Language Proficiency Tests Misleading

[Harold Schiffman]

 Forwarded From: Felecia Briscoe <felecia.briscoe at utsa.edu>




How Language Proficiency Tests Mislead Us About Ability: Implications for
English Language Learner Placement in Special Education

by Jeff MacSwan & Kellie Rolstad ó 2006

The authors argue that English language learner (ELL) language assessment
policy and poor language tests partly account for ELLsí disproportionate
representation in special education. Previous research indicates that many
states routinely assess ELLsí first language (L1) at initial enrollment and
that ELLs identified as limited in both languages have relatively high rates
of identification in special education. Two common tests, the Language
Assessment ScalesñOral (LASñO) EspaÒol and the Idea Proficiency Test IñOral
(IPT) Spanish, are shown to identify 74% and 90%, respectively,
Spanish-background ELLs (N = 145) as limited L1 students, whereas a natural
language measure found only 2% of participants to have unexpectedly high
morphological error rates. Correlations are provided. The authors recommend
changes in language testing policies and practices for ELLs.

English language learners (ELLs) are overrepresented in special education
programs, a problem that has persisted since its earliest documentation in
the 1960s (Artiles & Trent, 1994; Artiles, Trent & Palmer, 2004). In a study
of within-group diversity of disproportionate representation of ELL students
in special education, Artiles, Rueda, Salazar, and Higareda (2005) found
that ELLs identified by districts as having limited proficiency in both
their native language (L1) and English (L2) showed the highest rates of
identification in the special education categories investigated, were
consistently overrepresented in learning disabilities and language and
speech disabilities classes, and had greater chances of being placed in
special education programs as compared with the other district-defined
subgroups of ELLs examined in the study. The present study looks
specifically at select instruments used to assess ELLs¹ oral L1 ability and
raises questions about their validity. In this context, we discuss ELL
placement in special education, suggesting that the confluence of policies
and practices encouraging L1 oral language testing‹used with language
minority students but not with others‹and poorly designed language tests
disproportionately increases the chances that ELL children will be referred
for special education assessment (and, ultimately, placement) because of
poor performance on L1 tests.

We begin with an overview of current language testing policy for ELLs and
then locate the intellectual origins of aspects of this policy in the
history of deficit psychology. We then present results from a validity study
of native language tests designed for ELLs in which coded speech samples of
Spanish-speaking children are compared with Spanish-language test results,
and we show that the language test results are dramatically misleading with
respect to the actual Spanish-language ability of ELLs, as grounded in a
theoretically defensible view of native language proficiency, discussed
below.1 We suggest that placement in special education is likely to be
shaped by the significant limitations that we identify in these language
assessment tests, and we offer recommendations for improvements.

ELLS AND LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT POLICY

An important responsibility of schools in the United States is to determine
whether a child knows English sufficiently well to succeed in an all-English
instructional setting. In Lau v. Nichols (1974), the U.S. Supreme Court
interpreted Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to prohibit discrimination
against language-minority children by ignoring their special
language-related needs. Thus, schools must determine, for every child
enrolling in school, whether the child is an English learner. For students
identified as ELLs, states must offer theoretically defensible programs
aimed at teaching English and provide a comprehensible school curriculum
comparable with that provided for English-speaking students (Crawford,
2004).

An evaluation of children¹s English ability is appropriate‹indeed,
imperative‹in light of these considerations. However, many states also
require or recommend assessment of children¹s native language ability, with
the result that numerous children are identified as ³non-nons²‹that is,
nonspeakers of both English and their home language. In a survey of state
practices and policies, Mahoney and MacSwan (2005) found that 13 states
require or recommend that ELL students undergo an oral native language
assessment in addition to an English assessment as part of the ELL
identification process. These requirements/recommendations affect about a
quarter of the nation¹s 4,416,580 ELL students, who in turn make up 9.33% of
the nation¹s total reported population of 47,356,089 students (Kindler,
2002). Relevant state-level student frequencies and percentages are shown in
Table 1. Assessments of this nature may also be carried out elsewhere at the
initiative of districts and schools in the absence of explicit state policy,
which has been in flux in recent years under the influence of the No Child
Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001. Table 2 presents the most commonly used
tests of native language proficiency, as reported by state survey
participants (Mahoney & MacSwan).


click to enlarge

Explicit rationales for administering native language assessments to ELL
students are hard to find. Although it is difficult to know the origin of
the practice, the belief that minorities may have ³limited language ability²
and that this limited ability is related to difficulties at school has a
long history in educational psychology and contemporary bilingual education
theory. Below, we explore conceptions of language ability in minority
children and argue that it is conceptually indistinguishable from classical
prescriptivism, the view that some language varieties are inherently
inferior to others.


click to enlarge

CONCEPTIONS OF LANGUAGE ABILITY AMONG MINORITY CHILDREN AND CLASSICAL
PRESCRIPTIVISM

Dittmar (1976) traced the origin of what he termed ³the Deficit Hypothesis²
to Schatzmann and Strauss (1955), who had interviewed members of the lower
class and middle class about their impressions and experiences after the
occurrence of a disaster. They found that the former used lots of emotional
language, which reputedly gave rise to what the authors called ³elliptical
syntax.² Schatzmann and Strauss concluded that the lower classes only
conveyed their meaning ³implicitly,² while the educated classes conveyed
their meaning ³explicitly.²

