1. Special Education Evaluations For Students With ELL Needs
1/7/2014
Brian Lloyd
Lori Haindl Torres

2. Agenda
How do students become eligible and/or stay eligible for ELL services – 8:30 to 9:30am (ish)
Best practices for ELL instruction Ed – 9:30 to 10:30 (ish)
Break – 10:30 (ish) to 10:45
Issues with referral of students with ELL for special education eligibility – 10:45-11:15
Use of assessment tools for non-discriminatory evaluation of students with ELL needs for special education eligibility – 11:15-11:45

3. Outcomes ELL identification
Best practice for teaching students with ELL needs.
Evaluation and assessment practices for students with ELL needs.

4. Special Education Evaluations For Students With ELL Needs
IES Practice Guide - Effective Literacy and English Language Instruction for English Learners in the Elementary Grades (2007)
Practical Guidelines for the Education of English Language Learners - RESEARCH- BASED RECOMMENDATIONS FOR INSTRUCTION AND ACADEMIC INTERVENTIONS (Center on Instruction 2006)

5. IES Practice Guide for ELL Instruction

6. Center on Instruction ELL Research-Based Recommendations
ELLs need early, explicit, and intensive instruction in phonological awareness and phonics in order to build decoding skills.
K-12 classrooms across the nation must increase opportunities for ELLs to develop sophisticated vocabulary knowledge.
Reading instruction in K-12 classrooms must equip ELLs with strategies and knowledge to comprehend and analyze challenging narrative and expository texts.
Instruction and intervention to promote ELLs’ reading fluency must focus on vocabulary and increased exposure to print.
In all K-12 classrooms across the U.S., ELLs need significant opportunities to engage in structured, academic talk.
Independent reading is only beneficial when it is structured and purposeful, and there is a good reader- text match.

7. Center on Instruction ELL Recommendations for Math
ELLs need early explicit and intensive instruction and intervention in basic mathematics concepts and skill.
Academic language is as central to mathematics as it is to other academic areas. It is a significant source of difficulty for many ELLs who struggle with mathematics.
ELLs need academic language support to understand and solve the word problems that are often used for mathematics assessment and instruction.

8. Discuss in Groups Break into small groups and discuss:
What similarities do you see between the recommendations of the IES practice guide and center for instruction?
What do you see as the difference between the recommendations for ELL students and the recommendations for all students who have difficulties learning reading and math skills?

9. MTSS/RTI For Students With ELL Needs
English Language Learners (ELL) and Response to Intervention (RTI): Information for K–6 Educators (JENNIFER W. SUN, MA; JEANIE E. NAM, MA; & MICHAEL L. VANDERWOOD, PHD 2010)

10. MTSS/RTI For Students With ELL Needs
Tier 1
Prevention starts in Tier 1:
Conduct universal class-wide screening three times per year in order to identify and intervene with ELLs who are at risk for reading problems.
Train educators to use screening data to guide instruction in the classroom.
Assess in the areas of phonological awareness, letter naming fluency, alphabetic knowledge, and oral reading fluency.
Screen in the language of instruction and, if possible, in the student’s native language.

11. MTSS/RTI For Students With ELL Needs
Tier 2
Regardless of the level of English language proficiency, students who are identified as at risk in Tier 1 should be provided with research-supported intervention in Tier 2. If possible, the language of the intervention should correspond with the language of classroom instruction. The intensity of the intervention should be individualized and based on several factors, such as the student’s degree of risk and his or her rate of progress.

12. MTSS/RTI For Students With ELL Needs Tier 2 Continued
Provide intensive, small-group reading intervention (3–6 students) for students who are at risk for reading problems. Form groups based on reading ability.
Provide explicit and systematic instruction in five critical areas: phonological awareness, alphabetic knowledge, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension.
Emphasize development of conversational as well as academic vocabulary. Although students who speak another language develop social proficiency within the context of everyday living, cognitive academic language proficiency is dependent on formal schooling.
Provide interactive teaching that allows for multiple opportunities to respond, with corrective feedback.
Establish goals using district or national benchmarks. This can be done by developing district norms based on screening data or by using previously developed benchmark criteria.

