Q1: As a bilingual special educator, you have particular knowledge regarding the importance of differentiation for English Language Learners in your classroom. Describe why assessment is particularly important for this growing population of children and as well as some of the challenges in assessing these children?

<Mary Clare Freeman>

A lot of formal assessments I have used in the past and presently exist in SpEd are skewed and non-representative of ELLs (and many of our other minority SpEd students, at that). I do not rely heavily upon them, because I find them biased – so I tend to use more diverse reading, writing and math assessments, and norm them based on what age/grade they are working from. The negative side of this is that they are not normed traditionally against ELL, but their English-speaking peers – which presents a data problem because it is unfair to norm ELL students against native English speakers. But, it allows me the flexibility to understand what students know/learn and how they learn, as well as to monitor their individual progress. I personally focus a great deal on vocabulary development to boost comprehension, and I have found that progress monitoring/assessments have been useful to individualize lessons for students so their specific needs are met. Naturally, my greatest concern is the duality of vocabulary for ELLs – functional and academic – and what type will be more utilitarian and allow the individual to be successful. Generally speaking with SpED ELLs, both sets of vocabulary are under-developed, and can set a student up for failure inside and outside of the classroom if not appropriately addressed. Assessments, again, allow me to narrow which skillset are lacking, and individualize lessons for that child.