Testing: Considerations in Cultural Differences

Public Law 94-142 mandates "extensive child identification procedures and non-discriminatory testing and evaluation." Therefore, in order to receive much needed funds, school programs must comply with this requirement. However, many problems have arisen because of the fact that so many of our testing tools lack appropriate reliability and validity; that is, they were standardized on populations that excluded the poor child and are therefore discriminatory. This exclusion has caused mislabeling and overcounting of served children on which distribution of funds is based; that is, the more served children, the more funds provided. Thus , we must screen and test with instruments that appropriately identify children in need of services. If not, our identification of many speech-language handicapped children will be in error — and, as we shall point out, this is indeed the case. It is critically important that testers be able to distinguish speech-language deficiencies from differences; that is, to recognize standard dialect (establishment English) from nons tandard dialects (blackor mountain-English). finding and is used to separate adequate from inadequate communication skills. When screening a culturally different child, the speech-language pathologist should consider that the child's language may be linguistically different but adequate, which implies only the need for teaching the child the standard dialect. As Baratz (1968) has stated: "The speech pathologist must view the culturally different child's language differently than from children with language pathologies that result from physical or emotional difficulties. They've learned language but the language is different, not pathological. These children need to be taught standard English, not to be remediated." However, linguistic deficiencies obviously do exist, and the extent of the problem, as well as the implications for treatment, must be ascertained. Thus , as noted by Salvea and Pseldyke (1978), in this first step of identification, the existence of problems such as (1) the failure to identify truly deviant or deficient children, and (2) conversely, the identification of children as deviant when they have no problem to ameliorate or remediate, hinder reliable and valid case findings.