A Referral for Special Education Before the Team Has Met
Ms. Bhatt teaches second grade in a building where 38% of students are English learners. Alejandro arrived from Guatemala 14 months ago. On the most recent WIDA ACCESS he scored Level 2 (Emerging) in all four domains. He tells long, detailed stories in Spanish at recess, and his mother reports that he was reading in Spanish in first grade. In English, his oral reading fluency is 22 words correct per minute on a grade-level winter passage (benchmark 52); he produces 18 letter sounds per minute; and he computes two-digit addition with regrouping at 85% accuracy, above the class median. He has received Tier 2 intervention - 20 minutes, four days a week, small-group repeated reading - for 10 weeks and has gained 3 words per minute. The Child Study Team meets next week, and the referring teacher has already completed the special education referral form and asked Ms. Bhatt to sign it. District policy calls for 12 weeks of documented intervention before a referral. Ms. Bhatt has 30 minutes of push-in EL support twice weekly.
1. Should Ms. Bhatt sign the referral as written? Analyze the evidence and identify what is still missing.
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The evidence does not yet support signing as written, but it also does not justify closing the question. The pattern is largely consistent with second-language acquisition: 14 months of English exposure, strong Spanish oral narrative, reported Spanish literacy, grade-level math computation, and low English letter-sound and fluency scores. A disability is not the simplest explanation for a profile in which performance is strong in the first language and in a non-verbal domain.
But one number is genuinely concerning: only 3 words per minute of growth across 10 weeks of Tier 2 is slow, and it raises a fidelity question - was the intervention delivered four days a week, and was it targeted at his instructional level?
What is missing: Spanish-language reading data, classroom observation notes across settings, work samples, attendance and health records, and a parent interview about schooling history. Also missing is a team decision - the form was completed before the meeting, which inverts the process. The response is to ask the team to review the full body of evidence, request bilingual assessment data, and document intervention fidelity. If the team refers, the evaluation must use non-discriminatory measures in both languages so language difference is actually ruled out rather than assumed.
2. What data should be gathered over the next six weeks, and what would legitimately trigger a referral?
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Collect in three strands. First, progress monitoring twice weekly on English oral reading fluency plus a Spanish fluency measure administered by a bilingual staff member, so growth can be compared across languages. Second, classroom evidence: writing and math work samples, observation notes contrasting literacy block with math block, and a tally of his participation in oral discussion, where he is reportedly strong. Third, background evidence: attendance, vision and hearing screening, health history, and a structured parent interview covering schooling continuity, first-language literacy, and homework behavior at home. Add a fidelity check on the Tier 2 group - minutes delivered, group size, materials matched to his decoding level.
A referral is warranted if, after documented and faithfully delivered intervention, he shows flat growth in both languages, or a within-child discrepancy that language exposure cannot explain - for example, strong English oral comprehension with persistent inability to map sounds to print after explicit instruction, or a pattern that also appears in Spanish. A specific target helps: for instance, fewer than 1.5 words per week of gain across six weeks in both languages despite changed intervention. Slow growth alone in English, with strong Spanish literacy emerging, argues for continuing and strengthening intervention rather than referring.
3. What should change in core instruction and Tier 2 while the team gathers data?
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Waiting is not a plan. Core instruction should add supports that accelerate English literacy without pre-judging disability: pre-teach six to eight content words per week with pictures and gestures; use paired repeated reading with a fluent partner and a familiar text before an unfamiliar one; build sentence frames for oral and written responses so his strong storytelling can transfer into English; and check comprehension in Spanish where staffing allows, so a language barrier is not mistaken for a comprehension deficit. Small-group guided reading should use decodable text at his instructional level rather than grade-level passages that guarantee frustration.
Tier 2 should be adjusted, not merely continued: verify that the repeated-reading group is aimed at his decoding level, add explicit letter-sound and blending work to address the 18 sounds per minute, and monitor twice weekly with a graph both teachers can see. Ms. Bhatt's twice-weekly push-in time is best used for pre-teaching vocabulary and co-teaching the guided reading group, not for pull-out remediation that duplicates Tier 2.