Bereiter and colleagues (Bereiter & Engelmann, 1966; Bereiter, Engel-man,
Osborn & Reidford, 1966) similarly sought to explain lower educational
achievement of African-American preschoolers by pointing to inherent
linguistic deficiencies. These researchers reported that the four-year-olds
they studied communicated by gestures, ³single words,² and ³a series of
badly connected words or phrases² (Bereiter, Engelman, Osborn & Reidford,
1966, p. 114). The authors reported that, ³without exaggerating,² the
children in the study could ³make no statements of any kind,² and could not
ask questions (p. 114). As one component of the assessment, children were
asked to look at a picture of a squirrel in a tree and answer the question,
³Where is the squirrel?² In response, children tended to answer, ³In the
tree,² a response which Bereiter and colleagues characterized as illogical
and badly formed; rather, an answer expressed as a complete sentence was
required, such as ³The squirrel is in the tree² (Bereiter, Engelman, Osborn
& Reidford, 1966, p. 121).

As Dittmar (1976) noted, deficit theories of language ability typically
define the characteristics of ³better speech² in terms of those
characteristics that poor people lack. In other words, rather than looking
to a theory of language structure and acquisition to define what is
linguistically well formed or developmentally appropriate, dichotomies are
generated that position the language of the educated classes as the
developmental goal or an improved version of the language of the unschooled.

In the context of distinguishing a disability from a difference, Artiles and
Trent (1994) noted that

the notion of disability is concerned with atypical functioning or
educational performance due to biological, psychological, and/or social
factors. The level of functioning for individuals with disabilities falls in
the lower portion of the normal distribution curve. The notion of disability
exists because we have established parameters to judge when a person
functions anatomically, physiologically, intellectually, and/or
psychosocially within the limits of what is considered typical. On the other
hand, cultural diversity is not defined‹at least theoretically‹by a standard
parameter of functioning. Although it is also concerned with the idea of
difference, it is not‹unlike the disability construct‹ inherently linked to
the notion of deviance. (p. 424)

Humans learn because they are innately (biologically, anatomically) endowed
with the capacity to do so. Their biological makeup interacts with a
specific environment that is socially and culturally situated. With regard
to language acquisition, we expect children to acquire the language of the
specific speech community in which they grow up, along with whatever
features of the language that might be stigmatized in the dominant social
group. If a child successfully acquires the language of her speech
community, we view the learner as functioning normally from a linguistic
point of view. If not, there may be reason to suspect that the child has a
language-related learning disability. However, whether the child¹s language
is in any way similar to that of another speech community‹for instance, the
community of speakers who constitute the educated classes‹is entirely
irrelevant to the question of whether the child speaks her language fluently
or proficiently.

Valencia (1997) defined a deficit model as a theory that posits ³that the
student who fails in school does so because of internal deficits or
deficiencies² manifested ³in limited intellectual abilities, linguistic
shortcomings, lack of motivation to learn and immoral behavior² (p. 2). The
transmitters of these deficits, according to Valencia, have typically been
located in genetics, culture, class, and familial socialization. A
linguistic deficit theory, more narrowly, attempts to legitimate the social
stratification of linguistic differences by positing the existence of
properties of the language system that in some way represent the socially
stigmatized variety as inherently inferior to other varieties. Dichotomies
such as explicit/implicit, formal/informal, and restricted/elaborated are
used to label these differences, with no explicit linguistic arguments
presented to justify the claim that the varieties are in some way
hierarchically related. Or, as in the case of Bereiter¹s test, the
linguistic behavior of a member of the educated classes who is knowingly
performing an academic task is arbitrarily used as the standard of
linguistic correctness, again offered without justification (Labov, 1970).

It is to be noted that verbal deficit theory is conceptually closely related
to classical prescriptivism, the view that one or another language or
variety of language has an inherently higher value than others (Crystal,
1986; Pinker, 1994; Postal, 1972). Prescriptivists have often characterized
minority languages or language varieties as ³inexpressive,² ³primitive,² or
lacking complexity in comparison with their own language. The ³standards²
regarding English usage, which are familiar in U.S. language arts curricula
and found in influential prescriptive grammars, typically draw upon
Latin-ate analyses advanced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and
used to validate varieties of speech associated with the educated classes in
England and the United States (Baugh & Cable, 1978). Linguists, by contrast,
took on the project of describing a wide range of linguistic diversity using
the same taxonomy for all languages; this project, spurred by leading
figures of American structuralism like Leonard Bloomfield, led to the
conclusion that all languages, even the so-called primitive languages, were
equally complex. This research agenda seriously threatened traditional
distinctions used to legitimize the concentration of privilege and social
prestige in the hands of the educated classes. Newmeyer (1986) adds,

As long as American structuralists confined their campaign to the languages
of remote tribes, they did little to upset their colleagues in departments
of modern and classical languages‹in which almost all linguists were
situated in the interwar years. But such was certainly not the case when
they began crusading for the linguistic equality of all dialects of English
and other literary languages, no matter how ³substandard² they were
regarded. This egalitarian view came in direct conflict with the long-seated
tradition in the humanities that values a language variety in direct
proportion to its literary output. (p. 42)

