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While supporting English language learners can be a time-consuming and complex task for educators, the long-term benefits are abundantly clear.
However, when it comes to how schools are currently identifying reading disabilities among English learners, these practices can vary wildly, and don’t always effective.
Confounding this issue is the fact that students who are learning English at school tend to be diagnosed with learning disabilities two to three years later than their native English-speaking peers. What’s more, they’re underrepresented in special education before the third grade.
An article published on Harvard University’s Usable Knowledge website looked at how researchers from the Harvard Brain Experience Education Lab (BEE) have been trying to bridge the gap in understanding how best to identify and serve English learners with reading disabilities.
Led by Gigi Luk, the researchers are figuring out how English learners typically learn to read English, using neuroimaging, or brain scans, so they can better understand whether research on learning disabilities in monolingual students applies to English learners as well.
Luk’s team joined up with researchers at the MGH Institute of Health Professions to identify current practices and determine what additional knowledge educators need to fully serve their students.
What works…for now
The researchers pointed out that once it is understood how educators are identifying reading disabilities among English learners, they can better understand the challenges educators face, and help craft solutions.
Below, they share some of the best practices educators can use in the meantime to identify reading disabilities in English learners.
- If the child is able to read in a language besides English, assess language and literacy in the non-English language (if possible).
- Use informal and dynamic assessments (for example, test, teach, re-test) that allow English learners to demonstrate what they know and how they learn.
- Use multiple measures that cover oral and written language competencies. These can include measures of vocabulary, listening comprehension, phonological processing, rapid naming, phonics, timed and untimed word reading, verbal reasoning, and non-verbal reasoning – all of which can shed light on the source of the difficulty.
- Consult the manuals of all standardized tests administered in your school to investigate how English learners are represented in the norming sample, as well as whether there are specifications for how to modify the test for English learners.
The original version of this article, which appeared in Harvard University’s Usable Knowledge, has been edited for length.