Effective Assessment And Instruction For ESL Students In Special Education
13 Pages 3368 Words
h analysis on the proper assessment of bilingual students in special education classes. He asserts the over-representation of minority students in classes for the mentally retarded has been attributed to the indiscriminate use of psychological testing (especially IQ tests) combined with the linguistic and cultural orientation of school programs (Cummins 1). Although this research paper only focused on students with mild disabilities, Jim Cummins observation on IQ test applied to students with disabilities ranging from mild to moderate - severely handicapped. Cummins believes psychological testing is unfair because most schools reflect the middle-class, monolingual, monocultural, values of the majority society, students’ academic potential or “IQ” is assessed in relation to these norms (1-2). Furthermore, the major scope of this book is to understand why and how the abuses of the past, as it pertains to proper assessment and placement of ELL in special education, became so readily institutionalized in many countries, and why they persist today. One of the major concerns for this research paper is to distinguish how can we determine if an ELL has a “learning disability” or is merely experiencing a temporary language barrier. Cummins does an excellent job in examining what is a learning disability, and how long does it take for an ELL to acquire English proficiency, the nature of English proficiency, and its relationship to academic skills (3).
• Willings, Ann C, Greenberg, Hinda F. Bilingualism and Learning Disabilities: Policy and Practice for Teachers and Administrators: The content of this book is very detail, and extremely helpful for this paper, because it only focused on Hispanic students; which is the target ELL students group for this research paper. Moreover, the first chapter gives an overview of Jim Cummins analogy for psychology testing and assessment of minority students. Hence, validating the credibility of ...