Assessment of Puerto Rican Children in Bilingual Education Programs in the United States: A Critique of Lloyd M. Dunn's Monograph

Abstract

This article comments on Dunn's translation of the PPVT-R into Castillian Spanish and the process he used to norm this instrument with Puerto Rican and Mexican American children. Demographic characteristics of Hispanics, specifically Puerto Ricans and Mexican Americans, in the United States are provided. A review of relevant literature excluded by Dunn in his discussion of the scholastic, intellectual, and linguistic assessment of Puerto Rican and Mexican American children follows. It is concluded that the Spanish version of the PPVT-R is inappropriate to measure receptive language in Puerto Rican and Mexican American children in the United States because it does not follow cross cultural methods for test translation and validation.