Essay about Placing English Language Learners in Special Education

Because America is such a diverse country, public schools are faced with the challenge of providing students from all over the world with a quality education. As Chen points out “public schools have embraced the linguistic challenge presented by immigrant students” (¶1). Then, No Child Left Behind law was approved, and it required every public school should have an English Secondary Language (ESL) program that will provide the “academic support” for English Language Learners (ELLs). ELL parents are happy that their children are getting education help from the school, but it has raised the question of how successful are the ESL programs? Do ESL programs provide enough “academic support” to all ELL students? Do ESL programs have enough tools

An English language learner is defined as someone who “has sufficient difficulty speaking, reading, writing, or understanding the English language and whose difficulties may deny such individual the opportunity to learn successfully in classrooms where the language of instruction is in English” (Ortiz, Woika, 2013, p. 2). As defined by the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a child with a disability has “mental retardation, hearing impairments (including deafness), speech or language impairments, visual impairments (including blindness), serious emotional disturbance, orthopedic impairments, autism, traumatic brain injury, other health impairments, or specific learning disabilities; and who, by reason thereof, needs

For teachers, I believe they are lacking in having efficient data, practices, and resources. These three categories play an essential role in educating, evaluating, and caring for ELL students. Communication is a huge factor when it comes to instruction in the classroom. In the past research has shown poor communication between teachers, students and families. Schools often lack in providing differentiated methods and tools to teach ELL students. Schools in the past have failed to offer the correct assessments that were needed in order to diagnose each student's needs and measure their individualized learning standards. Educators can easily become frustrated because there is such a wide range of English learners. This means academic levels are different and the educators have not received the proper training or instructions on how to correctly educate ELL students.

The fact that ELL student’s are given the exact same educational services provided to native English speaker, seem to be very unfair for the ELL student’s and instead of helping the ELL students to succeed academically we are preventing them from succeeding in their classes. When I was reading this section I couldn’t stop thinking about the video that we saw in class, the student was very smart but the fact that he couldn’t understand the material being taught, this was preventing him from showing how brilliant and smart he is. Just imagine how many brilliant ELL students can’t succeed in class because they don’t understand the language of the instruction.

• Test scores comparing ELL students and native speakers of English as well as number of ELL students identified as requiring special education services

One of the biggest errors made in schooling today is placing a student who is an English Language Learner into special education because of errors made in interpreting language acquisition as a learning or language disability. There has been no single method that has proven to be fully effective when distinguishing between English language learning students and students with a learning disability. As a result, students can end up in classrooms or programs that are not suited for their needs and can hinder their educational achievement. It is important for teachers and schools to understand the process of acquiring a second language and to be able to recognize whether the student is really receiving an adequate opportunity to learn.

There have been many policies and legal battles when it comes to English Language Learners. For every policy, then will inevitably be a case to challenge it, as it is difficult to define what is truly equitable for every ELL student. Programs for English Language Learners (ELLs) have struggled to get the needed recognition and support from school district offices of our public schools. One piece of legislation that was passed to help end the inequality of education for these students was the Equal Education Opportunity Act or EEOA. The EEOA mandated that all students that are identified as an English Language Learner are to receive individual English only instruction. This is a good start to offering the right kind of instruction that is needed for students who are struggling to learn a second language.

As our nation shifts towards a more culturally diverse population both educators and families have to find a common ground to ensure that English Language Learners are academically successful. All stakeholders must carefully consider the social cultural impact on an ELL education. The process of raising bilingual learners take more than a language a school and a language learned at home. The transition must have a purpose and a goal.

The authors of the article explained how important it is to meet the needs of the students with limited English ability in the education system. One of the main point expresses about how frustrating it could be for these students, especially if they were never expose to this sort of environment or language before. Another point that was made in the article, explains how the educational system was not prepared for changes in this sort of population. In most cases, some of the curriculum that is being offered in school cannot be changed to accommodate English Limited Learners, also known as ELLs. Budget is also another issue, as schools are limited to hiring more ELL teachers.

This paper will be focusing on two articles that deal with Ell children as well as the policies and programs available for ell children. The two articles that will be discussed are Starting Early with English Language Leaners by Maggie Severns and Chapter Two from Menken, K. and García O. Book Appropriating Language Policy on the Local Level by David Cassels Johnson and Rebecca Freeman. These two articles provide us two different views on ELL services in two major cities in the United States which are Chicago and Philadelphia. Although these two articles discuss two different cities we are shown some of the similar views and struggles that they have with ell programs and policies. Therefore, this paper will explore the struggles of these ell programs as well as the policies and strategy of each city.

Doctors Ana Iddings and Mary Combs are Associate Professors from the University of Arizona who conducted research on how to help English language learners become successful in grades Kindergarten through 12 along with Dr. Luis Moll who is a Professor Emeritus from the named university. Dr. Iddings has conducted individual research on many topics, one being the education and professional development of teachers to work with English language learners (ELLs) and their families. Dr. Combs currently teaches courses in bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) courses on the graduate and undergraduate levels. Dr. Moll’s main research was conducted in education of Latino children in the United States.

The authors highlight that federal law clearly staes mandates aimed at safeguarding the rights of students with special needs. This includes linguistically and culturally diverse students, who have historically been disproportionately represented in special education. However, the authors suggest a lack of clear practices, procedures and policies for early intervention, referral, assessment, and eligibility determinations involving ELLs at the school district level. They document that best practices for assessing and identifying ELLs that have been present in the literature for a number of years (e.g., conducting prereferral interventions, using caution in interpreting results of norm-referenced instruments, avoiding translated instruments)

It has been estimated that by the year 2025, approximately one out of every public school student will be identified as an ESL/ELL student in the United States. ESL stands for English as a Second Language and ELL stands for English Language Learner. An ESL/ELL student can be defined as a student whose predominant language or languages at home, is other than English, and would require additional English language support to develop reading, writing, listening and speaking skills. The difference between an ESL student and ELL student is minor; An ESL student participates in programs that are customarily specialized while an ELL student partakes in a traditional educational classroom. English Language Learners have surpassed other subgroups in becoming the fastest growing of the public school population. Despite the common misjudgement of some people towards the ESL/ELL population, 76% of the ESL/ELL students in elementary schools and 56% of the ESL/ELL students in secondary schools are native-born. The highest percentages of ELL/ESL students in public schools are found in the west of the United States. Taking the average of both bigger and smaller cities, ELL students make an average of 14% of the total public school enrollment and in suburban areas, ELL students make up an average of 8.5% of public school enrollment. The ESL/ELL population has more than doubled over the past 15 years and more than half of those students struggle with their academic performance. An ESL/ELL

The purpose of schooling is to help our special education students to be functional and independent in the real world. I want them to learn how to deal with real life situations and to be able to understand and adapt to the changes it may bring. For example, being an autism teacher of high school students, my philosophy is different than of an autism teacher of elementary students. The most important thing of concern for the older students is to make sure they are as independent as possible and teach them some type of job skill to help them acquire a pay check to help with their care. I also help them have an

One of the most controversial issues facing educators today is the topic of educating students with disabilities, specifically through the concept of inclusion. Inclusion is defined as having every student be a part of the classroom all working together no matter if the child has a learning disability or not (Farmer) (Inclusion: Where We’ve Been.., 2005, para. 5). The mentally retarded population has both a low IQ and the inability to perform everyday functions. Activities such as eating, dressing, walking, and in some cases, talking can be hopeless for a child with mental retardation.