What considerations should schools and districts be aware of when they deliver Tier 3 intervention?
Page 8: Cultural Diversity
Katy Stromwell is optimistic that the RTI approach will improve most of the students’ academic outcomes. However, she remains aware that some challenges exist when school personnel identify culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students who do not demonstrate adequate progress. This is especially true when these students are referred to Tier 3 or special education services. To ensure that school personnel are appropriately identifying students for Tier 3 services, they must:
- Understand and respond to cultural differences
- Measure the student’s language proficiency
- Determine the cause of the student’s reading problem
- Administer nonbiased assessments
Understand and Respond to Cultural Differences
School personnel can examine the degree to which their school environment is culturally sensitive. One way to determine whether misconceptions influence instructional practices in the school is to ask school personnel to reflect on their own ideas and perspectives about cultural differences.
| COMMON MISCONCEPTION | IN REALITY |
| All English learners speak Spanish | Teachers should recognize that although the majority of English learners are Spanish speakers, they are a heterogeneous group that differs in many ways, such as in their home language, ethnicity, socioeconomic background, and immigration status. |
| All CLD students have the same experiences | Even students with the same culture and home language may have distinct learning characteristics and cultural experiences. |
| Standard classroom materials are effective for all students | Educators who incorporate culturally diverse instructional materials provide greater learning value for their students. |
Measure the Student’s Language Proficiency
It is also important for teachers to understand their students’ language proficiency and the ease with which students may become English proficient. There are two basic forms of English language proficiency: conversational English and academic English.
Forms of English language proficiency
Conversational English: also known as Basic Interpersonal Language Skills (BICS), occurs when a student uses the context or contextual clues around him or her to receive social communication and information (e.g., playing on the playground, interacting socially in the classroom). Conversational English is often acquired through conversation and meaningful context, where the focus is not on learning the language but on the social message that is being given or received.
Academic English: also known as Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP), is quite different from conversational English. Academic English is required to understand abstract concepts in highly structured academic settings.
Teachers should not assume that a student’s level of conversational English proficiency indicates his or her level of academic English proficiency. Although a student may be able to speak fluently, he or she may not have the vocabulary to perform well in academic content areas. A student’s level of language proficiency should be determined by formal and informal assessments conducted by bilingual educators from the school district.
Determine the Cause of the Student’s Reading Problem
Standardized tests indicate that 75% of third-grade English learners reads below grade level. School personnel must work meticulously to try and determine why CLDs are struggling with reading. Teachers may not realize that a student who is unable to comprehend a given text may be struggling because of inadequate English proficiency rather than another factor such as:
- A learning disability
- Lack of high-quality instruction
- Inconsistent school experience
Administer Non-biased Assessments
Although it’s true that CLD students participate in standardized testing, the ability of school personnel to draw reliable conclusions from these test results is limited. The reasons for this are numerous but include problems of nonrepresentative norming samples, test item bias, tests that have been translated from one language to another, and the comparison of students who have different levels of English proficiency as though they were equally proficient.
Nonrepresentative norming samples
Because norm-referenced tests are typically not developed with a sufficient number of students from culturally or linguistically diverse cultures in the norming group, such tests are likely to produce invalid results when administered to students not in this group.
Test item bias
Test item bias occurs when tests rely on concepts, shared assumptions, or events that are by definition outside the experience or understanding of culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) students. For example, a writing assignment that asked students to compose a persuasive essay about the value of individualism might severely disadvantage students from cultures more generally constructed around the idea of collective action and interdependence. Such a test would not accurately reflect whether the student was able to successfully write a persuasive essay.
One way to lessen the impact of testing bias is to first determine the student’s level of English language proficiency. Testing experts recommend that CLDs with limited English language development be assessed in both their home language and in English, a suggestion infrequently put into practice due to the relative difficulty in procuring comparable assessments in both languages. When possible, English learners should be assessed by a bilingual evaluator.
Listen as Alfredo Artiles talks about problems that occur when tests are translated (time: 1:34).
Transcript: Alfredo Artiles, PhD
By translating items, you are not necessarily taking care of issues of validity. The idea of validity is concerned with to what extent are we measuring what we are supposed to be measuring with this assessment? We assume that by translating items that the translation is going to reflect the same constructs or notions in the second language that we were trying to get with the English version of the test. That sounds like a logical, commonsensical approach; however, when you translate items, you run into a number of problems. One, the level of difficulty of certain items, for example, in the translated version might change, and there have been studies done in Mexico and in the U.S. showing that items that were perceivably easy in English, when they are translated into Spanish, have a higher level of difficulty because the nuances and the meanings are altered in the translation process, and vice-versa. Then you run into the issue of dialectical variations in the language, and to what extent a Spanish version of a test might make sense for kids coming from the central region of Mexico versus students who are coming from the mountains in Ecuador, or even people coming from the coast of Mexico. So you have subtle differences in the ways the language is used and whether that might mean very different things. That’s just an example of how you can complicate things by nearly translating a test, and you are not necessarily clear that you are altering the original intent of the measure by doing those things.
Keep in Mind
In many schools, issues of disproportionate representation arise for CLD students. Some English learners are not referred for special education because their teachers have judged them unable to succeed academically due exclusively to their difficulty with the English language. In other cases, CLD students may be over-identified for special education services because of test bias or because no testing is conducted in their home language. In preparation for determining special education eligibility for English learners, schools should:
- Be sure the evaluation consists of multiple sources of information
- Include experts in second language acquisition on the IEP team
- Train school personnel in second language acquisition
