We thank the New York City Council’s Subcommittee on Education for holding this oversight hearing on supporting multi-language learners in early childhood programs. INCLUDEnyc is the leading source of training and information for young people ages 0-26 with known or suspected disabilities, their parents, and the professionals who support them. For over 43 years, we have helped New York City families navigate the complex special education and support systems.
Every day, our organization works with families of preschool-aged children with suspected or known disabilities across the City. We see firsthand how hard all families must work to secure the evaluations, placements, therapies, and educational supports their young children need to access education meaningfully. However, many multilingual families face additional barriers at nearly every step of an already complex special education process.
At the heart of the problem is a severe shortage of bilingual evaluators and adequate assessments, special education teachers and programs, and bilingual related-service providers. Young children wait for evaluations, delaying services, supports, and appropriate placements that are often already identified as necessary. And far too often, bilingual services cannot be provided at all.
The shortage of qualified bilingual evaluators creates another serious problem: determining whether a multilingual preschooler has a disability and understanding its nature. Young children must be assessed in ways that distinguish language acquisition from developmental or disability-related needs. Without adequate bilingual and culturally responsive assessments, children can be both over-identified and under-identified for special education. A child may be incorrectly viewed as having a disability when they are demonstrating normal second-language development. Just as troubling, signs of a genuine disability can be dismissed as the result of a “language barrier,” delaying intervention when early support can make an enormous difference.
These shortages have direct consequences for children under five: they widen developmental delays, create severe communication barriers, lead to kindergarten entry with snowballing educational gaps and deficits, and increase the risk of long-term academic underachievement. Equally important is how these experiences shape a family’s mistrust of the system and can perpetuate an immigrant family’s sense of belonging.
Language access also determines whether parents can meaningfully participate in their child’s education. Navigating the legal and procedural intricacies of New York City’s special education system overwhelms many parents. When a family cannot reliably receive information in their primary language, that burden multiplies. Families need timely access to special education notices and informational materials in their home languages. They need high-quality simultaneous interpretation at evaluations and IEP meetings. They need translations of critical documents, so they can understand what they are being asked to consent to and what services their child is entitled to receive. Even routine and automated communications must be accessible in families’ primary languages.
These failures also do not affect all families equally. They compound longstanding racial, socioeconomic, linguistic, and disability inequities and can contribute to segregation within our early childhood and special education systems. Families with greater resources may be able to locate private evaluators, obtain outside services, or hire advocates and attorneys. Families without those resources—and particularly families confronting language barriers—have far fewer options when the public system fails to provide what their child needs.
Multilingual preschoolers with disabilities deserve the same timely, appropriate, and high-quality services as every other child—and their families deserve an equal voice in securing them.
Thank you for taking the time to consider these important matters. We look forward to partnering with you to improve equity and access for all students with disabilities in New York City.
Respectfully submitted,
Lori Podvesker
Director of Disability and Education Policy
INCLUDEnyc