| Students with learning difficulties are hindered in their pursuit of education. Students whose first language is not English are also at risk. When these two hindrances are combined, students may be denied the benefits of education. Although special education interventions can be effective, there is evidence that effectiveness is less for bilingual students. Most research on bilingualism in the U.S. has been conducted on Spanish-English. One group of bilinguals that has received very little attention is Yiddish-English students. Yiddish speakers differ significantly from most other bilingual groups. Yiddish is very different from most European languages, and Yiddish carries with it an often insular culture and a separate educational system. This study drew on a centralized data base of the New York City Department of Education to assess differences among English-speaking monolingual and Spanish- and Yiddish-speaking bilingual students between 3rd and 8th grade who had received special services. Improvement over 1 year and 3 years was assessed by comparing annual test scores or estimates in verbal (reading) and math abilities. The full data base included 226,274 students (67.0% male, 33.0% female). For those beginning special services in each grade, there were approximately 6,000-10,000 English speakers, 100-800 Spanish speakers, and 6-32 Yiddish-speakers per grade. Other variables of interest were special programs, disabilities, services administered, and gender. It was expected that Yiddish-speaking students would improve more after receiving services than others, based on differences in early education and community cultural expectations. On the contrary, it appeared that when interventions were received in the earlier grades, English-speakers improved more than the other groups. However, this difference disappeared around Grade 5, and following this, English-speakers failed to improve much, while the two bilingual groups continued to improve, although at a lesser rate. There were few differences in this pattern due to other variables, and most of those were consistent with the emerging model of an early advantage for English-speakers because of greater effectiveness of interventions in a familiar language, followed by later decline in effectiveness due to stigmatization of students needing special services. Interestingly, gender did not affect improvement at all. |
