Multidisciplinary teams often provide home language support and delay referral to rule out lack of opportunity to learn before evaluating ML children¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · qualitative r? · q2
Currency · newest study 2023 · not yet checked against its sources · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q2 i? Some teams wait until ML children have had more home language support before proceeding to a special education referral, using the response to help distinguish language need from disability. → Burr 2023

Evidence¶

Burr 2023¶

Burr, E., Burho, J., & Perez, A. (2023). Pre-Referral Processes in California State Preschool Programs: How Practitioners Decide to Refer Multilingual Children for Special Education Evaluation. WestEd. https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED655866

q2 · i? · qualitative · r?

Interview study of CSPP coordinators. One coordinator described asking whether "the support in the home language helps with that process" and, if not, looking "more at the disability side of it."

"Some interviewees explained that multidisciplinary teams often wait until ML children have had more support with home language development before proceeding to make a referral for special education evaluation."

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Bilingual staff help differentiate typical language development from disability, but interviewees described no systematic process for doing so — related
• CSPP pre-referral decisions draw on baseline data from the ASQ, ASQ:SE-2, and the DRDP administered twice per year — related
• CSPP pre-referral processes mirror the K-12 MTSS approach and apply fundamentally the same steps to ML and non-ML children — related
• Systems constraints on pre-referral include lack of appropriate observation tools, over-identification fears, and COVID-19 effects — related
• Learning behaviors of typical multilingual development can resemble those of disability, complicating accurate identification — related
• Multidisciplinary team collaboration is the most prominent theme in research on supports for multilingual learners with suspected disabilities — a broader claim this one bears on
• Edtech designers rarely make explicit design for multilingual learners central, favoring general universal design — related
• Subgroup analyses indicate school staff identification and referral services and informal networks both contribute to learning-mode differences in children’s SSI applications — related