Two methods of identifying language disordered children were examined in a study involving 54 regular kindergarten through fifth-grade teachers in two Albuquerque schools serving 1,212 children (assigned on a roughly matched basis to one of two groups). (Author/PHR)

This commentary on the mismeasurement of language and reading comprehension abilities argues that quantitative measures of complex behaviors and subsequent ranking of individual performance often do not accurately reflect the abstract constructs they purport to measure, and inappropriate quantification and ranking create and perpetuate potentially…