective even with nonverbal students.
If you are teaching a bilingual class that includes reading in the native language, the IEP committee will determine which language to use in the special education classroom. If the student is doing fairly well in oral English but is reading badly in both languages, the committee might choose to continue native-language reading in the special education classroom until a basic level of literacy is attained. On the other hand, if the student has fair English literacy skills, or if the student has a fair mastery of oral English but few reading skills in any language, the committee might decide to teach only English reading in the special education classroom.
Working With Younger Students
The majority of students who are placed in special education are identified as learning disabled. It is very difficult to identify K–2 students in this way. The learning disabled label is based on a difference between perceived intelligence and academic skills, and it is difficult to establish the existence of a learning ability for those who have been studying academic skills for so such a short time. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) does, however, allow that young children can qualify for special education based on developmental delay.