The Legal Intersectionality of English Language Learners and Special Education Students: Ensuring Students Receive Mandated Services

Students in the United States are afforded many rights and protections to ensure they receive an appropriate education. Supplemental programs that support academic achievement and social growth are common to eviscerate obstacles and equalize educational opportunities. Students who are disabled and students who qualify as English Language Learners are two categories that are entitled to receive state and federal financial and programmatic support. Despite being discrete programs, they have the potential to intersect so that students can qualify for both programs.

For many reasons, though, these potentially dually qualifying students are often misidentified, leaving them underserved. There is a plethora of reasons for this conundrum. Case holdings do little to clear the confusion because courts have limited experience when dealing with the amalgamation of special education and English language learners. Parents are often uneducated regarding these services and, thus struggle to advocate for their.

This article details that bilingual education has been an important concept since the Nation’s founding and that special education is one of the most important and most litigated educational concepts since the 1970s. To ensure that students are provided bilingual and special education services, educators, attorneys, and judges must become more familiar with the complexities of bilingual and special education students.