Assessment Practices used with Bilingual and/or LEP Students

• Under federal law, all children have the right to tests which are free of cultural bias

• It is highly inappropriate to evaluate students in English when that is not their dominant language (unless the purpose of testing is to assess the student’s English language proficiency)

• Translating tests from English is not an acceptable practice

• IDEA states that tests and other evaluation materials must be provided and administered in the child's primary language or mode of communication unless it is clearly not feasible to do so [34 CFR Section 300.532 (a)(1)]

• Assessment devices and procedures must be nondiscriminatory. Potential for bias can be minimized if assessment

• tools are carefully evaluated and selected. If test items demand an experiential background inconsistent with that of the student, the student will probably perform poorly

• Standardized tests in any language remain biased in favor of persons for whom that language is native. Therefore, low test scores attained by limited English proficient individuals often are interpreted as evidence of deficits or even disorders

• Translated tests are always different tests, unknown and unfair. While it is not difficult to translate a test, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to translate psychometric properties from one language to another. A word in

• English is simply not the same word in terms of difficulty in another language.

• Trained and untrained interpreters are widely used in assessment. This practice remains risky. Although a number of commercial models exist for training and using interpreters, there is no empirical validation of their suggested procedures

Multifaceted Assessment

• Performance-based assessment in the classroom

• Compare child's performance to that of her ESOL students who have similar formal education and backgrounds and opportunities to hear and use English

• Two purposes of assessment of students who speak languages other than English

• Determination of the student’s language proficiency

• Explore the need for educational intervention

• Use of dynamic assessment whereby information is obtained through interviews, observations, and other methods not simply based on objective criteria based on national norms

• Alterations may need to be made to the standardized procedures used to administer tests for bilingual students. These can include paraphrasing instructions, providing a demonstration of how test tasks are to be performed, reading test items to the student rather than having him/her read them, allowing the student to respond verbally rather than in writing, or allowing the student to use a dictionary

• All alterations made to the testing procedures should be fully detailed. It is important to recognize that standardization has been broken, limiting the usefulness and applicability of test norms

• Nonverbal tests are the most common procedure used in testing limited English speakers

Culturally and linguistically diverse students are likely to be overidentified, underidentified and misidentified as having disabilities (Gonzalez, et al. 1997)

 

Deborah Crockett is currently serving as the Multicultural Committee Chair to help address issues surrounding valid and effective remediations, assessments, interventions and services of students with diverse cultural and ethnic backgrounds.