Verbal deficit theories are also deeply embedded in contemporary research on
the education of ELLs, typified by Cummins¹ threshold hypothesis and
well-known distinction between basic interpersonal communication skills
(BICS) and cognitive-academic language proficiency (CALP). Cummins (1979)
argued that ³semilingualism²‹later termed ³limited bilingualism² (Cummins,
1981)‹could be used to explain bilingual students¹ difficulties at school as
part of the threshold hypothesis. Cummins defined semilingualism as ³low
level in both languages,² or ³less than native-like command of the
vocabulary and syntactic structures² of both languages (1979, pp. 230, 238).
Although the threshold hypothesis is widely accepted, no empirical evidence
has been presented to support the ³semilingualism² thesis embedded within
it. Paulston (1983), for instance, reviewed numerous Scandinavian studies
that sought linguistic evidence for the existence of semilingualism in
Sweden. She concluded that ³there is no empirical evidence to support the
existence of such a language development hiatus as [semilingualism]² (p.
42). More recently, MacSwan (2000) reviewed reputed evidence from studies of
language variation, linguistic structure, school achievement, and language
loss, and concluded that all of it was either spurious or irrelevant to the
construct.

Cummins has expressed a preference for the term academic language over CALP,
and interpersonal communication skills over BICS in recent discussions of
the BICS/CALP distinction, but the basic definition of the dichotomy remains
unchanged (Cummins, 2000). According to Cummins (2000), ³Considerably less
knowledge of language itself is usually required to function appropriately
in interpersonal communicative situations than is required in academic
situations² (p. 35), whereas academic language generally involves ³much more
low frequency vocabulary, complex grammatical structures, and greater
demands on memory, analysis, and other cognitive processes² (p. 36). A
problem here, as with semilingualism and other varieties of the verbal
deficit theory, lies in equating the language of school‹and hence the
language of the educated classes‹with language that is inherently more
complex and richer, and that places greater demands on cognitive resources.
It follows from these assertions that the language of school is in some
regard an improved version of the language of other contexts, a claim that
is not adequately supported by the empirical and theoretical arguments
presented.

Indeed, to demonstrate these claims, proponents must present some reasonable
evidence that academic language actually has the properties that they
attribute to it. The matter is especially compelling given the similarities
with traditional prescriptivism. The attribution of special ³complex
grammatical structures² and greater cognitive demands to the language of the
educated classes would appear to have disturbing implications for the
language of the unschooled or of children of lower socioeconomic status, and
hence for their cultural and linguistic identities (see MacSwan & Rolstad,
2003, for further discussion.)

Moving beyond the taxonomic analyses of the early structuralists, linguists
began to study the nature of the mind/brain and its relation to acquisition.
This research tradition, now well established, attributes our knowledge of
language and our ability to acquire it to innately given properties of our
biology, with peripheral effects of the environment visible in the form of
surface-level cross-linguistic differences. As Chomsky (1965) noted,

A consideration of the character of the grammar that is acquired, the
degenerate quality and narrowly limited extent of the available data, the
striking uniformity of the resulting grammars, and their independence of
intelligence, motivation and emotional state, over wide ranges of variation,
leave little hope that much of the structure of language can be learned by
an organism initially uninformed as to its general character. (p. 58)

Chomsky¹s statement paints a picture of children as inwardly driven language
learners who acquire their language perfectly and without instruction.

Indeed, during the most active acquisition period (ages 2-6), children learn
approximately 10-12 new words a day, often on one exposure and in highly
ambiguous contexts (Gleitman & Landau, 1994). Children know things about
elementary aspects of sentence structure for which they have no evidence at
all (Pinker, 1994), and in cases of creolization, children acquire
syntactically and morphologically complex linguistic systems in accordance
with principles of Universal Grammar in the presence of highly degenerate,
rudimentary adult language input (pidgins) (Bickerton, 1981). In an
extensive review of research on child language in the preschool years,
Tager-Flusberg (1997) reported that ³by the time children begin school, they
have acquired most of the morphological and syntactic rules of their
language² (p. 188) and possess a grammar essentially indistinguishable from
adults.

Given these facts, it is surprising to find that numerous ELLs in the United
States are classified as ³non-nons,² children with limited ability in both
languages, while majority language children do not tend to be so classified,
and indeed are not even tested. The practice of testing the native language
ability of ELL students appears to have arisen from the expectation that
such children may have inherent linguistic deficiencies, an expectation that
is likely rooted in persisting deficit models in educational psychology and
language minority education. If the tests used to so classify children are
likewise found to be rooted in erroneous conceptions of language ability, we
may conjecture that the overrepresentation of ELLs in language and speech
disabilities classes observed by Artiles and colleagues (2005) is likely to
be an artifact of poorly designed tests routinely administered as the result
of ill-conceived language testing policy. In the next section, we explore
this possibility empirically.

