Artifact: How to Create an IEP
Reflection & Discussion of Issues of Assessment
The reading and discussion for Julie Esparza Brown’s article on issues of assessment with emergent bilingual students made me more aware of issues that should have been obvious as an ENL teacher but that can get take a back seat to the manifold demands and sources of pressure that teacher have. The article made me very aware of not just formal assessment issues as they affect ELLs, such as special education testing and referral, language proficiency and accountability but also how the more informal issues of assessment that we often take for granted, such as a student communicating a “bad day” or being sick, or having problems integrating into the class. All of these compound the problems of assessment that ELLs are confronted by.
Nonetheless, the article did make me more aware of the problems of referral when it comes to students who are underperforming. In some cases, issues of assessment are very grey and students suffer from this. I had one student who was below-proficient in oral expression but whose testing results were close to non-existent when it came to writing in formal academic English. Whether he suffered from the routine occurrence of ELLs gaining higher proficiency in speaking and listening more rapidly than in writing or reading comprehension or not, or whether he had problems with organization, it was very hard to say. Fearing misdiagnosis because of language issues, it was only after numerous tests that I felt comfortable agreeing with the Special Education teacher that the student’s needs were not due to language proficiency. This student was in 7th grade and it is a testament to the challenge of this confluence of issues that he was diagnosed at such a late age. I believe these issues must be exacerbated in districts with smaller percentages of ELLs and for specialties such as speech language pathology that are in high-need of bilingual professionals.
Sometimes special needs issues compound language issues so that where one might have gone unnoticed or not needed intervention before, together it amounts to a clear and significant need for additional services. Using multiple sources of information, and multiple professionals, preferably bilingual professionals, is an urgent need for this community.
