| In 1975, Public Law 94-142, also known as The Education of All Handicapped Children Act, established the rights of the bilingual student to a nondiscriminatory assessment and called for a systematic plan to address any deficits identified by the assessment. Since that time and through the reauthorization of that law, now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, those charged with the evaluation of cognitive and achievement skills of children and adolescents have struggled to comply with the mandate. One of the challenges they face is the dearth of well designed, reliable and valid instruments to conduct evaluations of the growing number of bilingual, limited English proficient students. The Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests are purported to be unique measures of general cognitive ability in that they incorporate skills in both English and a second language. The current study attempted to assess the validity of the ability/achievement discrepancy identified by the Bilingual Verbal Ability Score/Woodcock-Johnson - Revised Tests of Achievement method. This method compares predicted ability, estimated with the Bilingual Verbal Ability Score, with actual ability as measured by the Woodcock-Johnson - Revised Tests of Achievement. The task is complicated by the fact that no other instrument has been designed to include the impact of bilingual skills on cognitive abilities. The ability/achievement discrepancy identified by the more traditional Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children - III/Wechsler Individual Achievement Test method was used as the criterion measure. The most important outcome of the current study was observed among subjects whose second language skills did not significantly impact their BVA score. Within that group, for subtests measuring reading skills and comprehension, the study revealed moderate to high correlations between the levels of discrepancy identified by the two methods. The impact of these results is limited by the small, skewed sample but suggests that the usefulness of the information provided by the Bilingual Verbal Ability Tests warrants its inclusion in the standard battery of instruments administered in the course of an assessment of learning abilities. |
