Why more focus on ELL than special education?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an ESOL teacher and I find that more lip service is paid to prioritizing ELLs in schools while more actual time, services and attention is paid to special ed students even though the student numbers are disproportionate.

ESOL teachers can have around 60 students in multiple grade levels on their caseloads while special ed teachers have a maximum of 10 in maybe 2 grade levels max, and they have special ed paras to support the special ed teachers with their admin work and students in the classrooms.

OP - This is NOT the case at our school. Please do not make such a sweeping generalization based on your individual experience. At our school, our ELL students often get short shrifted, as do their teachers, whereas SpEd students are top priority. Their SpEd teachers have smaller caseloads and increasingly get more and more classrooms, whereas we have not one room dedicated. They are NEVER pulled away from their students whereas ELL teachers often are. Your claim is unfounded and dangerous. Please go pick on someone else, like the greedy 1 percenters.

Do you know what “lip service” means?

You have actually made the same arguments about ESOL being neglected.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an ESOL teacher and I find that more lip service is paid to prioritizing ELLs in schools while more actual time, services and attention is paid to special ed students even though the student numbers are disproportionate.

ESOL teachers can have around 60 students in multiple grade levels on their caseloads while special ed teachers have a maximum of 10 in maybe 2 grade levels max, and they have special ed paras to support the special ed teachers with their admin work and students in the classrooms.

OP - This is NOT the case at our school. Please do not make such a sweeping generalization based on your individual experience. At our school, our ELL students often get short shrifted, as do their teachers, whereas SpEd students are top priority. Their SpEd teachers have smaller caseloads and increasingly get more and more classrooms, whereas we have not one room dedicated. They are NEVER pulled away from their students whereas ELL teachers often are. Your claim is unfounded and dangerous. Please go pick on someone else, like the greedy 1 percenters.

Do you know what “lip service” means?

You have actually made the same arguments about ESOL being neglected.

+1

[Anonymous]

I also have a friend whose child has been recently diagnosed with dyslexia and there is an appalling lack of effective services in public schools for a disability that is easily remediated with appropriate instruction and that is quite prevalent (up to 20% of kids may be affected).

This is not necessarily true. I agree it needs remediation, but it is not easy and is not necessarily successful.

[Anonymous]

OK if we accept as a premise that neither group is appropriately supported and this isn’t an attempt to pit the groups against each other. Which of the following is incorrect:

Both dyslexic and ELL children need specific instructional support. For dyslexic kids that is systematic research-based instruction implemented by trained teachers. There doesn’t seem to be any way to identify special education teachers or reading interventionists who have the right training. Is there a certification or job title? It seems like ESOL teachers are specifically trained in their instruction methods in order to become ESOL teachers.

If we accept that prevalence of dyslexia is up to 20% according to researchers at Yale Dyslexia Center and the prevalence of ELL learners is close to that in some schools. So the number of ESOL teachers in a school should match the number of ELLs. And the number of kids identified with dyslexia is likely below what it should be, given schools’ historical resistance to identify. But if we use 15% that seems like a fair rate for most schools, then they would need the specialized reading teachers to support those kids.

Maybe we could report reading achievement scores for dyslexic kids alongside ELL achievement statistics. Then parents would have some idea if any appropriate effort is being expended on supporting these kids. Is there a reason we don’t do this?

As a tax-paying citizen who is constantly asked to give more resources to schools (which I agree with) it seems like schools should be thinking about how their lower than expected achievement levels for reading might be related to not properly educating a huge proportion of their students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an ESOL teacher and I find that more lip service is paid to prioritizing ELLs in schools while more actual time, services and attention is paid to special ed students even though the student numbers are disproportionate.

ESOL teachers can have around 60 students in multiple grade levels on their caseloads while special ed teachers have a maximum of 10 in maybe 2 grade levels max, and they have special ed paras to support the special ed teachers with their admin work and students in the classrooms.

OP - This is NOT the case at our school. Please do not make such a sweeping generalization based on your individual experience. At our school, our ELL students often get short shrifted, as do their teachers, whereas SpEd students are top priority. Their SpEd teachers have smaller caseloads and increasingly get more and more classrooms, whereas we have not one room dedicated. They are NEVER pulled away from their students whereas ELL teachers often are. Your claim is unfounded and dangerous. Please go pick on someone else, like the greedy 1 percenters.

