Target Audience: School Psychologists

The English Learner student group is the fastest growing student group in the U.S., and Kentucky school districts are quickly diversifying.  This workshop will address challenging cases in which English Learners are struggling academically and/or behaviorally and there is concern that they may have a disability.  Our focus will be on data gathering in the initial stages of these cases and will progress to evaluation and eligibility considerations, if there is a suspected disability. The learning goals for our time together will include:

1. Outlining key elements of learning English as an additional language;
2. Identifying fundamentally important aspects of instruction that will support and develop the academic and  language skills of English Learners (i.e., what does an “opportunity to learn” look like for English Learners?);
3. Identifying the specific challenges of using norm-referenced, standardized tests for decision making;
4. Specifying key academic, social, cultural and linguistic areas in which to collect information and data;
5. Developing some understanding of outcomes of interventions, data collection, etc.