Examining School-Based English Learner Program Participation and Literacy Performance of English Learners With Autism

The study used data from the Florida Progress Monitoring and Reporting Network (PMRN), an archive of student progress monitoring and standardized achievement measures, to examine literacy abilities of autistic English learners (ELs). Research questions examined the progression of autistic ELs through English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) and the reading comprehension and reading fluency abilities of autistic ELs and autistic non-ELs as students progressed from Grades 3 to 7. Analyses included data from over 2,848,986 students from 2009 to 2013. Results found that autistic ELs may have progressed through ESOL faster than their typically developing counterparts and that the difference in scores on reading comprehension and fluency assessments between autistic ELs and autistic non-ELs was significantly less than the difference in scores on these assessments between typically developing ELs and non-ELs. The discussion includes practical implications based on these findings as well as areas of necessary future research to support autistic ELs.