RESEARCH QUESTION, METHODS, AND DATA ANALYSIS

RESEARCH QUESTION

We are concerned with the following research question: Are common native
language tests, used to identify many ELL children as having limited ability
in the language of their own speech community, accurate measures of these
children¹s true language abilities? As examples of common native language
tests, we focus here on the two most frequently reported (Mahoney &
Mac-Swan, 2005; see Table 2): the Language Assessment Scales-Oral-Español
(LAS-O Español; De Avila & Duncan, 1994)2 and the Idea Proficiency Test
Spanish I-Oral (IPT Spanish; Williams, Ballard, Tighe, Dalton, & Amori,
1998). In referring to the ³true language abilities² of these students, we
intend to denote children¹s language abilities as understood descriptively,
taking the standard of correctness to be the language of the actual
communities in which children acquired their native language rather than any
other language community or context.

STUDY PARTICIPANTS AND CONTEXTS

Participants were selected on the basis of three criteria: native language
background (Spanish), age (6-8), and English proficiency (nonproficient or
limited proficiency, as determined by the English LAS, the test adopted by
the school districts). Students included in the sample were predominantly
the children of Mexican nationals, enrolled in grades 1-3, of lower
socio-economic status, and represented a distribution of both male and
female students. All students meeting the selection criteria at each school
were invited to participate in the study, and all who responded
affirmatively to the invitation were included in the sample (estimated to be
about 80% of those invited). None of the students included in the study had
been identified as special education students.

Participants were situated at two urban public schools in central Arizona
within separate districts with predominantly low-income and racially diverse
student bodies. Six native-Spanish-speaking graduate and undergraduate
research assistants (five of Mexican and one of Panamanian background)
administered the language tests and interviewed the students for the purpose
of obtaining the language samples. All interviews were conducted in Spanish
on-site at the two schools. Research assistants were trained to administer
the language assessments by a certified bilingual school psychologist who
was also a graduate student researcher associated with the full range of
project responsibilities.

Because of scheduling difficulties and sample attrition, we were not able to
collect all data points on all study participants. For instance, although
180 students participated in some way in the study, language samples were
collected on 145 of these, the LAS-O Español was administered to 161
students, and the IPT Spanish to 174. Other tests were also administered,
but only the results from the two most common tests are presented here.

INSTRUMENTS

Language Assessment Scales-Oral Español (LAS-O Español)

As its name suggests, the LAS-O Español is an oral test of Spanish and is
individually administered. Two forms are available, 1B (grades 1-6) and 2B
(grades 7-12). The short form of Form 1B, used in the study, consists of
three parts. Part 1 is intended to assess children¹s vocabulary and is made
up of 20 items; the examiner asks the child to identify words for places and
actions illustrated on picture cards. Part 2 assesses listening; the
examiner plays a tape recording illustrated with a picture and asks the
child to answer 10 comprehension questions. In part 3 of the test, the child
is asked to listen to a tape-recorded story, again illustrated with
pictures; the child retells the story, which the examiner transcribes. Part
3 is scored holistically on the basis of a rubric moving from 0 (no response
or ³I don¹t know²) to 5 (³articulate and elaborated² speech; De Avila &
Duncan, 1989, p. 17).

The test developers refer to the theory of language proficiency underlying
the test construct as the probabilistic approach; the approach assumes a
linear relationship between linguistic proficiency and academic achievement,
and defines the passing score as the point at which children¹s language
proficiency intersects with the 50th percentile on a test of academic
achievement. The developers do not address the linguistic characteristics of
the test and how the items relate to a specific theory of linguistic
knowledge, except to say that the test items were selected ³according to
linguistic theory and prior experience [to tap] different elements of oral
processing thought to be important in school² (De Avila & Duncan, 1989, p.
3). For Form 1B, the developers reported an alpha coefficient of 0.9572 for
part 1 (Vocabulario), 0.886 for part 2 (Vamos a Escuchar), and interrated
reliability of 0.877 and 0.837 (depending on the prompt used) for part 3
(Cuentos). The test is intended to be used for the purposes of
identification, placement and reclassification of ELL students. Student
scores are classified as nonproficient Spanish speaker, limited Spanish
speaker, or proficient Spanish speaker.

The Idea Proficiency Test I‹Oral, Grades K-6‹Spanish, 2nd Edition (IPT
Spanish)

The IPT Spanish consists of six parts, called levels A-F. Each level is
designed to test a variety of skill areas and is intended to reflect an
increasing level of difficulty as students progress from one level to the
next. At the end of each level, a score box indicates whether a student¹s
score within a level warrants that the student stop the test at the given
level or advance to the next. In discussing theoretical considerations
related to language proficiency, the test developers indicate that ³theories
of language acquisition and language learning have been taken into
consideration in the construction of the IPT I-Oral Spanish² (Amori &
Dalton, 1996, p. 3). Each test item is explicitly associated with a specific
skill area (vocabulary, comprehension, syntax, and verbal expression), BICS
or CALP, a placement on Bloom¹s Taxonomy, and a hypothesized stage of
language acquisition. The test developers reported an alpha coefficient of
0.99. A table defines a student¹s level score as non-Spanish speaking,
limited Spanish speaking, or fluent Spanish speaking, factoring in grade
level.

In the present study, both the LAS-O Español and the IPT Spanish were scored
by native-Spanish speaking research assistants, except in the case of the
more subjective story retelling task of the LAS-O Español; to protect
against researcher bias, this section was scored externally by a
professional consulting firm recommended by the test publisher.

