This interview is episode 9 from Season 9 of Highest Aspirations, a podcast from Ellevation where we engage in important conversations about the most rapidly growing student demographic in the United States - English Language Learners.

What impacts have we seen on recent policy changes to reclassification or exiting of ELs with disabilities? How can schools prioritize collaboration and improve their current processes for determining reclassification for SPED ELs? What strategies can we use to ensure that these students are integrated into general education classrooms without compromising on learning in a supportive, language rich environment?

We discuss these questions and much more with Dr. Sara Kangas, who returns to HA after joining us back in 2018 to discuss how schools are accommodating English Learners with disabilities and the impacts that EL and disability status have on reclassification or exiting.

We sat down to catch up with Dr. Kangas and learn about the latest challenges facing students and how schools can employ a collaborative approach in addressing inequities. Dr. Sara Kangas is an associate professor in the College of Education at Lehigh University.  She is an applied linguist whose research focuses on the school-age population of multilingual learners (MLs) with disabilities.  Using ethnography and interpretive policy analysis, Dr. Kangas investigates opportunity to learn for MLs with disabilities, with particular attention to the ways in which education policies, school structures, and ideologies affect their everyday learning experiences.  Grounded in interpretivist and critical frameworks, her research seeks to promote social justice through advocating and expanding the learning opportunities and educational rights of MLs with disabilities.

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Dr. Kangas has published in top-tier journals such as the American Educational Research Journal, Teaching and Teacher Education, and TESOL Quarterly, among others.  Her scholarship has received the James E. Alatis Prize (2018), TESOL Award for Distinguished Research (2015), and the Wilga Rivers Memorial Graduate Student Award (2015).  Dr. Kangas earned her Ph.D. in Education with a concentration in applied linguistics at Temple University.

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