Home | How It Works | Stats Login | Register         Case: Can't test out I have several students in my ESOL Practicum that have been living in the United States since they were infants and have been in ESOL for several years. Still, they cannot test out of the ESOL Program. They need to get a 3 on FCAT and pass the CELLA test. One of the students is a 6th grader who cannot read. He has difficulties with decoding simple words. I tried giving him a passage in Spanish, and he still could not read it. I suspect that there is more than just a language issue here. He is in 3 ESOL classes, but I think he needs other ESE support. What can we do for him when he is stuck in ESOL? Solution: (Rates are posted for this solution!) There are some cases that require dual support. ESE support and ESOL support. I think you need to express your concerns to the ESE teacher and Administration. Maybe he/she could qualify for additional services. I noticed that some schools are still testing (IQ test) students in English when their first language is other than English. Please make sure that they can also provide testing in his/her native language, so the qualification process can be accurate. Here is part of a great article that I found online written by Jose Cardenas. Here is the link is you need to read the full article http://www.idra.org/resource-center/bilingual-intelligence-testing/ José A. Cárdenas, Ed.D. The following article was written by Dr. José A. Cárdenas around the year 1964, when he was serving as chairman of the Education Department at St. Mary’s University. It was first published in 1972 and is included in his new reference book, Multicultural Education: A Generation of Advocacy published by Ginn Press. Although written more than 30 years ago, the caveats raised about invalidity of intelligence testing for linguistically and culturally different children have never been addressed. There have been no further inquiries into the administration, performance and interpretation problems identified by the author in 1972. On the contrary, current literature about ethnic differences in mental abilities inferred from the results of IQ tests is being used for educational policy development, without regard to the problems identified in this article. Dr. Cárdenas’ early experiences with IQ testing of language minority, limited-English-proficient and bilingual students is a direct contradiction to Richard J. Hernstein and Charles Murray’s assertion in their recent book, The Bell Curve, that there are no cultural biases in intelligence tests. The past few years have seen increased concern over the testing of intelligence of minority children and particularly of the assessment of mental abilities of non-English speaking or bilingual children. Various national, regional and local studies have ascertained that bilingual children are over-represented in classes for the mentally retarded, and, in some cases, the traditional underachievement characterizing minority children in the public schools has been rationalized on the basis of below normal mental abilities. The unfair practice of administration of invalid intelligence tests to bilingual and bicultural populations has been noted and addressed by the courts and various civil rights agencies. In general, both the courts and regulatory agencies have understood at least some of the reasons for the lack of test validity and have consistently ruled against the use of language incompatible testing. However, the remedy formulated by the courts, often at the insistence of plaintiffs, has resulted in equally discriminatory or in some cases, even more discriminatory testing practices. Courts have consistently ruled the use of English intelligence tests to be unfair to children of limited English speaking ability but have then ruled that intelligence testing must be conducted in the language spoken in the child’s home. Such a response has not proved to be an ideal solution to the problem, and in most cases, has resulted in worse testing practices than those being replaced.