Natural Language Samples

Linguists concerned with the study of child language acquisition and
language disabilities collect natural language samples as standard practice.
A large corpus of such samples, along with tools for analysis, is maintained
by Brian MacWhinney as part of the CHILDES (Child Language Data Exchange
System) Project.3 Using common methods in the study of language acquisition,
the children involved in the present study were asked to interact with a
native speaker of Spanish and to tell a story about a boy and a frog from a
Mercer Mayer picture book with no text (Mayer, 1969). Spanish speech samples
of each child telling the whole story depicted in the picture book were
individually videotaped, transcribed word for word, and coded using
MacWhinney¹s (2000) standard CHAT (Codes for the Human Analysis of
Transcripts) format, as modified by Curtiss, MacSwan, Schaeffer, Kural, and
Sano (2004a) and adapted to Spanish by Valadez, MacSwan, and Martinez
(2002). The accuracy of transcription and coding was double-checked by a
second transcriber/coder; all interviewers and coders were native speakers
of Spanish. All but one transcriber was a native speaker, and the one
nonnative was highly proficient and always second-checked by a native
speaker. Differences of opinion regarding transcription or coding required
consultation and resolution among members of the research team. Our coding
system emphasized grammatical morphology for a variety of reasons. Research
on child language development, largely due to the influence of Brown (1973),
has focused on the development of grammatical morphemes as an index of a
child¹s linguistic maturity. More recently, however, linguistic theory has
become increasingly focused on the role of grammatical morphemes and
functional categories in syntax. In this perspective, the mapping of
linguistic structure is assumed to consist of two components: (1) a lexicon,
which varies across languages and, to a lesser extent, across individuals,
and (2) a mental system of computational rules and principles, taken to be
invariant across human languages. Differences between, say, Spanish and
English, or between any two languages, relate to difference in the lexicon,
mapped by the computational system into various surface forms. These
linguistic differences are generally taken to be confined to the functional
categories of the lexicon, which bear inflectional morphemes (sometimes
abstract). This theoretical framework, adopted here, represents the current
instantiation of generative grammar as developed within contemporary
linguistic theory (Chomsky, 1995, 2004).

On this perspective, knowledge of language is understood to be a purely
linguistic construct, reflecting a grammatical system which consists of the
rules and principles that govern syntax (word order), morphology (principles
of word formation), and phonology (pronunciation), and that interface with
principles of discourse, pragmatics, and semantic interpretation. Speakers
and communities differ with regard to the particular form that these
principles might take, resulting in the formation of distinctive varieties
and conventions on language use; but each community nonetheless has a
language just as rich and complex as the next (Crystal, 1986; Milroy &
Milroy, 1999; Newmeyer, 1986). Because language is an inherent human
ability, it becomes extremely important to distinguish it from other domains
of knowledge, such as academic knowledge acquired in the specific cultural
setting of school. School, like any environment, will have effects on
children¹s language, but the specific ways in which school alters our
language do not amount to qualitative differences from a linguistic point of
view.

For purposes of illustration, we present the following example of a coded
utterance, with translation provided in brackets:

*MAR: El niño se esta durmiendo, y la rana se escapo.

[The boy is going to sleep, and the frog escaped]

%mor: DART | el D|niño REF|se IAUX | esta-3Ss dormir-ido

CONJ | y DART | la D | rana REF | se IT | escapar-r3spret

%lex: N | niño N | dormir N | rana V | escapar

Errors of selection (for instance, where la is used when el is required for
the morphological category DART) are prefixed with 5 (equal sign); errors of
omission (where a category such as DART or IAUX is missing altogether) are
suffixed with 5 0. The coding system was developed around three functional
systems known as the I-system (inflectional), the D-system (determiner) and
the C-system (complementizer). Each code on the morphological tier (%mor:)
is separated by a vertical line (|) from the morpheme that it classifies.
Inflectional morphemes are separated from stems with a hyphen (-). The
system permits the calculation of morphological error rate from the total
number of functional categories and total number of errors in such
categories, per transcript. A full implementation of the syntactic coding
system of Curtiss and colleagues (2004b) was not needed given the specific
aims of the study; instead, each utterance that evidenced an anomaly in word
order was flagged as an error on the syntactic tier of the coded transcript.
The syntactic error rate was calculated from the total number of utterances
and total number of utterances flagged as syntactically ill formed in each
transcript. A detailed description of the coding system and the significance
of other codes illustrated above may be reviewed in Curtiss and colleagues
(2004a, 2004b).

It is important to note that a form was considered an error only if its
presence or absence did not conform to the language of the child¹s speech
community. For example, in an expression such as el rana, the article would
be marked as a selection error; if missing altogether but contextually
required, it would be marked as an error of omission. However, regional
variation such as pa¹ tras (para atras, ³over there²) and onde (donde,
³where²), among others, were not marked as errors for children whose speech
communities used such forms. Determinations regarding acceptable regional
variation were made in consultation with adult members of relevant speech
communities and with reference to published documentation regarding
linguistic variation in Spanish, principally Lipski (1994).

