Reply to Why more focus on ELL than special education?

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "Why more focus on ELL than special education?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=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.[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics