Teaching English Language Students

As the number of English Language Learner (ELL) students continues to grow, many schools are not prepared to face the challenges that ELL students will encounter. Schools struggle to provide ELL students with the appropriate type of assistance that is needed for the students. Research shows that when schools are not prepared to solve problems with ELL students, the schools will classify the student as special needs or as a special education student (Anderson, Minnema, 2005). ELL students are labeled as special need or special education because of the lack of test fairness. The test unfairness is caused by the assessments and evaluation tools that are used to determine whether students meet the qualifications for special education, because they …show more content…
According to Garcia and Ortiz (2004), not all ELL students that are referred to special education qualify to be in the special education setting, because they were placed in the setting before all the programs had been correctly modified to meet the students’ needs. Often ELL students are labeled as having a learning disability; when students who are learning a new language and ELLs with a learning disability who are learning a new language both do poorly on certain academic assignments with high language demands, it is easy to misclassify the ELLs with having a disability (Abedi, 2006). Research by Lesaux (2006) shows those students who are classified with a learning disability often do not have a disability, but are misclassified due to struggling academically. Although some ELL students are misclassified, there are still students who have a learning disability, but are never diagnosed; students often miss out from services that they need because educators believe that the student is facing difficulties due to the fact that the student is learning a new language (Limbos, Geva, …show more content…
According to Artiles and Klinger (2006), the education field is still struggling to provide the correct type of instructions for ELL students in special education who are facing difficulties with a learning disability. Research shows that, “even experienced teachers often lack the necessary knowledge needed to best serve this unique population of students” (Huang, Clarke, Milczarski, Raby, 2011). According to the findings, teachers face difficulties knowing the difference between ELL students with a disability, and ELL students who are facing difficulties learning a new