As described by Curtiss and colleagues (2004a), the validity of this coding
system is tied to an external criterion‹namely, linguistic theory‹developed
out of a rich history of empirical inquiry. Reliability, a necessary
condition of validity (American Psychological Association and National
Council on Measurement in Education, 1985), indicates the degree to which
repeated coding events of the same transcript will yield similar measures.
For each utterance and structure in a given transcript, coders must render a
judgment regarding the grammaticality of the expression. If different coding
events for the same transcript involve different grammaticality judgments on
the part of coders, then scores will differ with respect to the measure of
error in the respective structure or category under analysis. To guard
against this threat to validity, we invoked Labov¹s (1975, p. 31) consensus
principle (³If there is no reason to think otherwise, assume that the
judgments of any native speaker are characteristic of all speakers of the
language²) and clear case principle (³Disputed judgments should be shown to
include at least one consistent pattern in the speech community or be
abandoned. If differing judgments are said to represent different dialects,
enough investigation of each dialect should be carried out to show that each
judgment is a clear case in that dialect²).

FINDINGS

Table 3 presents frequencies of students¹ Spanish language proficiency
levels by test. Frequencies are presented for all students in the study for
whom LAS-O Español or IPT Spanish scores were available and for the subset
of participants for whom we were also able to collect natural language
samples. Note that the distributions are similar for both groups, with 74%
(N 5 119) of all students testing below the expected ³fluent² threshold, and
73% (N 5 95) of students with language samples available testing below the
fluent threshold on the LAS-O Español. With regard to the IPT Spanish, we
see remarkably few students scoring in the fluent range, at only 10% (N 5
17) for all students and only 9% (N 5 13) for students for whom a natural
language sample was available. In both instances, approximately 90% of
students fall below the fluent threshold. These data are presented to
demonstrate that large numbers of ELLs are identified as less than fluent in
their native language by both tests. The subgroup of students for whom
language samples were also available is presented to show that the
distribution of scores for the whole group and the subgroup is similar for
each test, increasing our confidence that the subgroup is representative of
all the students in the study with language test scores.

Now consider Table 4, which presents frequencies of morphological and
syntactic error rates for study participants by specified ranges and by
test, and Table 5, which presents these frequencies for all students in the
study for whom a natural language sample was available. Here one sees a
dramatically different picture of the language ability of the children
tested. For example, whereas the LAS-O Español identified nearly three
quarters of this group as limited in their L1, the analysis of the natural
language sample shows the proportion of error to be highly constrained
within a very narrow range, falling at 5% or less for the vast majority of
students, and at 10% or less for 97% of students for morphology, and 100% of
students for syntax.

Figure 1 graphically illustrates differences in the distribution of
proficiency ratings based on the LAS-O Español, the IPT Spanish, and the
natural language sample. For purposes of Figure 1, we will regard children
with relatively low and expected morphological error rates (below or near
10%) as proficient speakers of Spanish, and those with somewhat higher
morphological error rates as ³limited² on the natural language sample (we
discuss the meaning of ³limited² in this context below).

Our research question asks whether common tests used to identify ELLs as
having limited ability in their native language measure the true language
ability of these students. To address this question, we calculated
correlation coefficients among the LAS-O Español, the IPT Spanish, and
morphological error rate, displayed in Table 6. Error rate is inverted in
the table so that higher values will indicate stronger performance, making
them parallel to the proficiency levels of the LAS Español and the IPT
Spanish. Although some of the correlations are statistically significant,
the relationships among the measures were all found to be very weak.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

Let us now return to the research question we posed at the outset: Are
common native language tests, used to identify many ELL children as having
limited ability in the language of their own speech community, accurate
measures of these children¹s true language abilities?


click to enlarge


click to enlarge

We presented data showing that children in our sample were classified as
fluent, limited, and nonspeakers of Spanish, the language of their own
speech communities, on both the LAS-O Español and the IPT Spanish, two of
the most widely adopted native language proficiency tests (Mahoney &
MacSwan, 2005). Although the LAS-O Español classified approximately three
quarters of children as less-than-fluent speakers of their L1 (that is,
limited or nonspeakers), the IPT Spanish so classified approximately 90% of
the children we tested (see Table 3). These results are extraordinary in
light of research conducted over the last half century on language
acquisition, which has shown all normal children to achieve linguistically
and to do so effortlessly and in the absence of instruction (Pinker, 1994).
The divergence of these test results with research findings raises doubts
regarding the construct validity of the test instruments, leading us to
question the tests¹ theoretical foundations.


click to enlarge


click to enlarge

Indeed, neither test is constructed with an appropriate and theoretically
defensible conception of language proficiency. The probabilistic approach,
offered as the theory of language proficiency underlying the LAS-O Español,
is introduced by the test developers with no prior status among linguists or
other language researchers (De Avila & Duncan, 1989). The approach ³assumes
a linear relationship between linguistic proficiency and academic
achievement² (p. 7). In other words, language proficiency is understood to
be higher among speakers with higher academic achievement and lower among
speakers with lower academic achievement, precisely the assertion of the
prescriptivists who defined ³better speech² in terms of those
characteristics that the unschooled lacked. The prescriptivist underpinnings
of the LAS-O Español are well represented in the test itself‹as one sees in
the scoring rubric for the story-retelling task‹assigned 50% weight on the
basis of its ³theoretical and empirical importance² (De Avila & Duncan,
1996, p. 23). Here, a child¹s response is assigned a higher score because it
increasingly approximates that of ³a proficient speaker of standard
[emphasis added] Spanish² (De Avila & Duncan, 1996, p. 5). The authors
present no actual analysis of language proficiency as a mental or social
construct, and no attempt is made to relate the test or its underlying
theory to linguistics, language acquisition, or other language-related
research. (For a critical discussion of the Pre-LAS Español, a related
instrument, see MacSwan, Rolstad, & Glass, 2002.)

