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For most of the last decade, the New York City Department of Education has worked to establish a citywide standard reflective of current preferred practice in the assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse students. In a system with more than 1 million children and 1,800 speech-language providers, a number of strategies were implemented.
The first major activity was an intensive professional conference presented over three months and funded by the New York State Education Department. The conference focused on appropriate assessment strategies and was taught by experts from both inside and outside the department, with bilingual speech-language evaluators and their supervisors in attendance. The conference emphasized hands-on activities such as using videotaped case studies to apply preferred practices. Over the next year, conference participants met with assessment experts in their local schools for clarification and support on particular issues and with particular cases. This professional development spread the word on this city and state policy, and provided a strong knowledge base for the evaluators, supervisors, and administrators.
Of equal importance was the development, publication, and citywide dissemination of the Test Resource Guide, Volume V, Communication/ Language Assessment and Tests of Language Proficiency (1998; New York City Board of Education). In this book, the New York City Department of Education provides very clear guidelines regarding appropriate assessment of culturally and linguistically diverse children. It explicitly prohibits certain improper practices such as reporting scores from translated tests. It also contains analyses of the validity and reliability of more than 100 speech and language tests, including the applicability of each test to culturally and linguistically diverse students.
The Division of Student Support Services provides ongoing support by communicating with speech-language evaluators in the field concerning appropriate qualitative reporting measures. In individual cases where scores were inappropriately reported to determine eligibility, or where local administrators refused to accept reports solely because they did not contain test scores, speech supervisory personnel contacted those individuals directly to provide one-on-one support.
As a result of this work, it is now common knowledge and practice within the New York City Department of Education that scores are neither required nor reported for preschool and school-age bilingual-bicultural students. Indeed, a recent survey asked more than 100 bilingual speech-language evaluators whether they were being required to provide standardized test scores in their assessment reports for preschool or school-age children in New York City. Only two evaluators had been asked to provide scores, and, as it turns out, the two administrators who had asked for the scores were new to their positions.
Through this work, the New York City Education Department, in collaboration with the New York State Education Department, has improved the quality of evaluations. In doing so, it has reduced the number of inappropriate referrals for special education services of our bilingual/bicultural children.
Jane E. Coyle recently retired as a speech supervisor for the New York City Department of Education. She is in private practice and teaches at Long Island University's Brooklyn Campus. Contact her by e-mail at jecoyleslp@earthlink.net.
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