Teachers represent the largest school impact on student learning, yet the national professional teacher workforce has been described as inadequately prepared to meet the academic, linguistic, social, and other educational needs of the majority of the nation's public school student population. Moreover, youngsters from diverse linguistic, cultural,…

Identifying which K-12 English Learners (ELs) should receive special education services has historically been challenging and fraught with error. Educators are commonly puzzled as to whether an EL student's academic difficulties are the result of insufficient academic English language, inappropriate instruction, or an intrinsic learning…

In this paper, we review various challenges in regard to educating children with and without disabilities from culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) backgrounds. The challenges discussed include (1) biased assessment that results in mis- or overrepresenting CLD students in special education, (2) difficulty distinguishing between disability…