Although the developers of the IPT Spanish make reference to published
research on language acquisition, the literature is not properly
represented, and theoretically divergent notions are combined in a
surprising and unorthodox fashion. For instance, after describing classical
³stages² of language acquisition associated with infants and toddlers, the
IPT Spanish developers incorrectly indicate that these stages of acquisition
continue into the elementary school years. The developers then discuss
³constructs of language proficiency that exist in less visible form,² such
as CALP and Bloom¹s Taxonomy, and coin the term higher order language
skills, which they define as ³syntax, semantics, pragmatics² (Amori &
Dalton, 1996, p. 3)‹ aspects of language that Cummins (1981) would be more
likely to include in his ³species minimum,² or BICS. The authors do not
offer an operational definition of these ³less visible² forms of language
proficiency; however, both CALP and Bloom¹s Taxonomy are usually defined to
reflect language used in academic contexts so that the language of the
educated classes is again privileged as developmentally superior. Indeed,
just like Bereiter and colleagues, who required so-called proficient
speakers to answer in complete sentences, the IPT Spanish requires children
to provide answers complete with subject and predicate on several items‹even
in Spanish, a language that does not require overt subjects (see MacSwan,
2005, for further discussion).

Because we wished to compare the results of the LAS-O Español and IPT
Spanish with a better measure of children¹s language ability, we
additionally presented an analysis of coded language samples. The coding
system attended to very narrow and specific details of children¹s
grammatical knowledge and focused on functional categories associated with
overt morphology. The focus on children¹s knowledge of morphology was
justified in terms of current theories of the architecture of the human
language faculty (Chomsky, 1995) and a long research tradition in child
language acquisition and language disorders. The analysis of the natural
language samples is tied to a rich theoretical and empirical tradition and
involves highly detailed morpheme-by-morpheme analysis of a child¹s
language. It involves a relatively natural use of language and respects
children¹s home linguistic communities as the proper models of linguistic
correctness.

A crucial component of our argument relies on the notion that the natural
language sample is a much better indication of a child¹s true language
ability than is either the LAS Español or the IPT Spanish. We believe that
the theoretical foundation of the natural language sample and its close ties
to a rich empirical tradition in research on child language acquisition and
disabilities contrast strongly with the thin and, in important respects,
entirely absent theoretical foundations of the LAS Español or the IPT
Spanish. Based on these considerations, we believe the natural language
sample to be far superior a measure to either test.

Results of the analysis of these coded data, presented in Tables 3-5, showed
about 93% of all participants to have a morphological error rate of 5% or
less, and 97% of the study participants to have an error rate of 10% or
less. Linguists and child language acquisition researchers assume that
normal mature speakers will evidence some degree of error due to such
factors as slips of the tongue and fatigue. Errors of this nature are termed
³performance error,² believed to result from the failure of the linguistic
performance system to execute grammatical instructions due to the
interference of nonlinguistic factors. These are errors of the sort each of
us makes every day, errors that we often recognize ourselves as inconsistent
with our knowledge of language immediately after producing them. Researchers
generally estimate the range of normal error rate in typically developing
mature speakers to be about 10% or less (Brown, 1973; Goodluck, 1991;
Reilly, Marchman, & Bates, 1998), while the morphological error rate among
language-impaired children tends to be considerably higher (Bedore &
Leonard, 2005; Curtiss & Schaeffer, 1997, 2004; Leonard, 1997). Hence, we
conclude that all but 4 of the 145 study participants were well within the
range of fluent Spanish speaker, as determined by the natural language
sample. (We will return to the 4 children with higher error rates directly.)

The proportion of children identified as fluent speakers of Spanish on the
natural language measure differs considerably from what we have seen for the
LAS-O Español or IPT Spanish, leading us to the conclusion that the latter
instruments generate a plethora of false negatives. The correlation
coefficients displayed in Table 6 evidence very weak relationships between
morphological error rate and both the LAS-O Español and IPT Spanish.
Furthermore, the LAS-O Español and IPT Spanish are shown to have a very low
correlation, an indication that the two instruments lack concurrent validity
even when compared with each other (Campbell, 1960).

The evidence considered here supports the conclusion that results of common
native language tests such as the LAS-O Español and the IPT Spanish do not
correctly identify the true native language abilities of ELLs. Although the
natural language sample demonstrates the overwhelming majoring of children
in the study to be well within the range of expected error rates, both the
LAS-O Español and the IPT Spanish identified a majority of children as
limited or nonspeakers of their native language.

Four of the cases in Table 5 show somewhat high morphological error rate. We
suggested in our earlier discussion that normally developing linguistic
minority children acquire the language of their speech community
effortlessly and without instruction, just as majority language children do.

However, like majority language children, authentic cases of
language-related disabilities surely exist among ELLs as well. Indeed,
Leonard (1997) suggested that as many as 5% of children have a form of
specific language impairment (SLI). If we suspect that these 4 children may
have a language-related disability, then the proportion of children in our
sample falls within the expected range of language disabilities in any
population of children, majority or minority.

