The Council for Exceptional Children is pleased to partner with the National Center for Culturally Responsive Educational Systems (NCCREST) to periodically include in TEACHING Exceptional Children topical briefs to support your efforts in addressing the learning needs of exceptional students from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

This study examined the impact of linguistic and cultural enhancements to evidence-based mathematics instruction within a multitiered support system for English learners. The study employed a single subject changing criterion design for four fourth-grade students who were English learners with or at risk of a learning disability diagnosis in mathematics. Dual dependent variables were mathematics vocabulary acquisition and application in story problems. Student performance on identifying the correct mathematics vocabulary words when given the definition was measured across baseline and four phases of intervention. Students were also assessed on their ability to complete story problems that contained the target vocabulary. At each phase of the intervention, students showed an increase in performance on both vocabulary words correctly identified and story problems correctly completed. Implications for practice and future directions for research are discussed.

Purpose This study examined the frequency of code-switching by Spanish–English-speaking children as a function of language proficiency in each language and diagnosis (developmental language disorder [DLD] or typical language development [TLD]). Method Sixty-two Spanish–English-speaking children, 5–7 years of age, participated in this study (24 with DLD and 38 with TLD). Language samples were used to determine the level of language proficiency in each language as a continuum of performance. Correlational analyses were conducted to evaluate the relationship between Spanish and English language proficiency and the frequency of code-switching considering the total number of code-switched words, intrasentential code-switching (i.e., number of sentences/C-units with code-switched parts), and intersentential code-switching (i.e., code-switched sentences/C-units). Negative binomial and zero-inflated Poisson regressions were conducted to evaluate whether the frequency of code-switched words, code-switched parts, and code-switched sentences is different across children with DLD and their peers with TLD, controlling for Spanish and English proficiency. Results When Spanish was the target language, lower proficiency in Spanish was associated with higher frequency of code-switches to English for the group with DLD, but not for their peers with TLD who code-switched to English regardless of their Spanish and English proficiency. There were no statistically significant effects of diagnosis on the frequency of code-switches. Conclusion Results indicate that code-switching occurs similarly across children with DLD and their peers with TLD; therefore, the frequency and type of code-switches should not be used as an indicator of DLD.

Parent or guardian perceptions play a specialized role in the evaluation of school teachers. Parents are important stakeholders in teacher success, they are in some instances partners in the teachers' work, parents have unique personal information about student learning, and they can report on the teacher duties to inform parents about the classroom and child progress. This study analyzed the responses of parents to 12 survey items concerning teacher performance in 201 classrooms. The surveys were used as part of an innovative teacher evaluation program in which teachers elected to include parent feedback as one objective data source for annual review. In this study three factors emerged as important concerns for parents: humane treatment of students, support for pupil learning, and effective communication and collaboration with parents. Recommendations for use of specific survey items can be based on the empirical results of this sampling. The data gathered by parent surveys define one dimension of quality which may vary in importance from one teacher to another.Keywords parent surveys . parent evaluation . client surveys Educators describe four ways in which teachers' work with parents and guardians of their students can be related to teacher evaluation. One teacher duty is to inform parents about the education and progress of their individual children (Dwyer, 1995;Scriven, 1988). Second, teachers are partners and collaborators with parents in pupil

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