MSHA Information on Evaluations and Eligibility of English Language Learners
• School districts are required to use unbiased evaluation tools, and to rule out the presence of cultural, linguistic, and socioeconomic (i.e., poverty) factors when evaluating students from diverse ethnic or cultural backgrounds for eligibility for speech-language services. For example:
– School districts must use multiple evaluation tools and approaches including criterion-referenced and informal evaluations,
– The use of standardized, norm-referenced tests (and the application of test norms) with ELL students is extremely problematic, and should be avoided. Issues include:
- Norms can only be applied to students in the test’s normative sample; ELL students are almost never included in normative samples.
- When standardized tests have not been normed on ELL students’ cultural/ethnic groups, computed or standard scores are likely to contain bias, and should not be reported nor used to determine special education eligibility.
– School districts must access a member of the student’s cultural and language community to help interpret evaluation results, when possible.
– School districts must consider the length of time the student has been in the United States, and the amount and consistency of formal education that the student has received.
• Testing must be done in the student’s native language to determine if a speech-language disorder exists in the student’s native language as well as English.
• An interpreter who speaks the student’s native language must be used during all parts of the evaluation, including student testing, collecting communication samples, and communicating with the student’s parents.
• ELL students are eligible for speech-language services in the schools only if a speech-language disorder can be demonstrated in the native language and in English. ELL students are not eligible for speech-language services if their communication problems are the result of learning English.
Intervention
• School teams must take into account specific linguistic differences from the student’s native language. This means that teams must ensure that, for students who are eligible for service, IEP goals for speech and language focus on errors on sounds and language patterns that exist in the student’s native language.
For example, some languages from Southeast Asia do not mark verb tenses and therefore may not be present in the student’s language when learning to speak English. Lack of verb tenses in this case would not necessarily indicate a language disability. Teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) might choose to work on verb tenses as part of the student’s general education and ESL curriculum.
|
|
|
|
|
|
| Last updated 2012/08/14 17:00:42 CDT | Hits 1630 |
|
|
