Special Education placement for ethnic and second language learners in the United States has issues to consider to make sure that students who are limited English proficient are not diagnosed as needing special services because of bias and language issues referred to as disproportionality. There has been a study of the past 20 years or so of placement in special education dealing with minority students in various states and the findings suggest that there are more variable to investigate such as instructional factors that affect the quality of the school and teacher experience, referral procedures which are biased toward minorities and lack of prereferral intervention, assessment practices which points out that many school psychologists are not trained to test culturally and linguistically different student populations, and noncompliance with state and/or federal guidelines which assesses linguistically diverse students to be tested in their first language.
With school accountability such a high factor for success of schools, minority students have a greater "one size fits all" approach and therefore being labeled special ed and therefore exempt from the high stakes tests. This also affects promotion and graduation for the minority students, hense the high drop out rate.
Some solutions from the National Research Council (NRC) recommends a "universal screening program" (p.38) which is administered when students show signs of having difficulty in reading. Some factors that would address if bias is a factor is a longitudinal data consisting of how long a family has lived in the US, level of acculturation, birth place of the students, parents, grandparents and their language proficiency. Provide access to bilingual education, bilingual psychologists, and the language of the tests being in the minority student's Native Language.
Funding would also be provided to evaluate assessment methods used for culturally and linguistically diverse students and testing to see if bias is the main reason students are placed in special education.
I am pleased to read that the NRC is taking steps to help students with cultural and linguistic differences be included in the regular classroom and also have access to the gifted end of the special services spectrum.
Back to Work
14 years ago
2 comments:
You list some important recommendations. Would you add any additional recommendations for students in your school? Should local community members be a part of the decision making for special ed services?
Marilee
I think the more people involved from the stakeholder perspective, the more likely the recommendations will be taken seriously. Right now in our school our sped population are all in because of serious issues. We are very fortunate to have a speech pathologist who uses relevant material to our ares. Isn't that something else? I would be interested to ask our school psychologist what kind of bias that the test possibly have.
Post a Comment