Whoa, reading comprehension is important. You are both saying the exact same thing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an ESOL teacher and I find that more lip service is paid to prioritizing ELLs in schools while more actual time, services and attention is paid to special ed students even though the student numbers are disproportionate.

ESOL teachers can have around 60 students in multiple grade levels on their caseloads while special ed teachers have a maximum of 10 in maybe 2 grade levels max, and they have special ed paras to support the special ed teachers with their admin work and students in the classrooms.

OP - This is NOT the case at our school. Please do not make such a sweeping generalization based on your individual experience. At our school, our ELL students often get short shrifted, as do their teachers, whereas SpEd students are top priority. Their SpEd teachers have smaller caseloads and increasingly get more and more classrooms, whereas we have not one room dedicated. They are NEVER pulled away from their students whereas ELL teachers often are. Your claim is unfounded and dangerous. Please go pick on someone else, like the greedy 1 percenters.

Whoa, reading comprehension is important. You are both saying the exact same thing.

Give her a break, she never got the remediation she needed for her dyslexia.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am an ESOL teacher and I find that more lip service is paid to prioritizing ELLs in schools while more actual time, services and attention is paid to special ed students even though the student numbers are disproportionate.

ESOL teachers can have around 60 students in multiple grade levels on their caseloads while special ed teachers have a maximum of 10 in maybe 2 grade levels max, and they have special ed paras to support the special ed teachers with their admin work and students in the classrooms.

OP - This is NOT the case at our school. Please do not make such a sweeping generalization based on your individual experience. At our school, our ELL students often get short shrifted, as do their teachers, whereas SpEd students are top priority. Their SpEd teachers have smaller caseloads and increasingly get more and more classrooms, whereas we have not one room dedicated. They are NEVER pulled away from their students whereas ELL teachers often are. Your claim is unfounded and dangerous. Please go pick on someone else, like the greedy 1 percenters.

Whoa, reading comprehension is important. You are both saying the exact same thing.

Give her a break, she never got the remediation she needed for her dyslexia.

Um no- this looks like a non-native speaker response to me. If she were dyslexic, her spelling would be worse.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I also have a friend whose child has been recently diagnosed with dyslexia and there is an appalling lack of effective services in public schools for a disability that is easily remediated with appropriate instruction and that is quite prevalent (up to 20% of kids may be affected).

This is not necessarily true. I agree it needs remediation, but it is not easy and is not necessarily successful.

It is easy in the sense that the research-based approach is well-defined and well- understood.

It does require a lot of work from the kids- a dyslexic colleague described it as brutally demanding. And the teachers should meet with the child at least 3 times a week for an hour for the multi-sensory instruction. And the approach has to be tailored for each child’s progress so it is best done individually. But the individual tailoring is how teachers describe their instruction practices generally, so it doesn’t seem like it would be more challenging from a teacher perspective.

But I think it is very rare for a child to not be able to be remediated when the instruction is started in K or 1. I think the failure of instruction is more likely the result of late identification/ poor remediation efforts or a complicating additional disability such as ID.

[Anonymous]

I am a gen ed teacher who has an ESL certification and a sped certification and I've been in the field 25 years. I don't know of any population that is getting what they need, even in the best funded systems. A LOT of money is spent on special education, but it isn't enough. Some extra money is spent on ELL's. Gen ed students get the least amount of resources and services.

There is a lot of research that shows once kids enter special education, they never leave and their prospects in life are not good. To this point, my district tries to keep kids out of sped if possible. Our ELL's have mixed results. It really seems to depend on poverty, parent interest in education, luck and a bunch of other factors. I don't know. But I do know this isn't really one group versus another. All students need more resources in the form of trained teachers. All of them.

I do know there is someone on this board who posts frequently about dyslexia and how few trained teachers there are, etc, etc. To that person I will say this: The ONLY way things change in education is by parents and teachers who work together to form advocacy groups to pressure the government into better laws and more funding. Historically, this is how change happens if you look at special ed over the last few hundred years. So, dyslexia mom, instead of whining on this site, if you want to see change there's only one way that's going to happen: You'll have to dedicate the rest of your life to organizing around this issue. That's the solution. You may not like it, but it's the only option if you want to see change.

