Case Site Interviews

EDICS Tracking and OMB Number: (4831) 1875-New Revised: XX/XX/XXXX

RIN Number: XXXX-XXXX (if applicable)

Appendix C. Interview Information Sheet

The purpose of this study to learn more about the processes and personnel involved with identifying English Learners for special education services, the challenges that schools and districts face in making such identifications, and the strategies that schools and districts use to overcome those challenges. Westat and its partners, Instructional Research Group and Compass Evaluation and Research, are conducting the study for the U.S. Department of Education’s Policy and Program Studies Service. The study team has reviewed recent research on identifying English Learners with special needs and collected documents that describe policies and programs relevant to EL students with disabilities, and is now conducting case study site visits in six school districts and three schools in each district across the U.S.

Our purpose in these case studies is not to evaluate or monitor the practices in a specific district or school. Rather, it is to better understand the current challenges that districts and schools face in identifying ELs with disabilities and the strategies that are being used to overcome those challenges. We hope that what we learn from this exploratory study will help us generate hypotheses regarding assessing and identifying ELs with disabilities and plan a nationally representative study on the topic.

To assist with the study, we are asking educators like you, who are knowledgeable about procedures and practices for identifying ELs with disabilities, to participate in a 90-minute interview. Depending upon your role, we may ask you questions about (1) procedures, practices, and instruments used to assess and identify ELs for special education; (2) personnel involved in identification and assessment; (3) challenges related to the assessment and identification of disabilities among EL students, and strategies that are used to overcome those challenges; (4) patterns of special education identification; and (5) procedures and practices used to exit EL students with disabilities from language instruction educational programs.

Your participation in the interview as well as responding to individual interview questions is voluntary. You may decide not to participate or to end your participation at any time.

We will only use the information you provide for the purpose of this study. We will treat all information that you supply in a confidential manner, to the extent provided by law. We will not use your name and will not attribute any quotes. We also will not share what we discuss with other people outside the study team. We will not disclose the names of the districts or schools visited.

After we return home and have had a chance to review our notes from the interview with you, we may conduct a brief follow-up with you to check our interpretation of aspects of the information you provide. We can do this over email or phone.

If you have any questions or would like more information about this study, please contact ED Project Officer, Jean Yean at (202) 205-6212 or jean.yan@ed.gov or the study Project Director, Tamara Nimkoff at Westat at (919) 474-0719 or tamaranimkoff@westat.com.

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