I remember a time when I worked in the schools in Arizona and New Mexico and I was the only bilingual clinician or one of 2 in the district. The districts I worked for were 98% and 55% Hispanic, respectively. At that time I would take all referrals and never questioned the teachers' observations about the Mexican children who were referred for special education or speech & language. I think the first job I had right out of college, most of my time was testing children who had been on the waiting list for 2 years. Now we legally don't have waiting lists, but we still have a lot of referrals of second language learners. What I learned from those 7 years of evaluations, was that not all teachers really know when a child who is a second language learner has a learning or language disorder. I got an email from a clinician who expressed the same frustrations that I had 25 years ago. I do the bilingual evaluations at my school and throughout the district. My concern is that these children are being over-referred by their home schools, no matter their age. This may be due to the "growing pains" in our district...dealing with the increasing population of second language speakers and not being familiar with what to look for in/expect of these students. The majority of the time, I will test them and they come out "low" in both English and Spanish (with scores in English usually being slightly higher for the older children...I think because they had been instructed in all English before bilingual classes were implemented...they are not strong in either language). The flip-flopping of the students from all English to bilingual has been devastating. Now very large numbers of students throughout the district have BICS in English, but have not acquired CALP yet, and have lost their more developed Spanish skills. At least this is my hunch. I realize that many ELL students show the same characteristics as LD students but I am not sure that the educators at the schools know this. Often, I will test the young ones (pre-k, k, 1, 2), and their Spanish shows l/r, l/rr, and r cluster reductions, for example. Well, the English-speaking SLP at that school wouldn't do therapy for that..and it's also a developmental error, right? Not only that, many many students in Kindergarten are being referred in the fall for sp/lang. evals and they haven't even had prior school experience. What do you recommend in the area of colleague education? That is, what can I tell these teams or my colleagues to look for? Many times, I will test, talk briefly to the parents and teachers, but feel that therapy is not warranted. Just because a student is not achieving, I believe that more time should be given, with progress being compared to that individual student, not the rest of the class.
Over the years I've enjoyed observing how different school districts have worked to meet the challenges of testing children who are ELLs. Some of the solutions have been short term and other districts worked out long-term solutions to not only protect children but also professional staff from liability suits. I've seen one district actually develop a needs assessment over a year. This could probably be done post hoc. The bilingual clinicians took count, actually took names of children, schools, and teachers, who referred and then posted whether the child qualified or did not qualify for services. This type of information could be archived on an Excel spreadsheet. This gave the administrators the number of children who did not qualify for services. This number could then be multiplied by the number of professional hours taken to do the evaluation and then multiplied by the cost of completing an evaluation that was not appropriate. Translating the number of inappropriate referrals to cost to the district seems to have an eye opening and listening effect on administrators.
Once this information is compiled, this information is presented to the administration, whether it is the special education director, superintendent, or the school board. I worked in one small district where the superintendent was my direct supervisor. This information becomes the basis for the need to educate the staff so that appropriate referrals are made to special education. This education process could include development of a team to educate staff, which means that a program is developed so that the team is presenting the same information. Education plans could include speaking to principals, teachers at each grade level, and other professional service staff. Plans could be made to develop a website for the district so that teachers could down load information about second language acquisition, or articles that they might read to help them in instruction. I observed one district provide cultural awareness and sensitivity training to all of their psychologists. There are ways to help the over referral situation once the primary intervention is completed or underway. Some school districts have multicultural teams in each school building that reviews all referrals to special services, before the referral goes to the child study team in the building. Their whole purpose is to assure that the child is not failing because of cultural biases or the learning of a second language. I've known several districts that developed teams of bilingual professionals to complete the evaluations. Some districts may divide schools by region and the teams are assigned to a region. Other districts rotate the bilingual clinicians for evaluations, so that they are given a rest every other year. One district I've worked with has a handbook, the steps to referral and specific evaluation procedures. I know of 2 organizations that mentor all new bilingual clinicians in the first year of employment with experienced bilingual clinicians. The purpose is to make sure that the new clinician understands the district policies and procedures for testing bilingual children. This includes bilingual clinicians with their CCC's. When it comes to kindergarten referrals at the beginning of the year, some children do need to be referred, but the majority probably needs more time in the new school environment. Kindergarten can be so frightening to some children. I walked home a few minutes after classes began on the first day of kindergarten. I didn't understand the teacher and none of the children spoke Spanish. I just followed my mother home. This is another reason why I believe that educating teachers should be done by grade level. Most schools have continuing education available for their speech/language pathologists. I've always believed that bilingual clinicians have a great responsibility in educating other clinicians about issues related to assessment and treatment of children who are English language learners. Some clinicians are zealots, and I know a few who love presenting! While others educate in their quiet way and win teachers with their special grace. Educating our colleagues is a responsibility for all of us who work with bilingual children. You just have to figure out what is the best way for your work environment.