[Anonymous]

I’m a sped teacher. I also want to add that dyslexia is a complex reading disability and presents differently in each child. Some students have primarily spelling issues; others also have decoding and /or fluency deficits that then affect comprehension. Students with dyslexia don’t always present issues in k-1 and if they do and are given a successful intervention they can still then have additional issues arise as reading and writing tasks become more complex in later grades.

[Anonymous]

Dyslexia mom here- not sure if I am the “whining” one the teacher is referencing. I think OPs question sounds like someone who is just diving into this disturbing area since she is now personally affected with her friend’s child’s diagnosis.

It is a really disturbing thing when you first realize how poorly served this population is. I think of it as moving through the stages of grief.

And I don’t think you can assume that the “whining” dyslexia mom isn’t also partnering with teachers and advocating for change along with saying dyslexia here. I know I am.

But since you have a SPED certificate- did that include training in OG-type interventions for dyslexic kids? Or is there another way to figure this out for people who are looking at schools? Because I think that is what OP is trying to figure out for her friend.

I have to admit that I am skeptical of your claim that keeping kids out of special Ed supports them better, since if they don’t have an IEP school’s aren’t required to provide appropriate instruction.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a sped teacher. I also want to add that dyslexia is a complex reading disability and presents differently in each child. Some students have primarily spelling issues; others also have decoding and /or fluency deficits that then affect comprehension. Students with dyslexia don’t always present issues in k-1 and if they do and are given a successful intervention they can still then have additional issues arise as reading and writing tasks become more complex in later grades.

It seems like ELL kids would also continue to need support as the complexity of ELA assignments increases in later grades. I know that I was not writing essays as well as native speakers even after I was fluent in a second language at my international school. There are definitely German verb constructions that still baffle me.

Does ESOL/ELL support stop at a particular fluency level?

[Anonymous]

Different districts have different exit criteria. In my district, once students reach an overall score of 4.5 on the WIDA ACCESS, they exit from ESOL.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Dyslexia mom here- not sure if I am the “whining” one the teacher is referencing. I think OPs question sounds like someone who is just diving into this disturbing area since she is now personally affected with her friend’s child’s diagnosis.

It is a really disturbing thing when you first realize how poorly served this population is. I think of it as moving through the stages of grief.

And I don’t think you can assume that the “whining” dyslexia mom isn’t also partnering with teachers and advocating for change along with saying dyslexia here. I know I am.

But since you have a SPED certificate- did that include training in OG-type interventions for dyslexic kids? Or is there another way to figure this out for people who are looking at schools? Because I think that is what OP is trying to figure out for her friend.

I have to admit that I am skeptical of your claim that keeping kids out of special Ed supports them better, since if they don’t have an IEP school’s aren’t required to provide appropriate instruction.

I am not sure that keeping kids out of sped supports them better, only that once they are put into it, it is sort of like an academic purgatory. They are NEVER getting out. It isn't like sped means a kid gets the help they need, they are fixed and then they are fine. It just doesn't work like that.
And as sped is so financially burdensome on districts and taxpayers, schools are doing what they can to stay afloat.

No, my sped training did very, very little in terms of intervention training. It is just the initial training and was only 4 required classes. My district did finally pay for all of the sped teachers (those actually offering sped services, not gen ed teachers with sped training) to be OG trained, which is awesome for the kids who now have access to that additional methodology and awesome for those teachers, who can now both serve their students better AND offer after school/summer tutoring at $100 a hour or more. The reality is there is no database (and never will be) re: which schools offer which training. It is also false to assume that as long as a kid gets OG interventions, they will be fine. It might work for them, it might not. There's also a limit of what can be provided for in public schools and parents have to understand this or work to change it. If the mom who is constantly bringing up the dyslexia issue is working on organizing for change, good for her.

Re the post about do ELL's need more help the higher the grade level? YES! But once they exit, that's it in terms of additional ESL help outside what the gen ed teacher can provide. Schools are limited in what they can provide kids. That's reality.

[Anonymous]

The school gets money for ESOL. Our children are U.S. born but school insisted on keeping them in ESOL for money-which they indicated multiple times. One child was special ed.-significant push back on getting services under IEP. School just did not care.