Bridging Distance for Learners With Special Needs

As summer transitions to fall, millions of students began the new school year the same way they ended the last: physically separated from the teachers and staff who are crucial to their academic success.

For English-language learners and students with physical or learning disabilities, the indefinite shift to distance learning poses even more challenges.

Under federal law, these students are eligible for special education services designed to help them succeed in school. But those services are not always easily transferable to distance learning, or even in-person learning with social distancing.

Some special education students have gone months without occupational, physical, and speech therapy services and other supports. In districts that provided virtual therapy, parents were pressed into duty, forced to try to replicate the therapy that trained specialists would normally provide in school.

Many English-learners don’t have dependable internet and technology at home, surveys show. Their teachers face a digital divide of their own: English-learner specialists undergo fewer hours of professional development with digital learning resources than traditional classroom teachers.

Schools must also acknowledge that some students will need both English-learner and special education support services.

After the rocky rollout in the spring, states such as California and Oregon urged schools to prioritize in-person learning for children with disabilities and those learning English when classes resume. If that return is weeks or months away, here are some steps, developed by English-learner and special education advocacy groups, and state departments of education, school districts can take now to connect with their students doing distance learning:

1. Listen to families

During the school shutdowns, parents were likely to become even more attuned to the needs of their children. As schools work to determine what students need, they should continue to gather feedback from parents.

Children whose parents are involved in supporting their learning do better in school. That support becomes even more important when the schooling is happening away from school.

Do not wait for families to ask for help. Reach out to them. Some families will simply not feel comfortable advocating for their children or pushing back against requirements that will not work for them.

For English-learner families, that often means finding a way to overcome language barriers. Roughly 75 percent of the nation’s roughly 5 million English-learners are native Spanish speakers. That means that more than a million are not.

Find out what those home languages are and connect families with staff or volunteers from community agencies who can help you communicate. That communication is key to student success and access. Some schools are relying on multilingual staff to connect with English-learner and immigrant families.

During the pandemic, Individualized Education Programs, or IEPs, the carefully constructed legal documents that determine what services students with disabilities are entitled to receive, became imprecise guides.

Some families reported severe learning loss and skill regression while schools were closed during spring and summer. Document the observations and concerns of parents and other caregivers. Let those observations guide revisions to their IEPs—and your instruction plans, if possible.

With classes resuming, some special education administrators are fearful that a deluge of lawsuits from frustrated parents and disability rights advocates will overwhelm schools. That could well happen, but experts recommend focusing on what you can do for families, not what you cannot.

Parents will certainly expect more this fall. Make sure you can explain what your district has done to shore things up. Experts recommend being upfront and direct about what parts of an IEP or 504 plan cannot be met during distance learning. That could pave the way for an extension of what some educators called a “grace period”—the implicit understanding that, with their buildings shut down to slow the spread of coronavirus, schools were doing their best to serve students under trying circumstances.

2. Make online learning accessible

Logging onto school-issued devices and district learning platforms was a nightmare for some native English-speaking families in the spring. Imagine how difficult that is for families trying to access tech support in their second or third language.

A nationally representative survey from the polling firm Latino Decisions conducted on behalf of Abriendo Puertas/Opening Doors, a parent-led educational organization, found that 82 percent of Spanish-speaking parents want more technical support with learning websites and apps and 83 percent needed more help navigating distance learning platforms. The Clark County, Nev., schools hosted virtual workshops for parents to help guide them through tutorials on how to use Canvas and Infinite Campus.

But families also may not even have internet access or adequate digital devices to begin with. Another Latino Decisions survey, this one conducted on behalf of Somos, a New York City-based health delivery network, in April, revealed that close to 40 percent of Latino families did not have access to broadband and one-third of Latino families did not have enough computers for their children to use at home during the nationwide school shutdown.

The concerns do not end there, though. A 2019 report from the U.S. Department of Education found that teachers of students learning English were more likely to use general digital education resources, rather than those specifically designed for English-learners.

To overcome those issues and support English-learners during distance learning, WestEd recommends that teachers prioritize live instruction and extra office hours to model language use. In the South Bay Union, Calif., schools, where roughly half of the 7,000 students are English-learners, the district will offer virtual breakout groups for personal instruction for smaller groups of students to encourage more discussion and engagement.

The federal Education Department also devoted pre-COVID 19 research funding to deepen understanding of how students with disabilities learn online.

A 2016 report from the Center on Online Learning and Students with Disabilities determined that most online learning platforms were “poorly aligned” with the needs of students with disabilities, offered little support beyond rote drills and practice exercises, and often failed to accommodate the needs of students who may struggle to focus or multi-task.

With the new school year underway in many schools, students with disabilities will need more and better instruction than they have received in the past—and the challenges and solutions will be different for each student.

In the spring, disability rights and educational advocacy groups launched EducatingAllLearners.org, a resource hub designed to provide insights and tips on improving remote learning for students with disabilities.The National Center for Learning Disabilities and Understood.org, which has published guides about the types of support that students with disabilities may need as school resumes. The organizations belong to the COVID-19 Education Coalition Centering Equity, which produced an equity guide for students with disabilities, English-learners, and other students whose needs may be overlooked or misunderstood as school resumes.

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Downloadable Guide: Key Back-to-School Questions for ELLs and Students With Disabilities

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Understood.org has also written extensively about the supports that students with disabilities may need as the school year gets underway.

Part of the challenge lies in ensuring that students have access to appropriate accommodations and assistive technologies, such as text-to-speech software to help students with cognitive- or speech-related disabilities communicate with their teachers or devices that help magnify screen text for students who have impaired vision.

Students with IEPs or 504 plans may need accommodations such as web captions to follow live instruction or tools that allow them to access transcripts or recordings so they can listen and re-listen to teachers as they talk through assignments and lessons.

While many districts are trying to soften the blow of budget cuts on education for students with disabilities, finding money to pay for the accommodations and assistive technologies could prove challenging. In Georgia, the state department of education used $6 million in funds from the federal coronavirus relief package to help districts cover the costs.

3. Focus on co-teaching

The ever-evolving nature of education for students with disabilities and English-learners means that teachers need to collaborate to best serve their students because students do not learn in bubbles.

More than three-fourths of students with disabilities spent most of their day in traditional classrooms with peers who are not eligible for extra supports. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act mandates that children who receive special education services should, whenever possible, be taught alongside students who are not eligible for special education services.

Students in high schools—especially immigrant students—who are still learning English are often enrolled in separate programs. But programs that segregate English-learners in English-only classrooms have fallen out of favor and practice nationally as research has indicated that other instructional models are more effective.

That means that general classroom teachers must communicate with special education and English-as-a-second-language specialists to review and determine what supports students need, and how and when they receive those extra supports. Without the collaboration and extra aid, the struggles that students and teachers slogged through in the spring could re-emerge this fall.

Schools must also acknowledge that some students will need both English-learner and special education support services. English-learner and special education specialists should also communicate with each other to distinguish between English-learners who struggle with the language and those who have learning disabilities.

When students are not in class full-time, it would behoove schools to think of parents as co-educators, too. Until students return to in-person instruction, they are your eyes and ears.

Children whose parents are involved in supporting their learning do better in schools. Research has borne that out time and again. But parental involvement has taken on a new meaning amid the pandemic.

When possible, provide parents with the tools they need to succeed—resources that can help them guide students through virtual therapy, modified math lessons or reading instruction for children with dyslexia.

When school resumes, schools will face a high-stakes test of their ability to serve some of the nation’s most vulnerable students. And, without access to technology, the proper support services, and cooperation between educators and families, the students most in need of in-person schooling face an uncertain future.

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