Curriculum-Based Measurement in Assessing Bilingual Students: A Promising New Direction

Abstract

There is growing concern that current methods of assessing students from linguistically and culturally diverse backgrounds are sometimes biased against the student. For example, traditional forms of measuring English reading acquisition may demonstrate that a student has a learning disability or cognitive delay, when in fact; the student is merely having difficulty learning English. Alternative assessment methods are needed to monitor the English reading acquisition for these bilingual students for two reasons: (a) to ensure that they are not misidentified as needing special education and (b) to ensure that students who are in need of special education services receive the educational support necessary to be successful in school. This article discusses problems with traditional methods of assessing bilingual students and describes curriculum-based measurement (CBM) for use with bilingual Hispanic students. Additional information about the features of CBM is presented along with issues related to the use of CBM with bilingual Hispanic students.