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Abstract
This study examined the operationalization of one of the key reforms initiated by the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975 (U.S. Congress, 1975) and continued through the 2004 reauthorization of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (U.S. Congress, 2004)-namely, nondiscriminatory assessment. The original and current specifications in federal law require that tests be selected and administered so as not to be racially, culturally, or sexually discriminatory. The specific dimensions studied here pertain to the nondiscriminatory diagnosis of learning disabilities (LD) in English learners. A checklist of legal and professional guidelines for making assessments of English learners was used to evaluate 19 psychological reports made on English learners as part of the assessment process for special education eligibility in a small, urban elementary school district in California. The results of this study present a fairly compelling profile of how the writers of psychological reports-school psychologists-do not use extant legal or professional guidelines for making nondiscriminatory assessments of bilingual children.
In the 1960s, the federal courts examined the testing of minority children for special education placement. At the heart of many of these court cases (which were directly responsible for the federal mandate to ensure nondiscriminatory assessment) were two questions: Do cultural differences make tests biased (Larry P. v. Riles, 1972; P.A.S.E. v. Hannon, 1980) or do linguistic differences make the tests biased (Diana v. California Board of Education, 1970; Jose P. v. Ambach, 1979)?
These two questions have a long history of professional discourse and debate in the area of IQ testing, dating back to the 1920s. As the early researchers in the area of measuring human intelligence acknowledged, the assumptions underpinning intelligence tests are very robust with respect to equality of prior experiences between normlng samples and individual test takers (Colvin, 1921; Woodrow, 1921). Regrettably, of course, the entire research program known as "race psychology" (e.g., Garth, 1923) ignored these assumptions and proceeded to document IQ differences across every conceivable cultural and linguistic division in the United States and abroad. Some early researchers, however, did recognize the unique challenges posed by non-English speakers (Manuel, 1935). The most common solutions for assessments of non-English speakers was to test them with nonverbal tests, with translations of tests, with interpreters, or with tests normed...