Indeed, the children in our sample whose error rate is somewhat high,
especially the 2 children with error rates at 17%, may have such a
disability. These children made frequent errors in gender agreement (la
perro, ³the dog²; la niño, ³the child²; el rana, ³the frog²) and verb tense
selection, and left out articles in obligatory contexts. If these children
are language impaired, we would expect similar errors in their English.
Another possibility, of course, is that the Spanish-background children with
unexpectedly high error rates may be heritage speakers of Spanish who have
only partially acquired Spanish but have genuine native language ability in
English.

Further study would be needed to appropriately identify the specific
language learning situation of the 4 children whose morphological error
rates were unusually high; however, the data presented here are consistent
with the view that developing children typically acquire the language of
their speech community, and there is no reason to expect such children to
arrive at school with limited ability in their native language any more than
one would expect majority language children to do so.

We noted at the outset that Artiles and colleagues (2005) had reported that
ELLs identified by districts‹presumably using tests like the LAS-O Español
and IPT Spanish‹as having limited ability in both their L1 and L2 showed the
highest rates of identification in special education categories. In light of
this finding and the conclusions reached above regarding the validity of
select Spanish-language tests, we offer a theory that points to
institutional mechanisms to shed light on aspects of the problem of
overrepresentation of ELLs, at least with respect to this specific subgroup
of students. Spanish-background ELLs are more likely than any other student
to undergo native language assessment because numerous states encourage
districts to perform native language assessments, and tests of Spanish are
readily available commercially. Because teachers might reasonably refer
students identified as having low ability in both languages for special
education testing, where some test or another is likely to qualify a
referred student, we can expect Spanish-background ELL students to be
overrepresented in special education categories. Because the
Spanish-language test results are dramatically inaccurate, misidentifying a
majority of ELLs as limited in their L1, these children are very likely to
be inappropriately placed in special education programs in large numbers.

When the National Research Council panel convened to study the problem of
overrepresentation, it asked whether overrepresentation of special education
placements among ELLs and other minority students was due to ³biological and
social/contextual contributors to early development,² whether ³the school
experience itself² might somehow be responsible, or perhaps a combination of
both (Donovan & Cross, 2002, pp. 357-359). In the case of many ELLs, it
appears that the school experience itself may be responsible, but perhaps
not so much at the classroom level as at the level of state and district
language testing policy. Overrepresentation appears to result in important
respects from institutional factors that cannot reasonably be construed as
limitations or language-related disabilities inherent in the children
themselves.

We suggest here, as elsewhere (MacSwan & Rolstad, 2003; MacSwan et al.,
2002), that the practice of routinely assessing the oral native language
ability of minority students be abandoned. However, ELLs, like all students,
should be referred for appropriate assessments when a genuine learning
disability is suspected. If a language disability is suspected, the
diagnosis must be carried out in an ELL¹s native language to avoid erroneous
diagnosis of second-language speech as a disability (Paradis, 2005).
Moreover, we stress an important distinction between assessing a language
and assessing in a language. To determine a student¹s ability on
nonlinguistic constructs and literacy, assessments of various kinds can and
should be given in the language that the student is most comfortable using.
Assessment for special education eligibility in particular should be carried
out in an ELL¹s home language.

Although natural-language sampling of the type used in our study is a useful
method for assessing language ability, the level of analysis used by Curtiss
and colleagues (2005a, 2005b) and adapted here may be excessive and too
time-consuming in many instances. Restrepo (1998) has stressed the
usefulness of language sampling and of parent interviews as methods of
appropriately and correctly identifying language impairments among bilingual
children. Along with Restrepo, we urge practitioners to engage in careful
analysis of actual speech samples, either immediately in an interview format
or recorded for careful study, rather than relying on commercially available
language tests. Such analyses must be carried out by linguistically trained
and experienced practitioners with knowledge of the language under analysis.

For researchers, the challenge appears to be developing a conception of
language proficiency that respects the rich resources of diverse
communities. Repudiating prescriptivist dogma, which continues to thrive in
the form of many language tests and theories of language proficiency, is a
matter of first-order importance. Over 30 years ago, Labov (1970) issued a
stark rebuke to Bereiter and his colleagues, which regrettably seems as
appropriate today as it was then: ³That educational psychology should be
strongly influenced by a theory so false to the facts of language is
unfortunate; but that children should be the victims of this ignorance is
intolerable² (p. 260). Let us hope that reforms in language-testing policies
and improvements in assessment quality will be made to improve conditions
for both ELLs and children with disabilities in the very near future.

The authors gratefully acknowledge research support from the Spencer
Foundation. We also wish to thank the three anonymous reviewers and the
editors of this special issue for providing us with careful and extensive
comments and suggestions for revision. As always, we are indebted to our
colleagues and students at Arizona State University for critical discussion
of ideas presented here. In the end, of course, we alone are responsible for
the content of the article.

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Cite This Article as: Teachers College Record Volume 108 Number 11, 2006, p.
2304-2328
http://www.tcrecord.org ID Number: 12806, Date Accessed: 11/4/2008 10:42:08
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