Double Jeopardy: An Analysis of the Reading Data of Eighth-Grade English Language Learners in Special Education

• In Event: Counternarratives: Voices From New Scholars of Color

Abstract

Objectives - There are now more than 400 languages spoken in the U.S. (Spinelli, 2008), and although the English Language Learner (ELL) population is projected to increase, only twenty-seven percent of teachers report that they feel prepared to teach ELLs (Spinelli, 2008). Consequently, the 2010 recommendations by Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) to the U.S. Senate included an expansion of the definition of “highly qualified teacher” for ESL and Bilingual Education in the No Child Left Behind Act (TESOL, 2010); as there is a need to employ instructional practices and assessment measures that appropriately evaluate the needs of these students (Spinelli, 2008). Meeting the instructional needs of ELLs becomes even more complex when ELLs are diagnosed with a learning disability, particularly a disability that relates to literacy and language proficiency.
Learning disabled is the Special Education (SE) category that contains the largest number of Latino children, the largest number of Black children (NCES, 2009), and the largest number of ELLs (Donovan & Cross, 2002 in Wilkinson et al., 2006). Thus, each of these subgroups (i.e. Latino, Black, ELL) are a minority population, representing a majority in a disability category and under researched. In order to investigate the reading achievement of ELLs with LD, this paper will analyze the data of reading scores of 8th grade ELLs who are enrolled in Special Education.
Framework: The tenets of Sociolinguistics and Critical Race Theory will be used to analyze the literature with respect to language and language use in education contexts (Hymes, 2010), and to examine issues of race in educational contexts (Ladson-Billings, 20055).
Methodology/Data The dataset for this study contains scores from students enrolled in a large diverse public school district in the Mid-Atlantic. The district contains over 200,000 children, and there are 9,150 enrolled in eighth grade. For this study, there are four variables under investigation (i.e. Language-ELL or non-ELL, Race-Black,White, Asian, or Latino, Socioeconomic Status-Free and Reduced Meals (FARMS/non-FARMS), and Disability-LD or non-LD). An ANOVA will be used to determine the differences in performance of the reading scores on a statewide assessment of ELL-LD students in these four categories.
Scholarly Significance: The research that exists on the ELL-LD population is largely slanted toward early childhood and elementary age children (Haager, 2007; Liu, Ortiz, Robertson, & Kushner, 2006; August, Carlo, Dressler, & Snow, 2005; Case, & Taylor, 2005), therefore, secondary practitioners need a body of knowledge that examines how the ELL-LD populations perform. This practitioner knowledge could improve instruction and lead to better test scores. States are required by NCLB to reduce gaps. Adequate Yearly Progress is measured both overall and for each disadvantaged group as specified by NCLB (Mosquin & Chromy, 2004), and states are evaluated in their ability to reduce or eliminate gaps. The U.S. Department of Education Office of Civil Rights has recently focused on overrepresentation of ELL’s in SE and this research will inform the community.

Author

• Ebony Demetria Terrell Shockley, University of Maryland - College Park