Special Education Considerations for Multilingual Learners

Multilingual learners in Grades K–12 are often overidentified or underidentified for special education. The third edition of this groundbreaking text offers a better way to meet the needs of multilingual learners: by creating a culturally and linguistically responsive multi-tiered system of support (MTSS) and implementing a continuum of services that meets the needs of the whole child.

Shifting away from traditional ways that schools address the needs of students who experience challenges, the new edition of this text takes a strengths-based approach to supporting multilingual students and focuses on the complex issues that affect a multilingual learner's development. Chapters have been fully updated to reflect the latest best practices and reorganized to better align with MTSS. Educators and other school-based professionals will be fully prepared to:

• Form collaborative MTSS teams that blend the diverse expertise of staff members
• Evaluate and enhance the learning environment for multilingual learners
• Gather extensive data about six critical factors in students’ home and school life, from previous schooling experiences to cross-cultural factors
• Authentically assess the strengths of multilingual learners
• Create a continuum of services that addresses the individual needs of each student
• Plan effective instruction and intervention using a multilingual lens
• Monitor the effectiveness of support strategies and programming for multilingual learners

PRACTICAL FEATURES:

• MTSS team activities to support professional learning
• Templates, a rating scale, and other reproducible tools
• Real-world examples from the field
• Discussion questions to help teams apply the concepts to their own student population