Students with and without learning disabilities often struggle to learn a foreign language (FL). Teachers could benefit from a measure designed to screen and identify students at risk for FL learning difficulties. In this study, we examined the reliability and validity of scores from four curriculum-based measures (CBM) as potential indicators of…

Whenever a major intelligence or achievement test is revised, there is always renewed interest in the underlying structure of the test as well as a renewed interest in the scoring, administration, and interpretation changes. In this interview, Amy Gabel discusses the most recent revision of the "Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth…

Current assessment practices in the United States are not able to accurately capture the total linguistic, cognitive, and achievement abilities of bilingual learners. There are psychometric complexities involved when assessing and interpreting test results of bilingual students, which impact the validity of this practice. Further, the compromise…

A language-based test battery was used to identify characteristics of 101 learning disabled adolescents. Factor analysis revealed four major components (oral language; silent language; short-term memory processing; perceptual-motor) and suggests a distinct set of factors representative of juvenile offenders alone; or factors representative of…

The Test of Adolescent Language (TOAL) was administered to 7 educable retarded, 23 learning disabled, and 24 possibly gifted adolescents. With 57 percent of the EMR and 27 percent of the LD scoring below the test floor, results suggested that TOAL is not valid for assessing low language levels. (Author/DB)

Study evaluated sensitivity of two independent rapid naming tests--Naming Pictured Objects and Producing Names on Confrontation--in differentiating 16 children (7 and 8 years old) with language and learning disabilities from 16 age peers with normal language development and academic achievement. The interrelationship between total naming time and…

The purpose of the study was to determine whether, by item analyses, a miniscreening test could be derived from the 23-item Screening Test of Adolescent Language (STAL). The miniscreening test is recommended for large scale screening with students from the 6th through 12th grades. (Author)

Comparison of language test performance of 26 learning disabled and 26 non-learning disabled Black elementary-aged children is discussed in terms of (1) relative performance of the two groups, (2) the most useful assessment measures for this population, and (3) effects of socioeconomic factors on language test performance. (Author/DB)

The validity of the Test of Language Development (TOLD) was investigated with normal reading, reading disabled, and language delayed children (ages seven to nine years). (DLS)

Seven independent studies of young children's performances on language tests were reviewed. (Author/BD)

The concurrent validity of the Diagnostic Analysis of Reading Errors (DARE) subtests was studied, based on the responses of Lebanese secondary and postsecondary students relative to their achievement in an English course or on a standardized test of English proficiency. The results indicate that the DARE is not a viable predictor of English…

In July 1990, "Standards, Policies and Procedures for the Evaluation of Assessment Instruments Used in the California Community Colleges" was published, requiring colleges to determine whether current testing practices discriminate against members of underrepresented groups. The standard for demonstrating disproportionate impact comes…

This study investigated the construct validity of five perceptual traits (auditory discrimination, visual discrimination, visual memory, visual-motor coordination, and auditory to visual-motor coordination) with five simulated work samples (union assembly, resistor reading, budgette assembly, lock assembly, and nail and screw sort) from the Jewish…