(National Research Council, 2002) Minority Students in Special and Gifted Education
This article highlighted the role that evaluators play in perpetuating the achievement gap between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds.
(Spaulding, Swartwout Szulga, & Figueroa, 2012) Using Norm-Referenced Tests to Determine Severity of Language Impairment in Children: Disconnect Between U.S. Policy Makers and Test Developers
This study has exposed the disconnect between research, state and federal law, and clinical practice.
(Olswang, Rodriguez, & Timler, 1998) Recommending Intervention for Toddlers With Specific Language Learning Difficulties: We May Not Have All the Answers, But We Know a Lot
This review analyzed the literature available at the time in order to compile characteristics that would enable early intervention (EI) providers to distinguish between children who are “late talkers” but will likely catch up to their peers without therapy (as the majority do) and those who truly have a language disorder.
(McCauley & Swisher, 1984) Psychometric Review of Language and Articulation Tests for Preschool Children
This was one of the first of many articles publishing research demonstrating the severe limitations of using commercially available child language tests when assessing children for speech and language disability.
(Spaulding, Plante, & Farinella, 2006) Eligibility Criteria for Language Impairment: Is the Low End of Normal Always Appropriate?
This article demonstrates how many standardized tests do not even provide information about validity and reliability.
(Peña & Quinn, 1997) Task Familiarity: Effects on the Test Performance of Puerto Rican and African American Children
This study illustrates how important it is for an evaluator to be familiar with both the typical language practices of the communities they work in as well as the bias inherent in many of the standardized tests that are used to determine disability.
(Paradis, 2005) Grammatical Morphology in Children Learning English as a Second Language: Implications of Similarities with Specific Language Impairment
This study provided evidence that typically developing children acquiring English exhibit errors on standardized tests that are similar to the performance of monolingual children with specific language impairment.
(Pruitt & Oetting, 2009) Past Tense Marking by African American English-Speaking Children Reared in Poverty AND Passive Participle Marking by African American English-Speaking Children Reared in Poverty
These studies represent more evidence against the use of standardized tests when assessing the linguistic abilities of culturally or linguistically diverse (CLD) children.
(Umbel, Pearson, Fernandez & Oller, 1992) Measuring Bilingual Children’s Receptive Vocabularies
This study showed that examining only one of a bilingual child’s languages does not provide an accurate representation of the child’s linguistic knowledge.
(Restrepo, 1998) Identifiers of Predominantly Spanish-Speaking Children with Language Impairment
This study proved that measures other than standardized language assessments can more accurately identify language impairment in culturally and linguistically diverse children (in this case monolingual Spanish speakers).
