Using Assessment to Improve the Accuracy of Teachers' Perceptions of Students' Academic Competence.

Teachers' perceptions of their students' academic skills can affect students' achievement and may be influenced by unrelated student characteristics such as socioeconomic status (SES). In this ad hoc randomized controlled trial, teachers (n = 28) were randomly assigned to receive training on using assessment to guide literacy instruction, Assessment-to-Instruction (A2i), or on Math PALS (control). Teachers rated students' (n = 446) academic competence. A2i teachers' ratings did not vary by SES, and their ratings correlated more strongly with students' literacy and mathematics assessment scores compared with those of the control teachers. Control teachers generally underestimated lower SES students' academic competence; underestimation was greater at more affluent schools. Teachers' ratings of students' academic competence predicted reading and mathematics outcomes. Thoughtful use of assessments to guide instruction appeared to improve the precision of teachers' ratings of students' academic competence, improve student outcomes, and reduce potential teacher biases about children from higher-poverty families.

English BESA Morphosyntax Performance Among Spanish-English Bilinguals Who Use African American English.

Purpose This study examined the use of African American English (AAE) among a group of young Latinx bilingual children and the accuracy of the English Morphosyntax subtest of the Bilingual English-Spanish Assessment (BESA) in classifying these children with and without developmental language disorder (DLD). Method Children (N = 81) between the ages of 4;0 and 7;1 (years;months) completed a narrative task and the BESA Morphosyntax subtest. We identified DLD based on four reference measures. We compared specific dialectal features used by children with DLD and their typically developing peers. We also conducted an overall analysis of the BESA subtest and subsequent item-level analyses to determine if particular items were more likely to contribute to the correct classification of the participants. Results Children with DLD used three AAE forms in their narrative samples (subject-verb agreement, zero copula/auxiliary, or zero past tense) more frequently than their typically developing peers. Area-under-the-curve estimates for the cloze, sentence repetition, and composite scores of the BESA indicated that the assessment identified children with DLD in the sample with good sensitivity. Item analysis indicated that the majority of items (84%) significantly differentiated typically developing children and children with DLD. Conclusions The BESA English Morphosyntax subtest appears to be a valid tool for the identification of DLD in children exposed to AAE and Spanish. We provide practical implications and suggestions for future research addressing the identification of DLD among children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.