13. MTSS/RTI For Students With ELL Needs Tier 2 Continued
Monitor progress regularly to ensure that students are benefiting from the intervention and meeting their goals. The same assessment tools used to identify the students in Tier 1 can be used to monitor progress in Tier 2.
Establish initial goals and adjust them based on rate of growth.
If the student’s progress is above his or her goal line, either increase the goal or exit the student from the intervention.
If the student’s progress is equal to the goal line, continue the intervention.
If the student’s progress is below the goal, adjust the intervention.
The frequency of progress monitoring should be determined by the severity of the problem. The general recommendation is that students at high risk for reading problems be monitored weekly or biweekly (Gersten et al., 2007).
Although there is not a universal standard, typical practice is to have at least 7–10 data points before the data are used to make an educational decision (Shinn, Good, & Stein, 1990).

14. MTSS/RTI For Students With ELL Needs Tier 3
Before considering a student for special education, educators must determine whether the student’s academic difficulties more likely reflect a learning disability or limited English proficiency.
Compare the student’s rate of progress during intervention with other students of similar English language proficiency.
Conduct a comprehensive review of the student’s educational history, including an examination of:
(a) the quality of the instruction provided in Tiers 1 and 2, and whether the instruction was matched to the student’s needs;
(b) whether the critical components of literacy instruction were provided (refer to Tier 2);
(c) the intensity, including the frequency and duration, of past interventions;
(d) previous progress monitoring data, including initial performance, rate of progress, and whether past goals were met; and
(e) the fidelity of intervention implementation (e.g., was the intervention consistently implemented as intended?).

15. Pre-Referral Guidelines for English Language Learners
Comprehensive Pre-Referral Guidelines: Identifying Appropriate Special Education Referrals - A Focus on English Language Learners (Linda J. Pérez, M.A., L.S.S.P., Dirian M. Valdés-Guada, Ph.D. 2009)
Comprehensive Assessment of Culturally Diverse Students: A systematic, Practical approach for Nondiscriminatory Assessment(Samuel Ortiz 2004)

16. Comprehensive Pre-Referral Guidelines
Prerez and Valdes-Guada reference IDEA and state: Resulting regulation according to Sec. 612 states: … testing and evaluation materials and procedures utilized for the purposes of evaluation and placement of children… … shall be provided and administered in the child’s native language or mode of communication, unless it clearly is not feasible to do so… (PL , p. 32).

17. Reference to IDEA…
(1) Assessments and other evaluation materials used to assess a child under this part—
(i) Are selected and administered so as not to be discriminatory on a racial or cultural basis;
(ii) Are provided and administered in the child’s native language or other mode of communication and in the form most likely to yield accurate information on what the child knows and can do academically, developmentally, and functionally, unless it is clearly not feasible to so provide or administer;

18. Comprehensive Pre-Referral Guidelines

19. Comprehensive Pre-Referral Guidelines

20. Comprehensive Pre-Referral Guidelines

21. Comprehensive Pre-Referral Guidelines

22. Comprehensive Pre-Referral Guidelines

23. ELL and Reading Street
Reading Street provides effective instruction that gives these students opportunities to listen, speak, read, and write at their current levels of English development while gradually increasing the linguistic complexity of the English they read and hear, and the English they are expected to speak and write.
EXAMPLES: dH9&PMDBSUBCATEGORYID=&PMDBSITEID=2781&PM DBSUBSOLUTIONID=&PMDBSOLUTIONID=6724&PMDB SUBJECTAREAID=&PMDBCATEGORYID=3289&PMDbPro gramID=69481&elementType=asset&elementID=Custo m%20Bucket%202

24. Group Activity
Let’s break into groups of 2-3 to review sections of the Samuel Ortiz 10 Stage Model of Nondiscriminatory Assessment (Handout Pages 9-24).
After each team member reads their section, share out your observations including:
Things that my challenge your thinking about evaluations for students with ELL needs.
Something that confirms your current practice.
Any other highlights and/or points of interest.
This is Lori’s.

25. Discussion