Identification of Learning Disabled Bilingual Hispanic Students

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to compare bilingual students who had been identified as learning disabled (LD) with a group of bilingual students who were not identified as LD (NLD) based on standardized measures of achievement and potential. In addition, behavioral surveys of both groups were conducted. Subjects were 20 first- through sixth-grade limited-English proficient bilingual Mexican-American children − 10 were learning disabled, 10 were non-learning disabled. Based on analysis of the data the following tests predicted learning disabilities: Prueba de Lectura y Lenguaje Escrito (PLLE), Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (TONI), Test of Reading Comprehension (TORC), Prueba de Desarrollo Inicial de Lenguaje (PDIL), Test of Early Language Development (TERA), and the Perfil de Evaluacion del Comportamiento/Teacher Survey (PEC). Significant differences were found between the LD and NLD groups in 75% of the measures administered. Additional results indicated that the LD students scored poorly on the nonverbal IQ test and the language achievement tests, suggesting that the sample would not have been identified as LD based on the instruments utilized in this study.