Thursday, November 17, 2005
ELL students with disabilities
From the ColorinColorado newsletter:
English language learning students with disabilities
With the number of ELL students in U.S. schools continuing to rise, what are the educational implications for these students who also have disabilities that affect their educational achievement?
The U.S. Department of Education commissioned a report - A Descriptive Study of Services to LEP [Limited English Proficient] Students and LEP Students with Disabilities - that surveyed schools and districts nationally to identify characteristics of and services provided to ELLs. One portion of the study focused on the services offered to the subpopulation of ELLs who are also students with disabilities, the instructional services received by these students, and on these students’ participation in standards and assessment systems.
Select findings of this study include:
* From 1987 to 2001, there was an increase from 3.3 percent to 14.2 percent in the proportion of students with disabilities who do not primarily use English at home (U.S. Department of Education, 2002).
* In surveyed districts, 13.5 percent of all students were receiving special education services, while only 9.2 percent of ELLs were receiving special educational services (p. 6).
* The percentage of ELL students in each disability classification (e.g. mental retardation, speech/language impairments) was smaller than the percentage of total population in each disability classification (p. 8).
* Approximately 24 percent of K-12 teachers in public schools work with at least one ELL student with a disability (p.19).The study also discussed educators’ concerns about the difficulty in distinguishing certain disabilities from the process of learning English (p. 3). Lack of assessments that can be validly used to assess potential disabilities in ELLs and lack of staff with the language abilities and skills to perform these assessments factor into the challenge of distinguishing language acquisition from disability in ELL students. The report identifies a need for further guidance and resources related to the identification of English language learning students with disabilities (p. 28).
The full study is available here:
http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/resabout/research/descriptivestudyfiles/index.htm.The portion of the report entitled “Findings on Special Education LEP Students” is available here:
http://www.ncela.gwu.edu/resabout/research/descriptivestudyfiles/special_ed4.pdf.