The Referral That Shouldn't Come First
You teach fourth grade in a school where 38 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Marisol enrolled three weeks into the year; her cumulative file shows she has attended four schools in two years and that her family follows agricultural work. She is quiet, completes roughly half of her independent work, and scores below benchmark on the fall reading screener. Two notes sent home have gone unanswered and the phone number on file is disconnected. At a grade-level team meeting a colleague says, "Just refer her - she's clearly behind." During a unit on family traditions, Marisol stops participating when classmates share photographs of grandparents and holiday celebrations.
1. A colleague recommends immediately referring Marisol for a special education evaluation. How should you respond, and what should happen before any referral?
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I would push back on the timing without refusing to act. Low achievement alone is not evidence of a disability, and the team is obligated to rule out exclusionary factors first.
- Language: A home language survey should be on file. If a language other than English is spoken at home, she needs English language proficiency screening before reading scores can be interpreted as a skill deficit.
- Opportunity to learn: Four schools in two years means gaps in curriculum, not necessarily gaps in ability. I need to know what she actually received.
- Instructional match: Has she had differentiated instruction and a period of progress monitoring with my current teaching, or has she simply not had time?
- Records: Request records from prior schools, check attendance, and ask the nurse about vision and hearing.
The colleague's instinct to act is right; the sequence is wrong. If, after targeted intervention and progress monitoring, she still shows minimal growth relative to similar peers, a referral is appropriate - and I should also remember that a parent or teacher referral cannot be indefinitely stalled. The point is to base the decision on data, not on a three-week impression.
2. How would you establish contact with Marisol's family, given the disconnected phone and unanswered notes?
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Every method I have tried so far assumes a household with a working phone and an adult home during the day, which is a poor fit for a family doing agricultural work.
- Use the district's resources: Ask the bilingual family liaison or social worker to attempt contact, and check whether the family qualifies for the Title I Migrant Education Program, which can connect home and school.
- Update contact information through the office, and ask whether there is a second adult or emergency contact who can reach the family.
- Vary the channel: text or messaging app, email, a note with a stamped envelope, contact at pick-up, or a home visit arranged with the liaison.
- Vary the content: the first message should not be about problems. It should say what Marisol does well and ask the family what would make communication easier for them.
The goal is a working two-way channel before there is a problem to discuss, and I should avoid framing the family's nonresponse as disinterest.
3. How would you adjust the family traditions unit?
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The unit's design is producing the disengagement, not Marisol's background. Photographs and holiday memories assume a stable home, stored keepsakes, and a particular family structure.
- Decouple the task from objects. Offer multiple ways to represent a tradition: drawing, oral storytelling, a written description, interviewing a relative by phone, or describing a food or song.
- Avoid required home artifacts. Anything sent home for a grade punishes students whose families cannot supply it.
- Broaden the frame. Include traditions of work, migration, neighborhood, and language, not only holidays and grandparents.
- Set norms before sharing. Discuss privacy and the choice to pass, and let students decide what is public to the class.
I would also preview the lesson with Marisol and give her a low-stakes entry point. The larger principle: a family engagement activity should never require students to expose a vulnerability in order to earn credit.