What Can School-Based SLPs Do To Address Significant Disproportionality?

Equitable Evaluation Tools Infographic

Examine Current Assessment Practices

SLPs can review assessment practices to ensure that they are not over- or underidentifying students as having communication disorders.

Over-identification occurs when a child does not have an impairment but is identified as having a language disorder. Children who are learning a new language may be incorrectly identified with a language disorder because of the language acquisition process. Underidentification occurs when a child with a true language disorder is not correctly identified.

When conducting an assessment, SLPs can use a variety of measures—in addition to administering norm-referenced standardized tests—to determine the presence of a communication disorder.

SLPs are encouraged to review the population that the test developer originally used to establish the norms for a standardized test to ensure that the measure is valid and reliable for the student who is being assessed.

This may mean that the SLP recognizes an important fact—that the population used to establish norms may not be valid or reliable for the particular student whom they are assessing. If this happens, the SLP should not use that measure. Ultimately, a thorough review of normative data will help the examiner make appropriate clinical decisions about which standardized assessments to use.

IDEA Part B regulations support appropriate service delivery to culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) populations. Part B includes specific considerations for assessment. See IDEA Part B: Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students for further information.

Gather Information From Classroom Performance

SLPs can conduct classroom observations as well as review work samples and other data to gather qualitative information on student performance.

Classroom observation, review of curriculum-related work samples, report cards, and performance on district and state standardized assessments provide qualitative and quantitative data on a student’s performance. They yield information about a child’s knowledge and use of language for listening, speaking, reading, writing, and thinking, including

phonology and print symbols (orthography) for recognizing and producing intelligible spoken and written words;
syntactic structures and semantic relationships for understanding and formulating complex spoken and written sentences;
discourse structures for comprehending and organizing spoken and written texts;
pragmatic conventions (verbal and nonverbal) for communicating appropriately in varied situations; and
metacognitive and self-regulatory strategies for handling complex language, literacy, and academic demands.

Use Informal Assesessments

SLPs are encouraged to use dynamic assessment, language sampling, and interviews to develop a holistic view of a child’s speech-language and communication skills across contexts.

Dynamic Assessment

SLPs can also use dynamic assessment (DA) with culturally and linguistically diverse (CLD) populations.

DA is an alternative assessment approach. It is highly interactive and process oriented. DA frequently takes the form of a “test–intervene–retest” model.

DA measures the child’s ability to learn independently of their previous experience. It does not require comparison with monolingual population norms or pre-existing knowledge of language or schemas.

It emphasizes the learning process and accounts for the amount and nature of examiner investment. Students who are able to make changes are likely to have language differences. Those who are unable to make changes are more likely to have a language disorder.

Language Sampling

SLPs may use a variety of tasks and activities to elicit a language sample—including engaging a student in conversation or having the student tell or retell a story, describe a picture or activity, or participate in play.

SLPs can analyze language samples by manually examining them or by using computer software programs to gather the following key data points:

utterance length
complexity
articulation abilities
narrative and expository skills
perspective-taking
comprehension
imitation
direction-following abilities

Parent/Caregiver and Teacher Interviews

Parent/caregiver and teacher interviews provide information on how language strengths and weaknesses affect the student. Responses may highlight a student’s relative successes and difficulties participating in educational, social, and vocational activities.

SLPs can conduct interviews using standardized questionairres and scales. Typically, interviews include a combination of descriptive and structural questions.

Descriptive questions are broad and allow the interviewee to describe experiences, daily activities, and objects and people in their lives.

Structural questions are more specific; interviewers use them to dive deeper into the interviewee’s responses to descriptive questions.

Examine Cultural Considerations

SLPs are encouraged to consider their own cultural competence, cultural responsiveness, and cultural humility in all interactions.

SLPs are encouraged to

weigh the cultural sensitivity of assessment measures and methods and
identify and eliminate components of a comprehensive assessment that may lead to bias and over- or under-identification of SLI or eligibility for speech and language–related

To avoid inadvertent over- or under-identification of language learning disorders, SLPs can identify dialectally and culturally acceptable or unacceptable productions as inadequate or adequate relative to Standard American English.

Test items that require a high level of knowledge and experience with mainstream culture are considered to have a high “cultural load.”

Implement MTSS

SLPs might consider using multi-tiered systems of support (MTSS)—such as Response to Intervention (RTI)—to provide universal screenings and assist struggling learners at increasing levels of intensity.

SLPs also might use RTI or other forms of MTSS as a beneficial method of making decisions about general, compensatory, and special education.

Although SLPs should not use this process to delay or deny an evaluation for eligibility, they can use it to provide services and interventions to struggling learners at increasing levels of intensity.

In an RTI model, SLPs can

assist with universal screenings,
consult with teachers to meet the needs of students in initial RTI tiers with specific focus on the language underpinnings of learning and literacy, and
collaborate with classroom teachers to provide services and supports for students with communication disabilities.

Weigh the Impact of Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES)

SLPs are encouraged to consider the impact of SDOH and ACES in assessment procedures.

Here are some examples of ACES:

experiencing economic hardship
navigating a divorce of, separation of, or abandonment by divorce or separation of parents
experiencing the death of a parent
having a parent who served time in prison
witnessing adult domestic violence
being a victim of—or witness to—neighborhood violence
living with someone who was mentally ill or suicidal
living with someone who has an alcohol or substance use disorder
being treated or judged unfairly due to race/ethnicity