Traditional Culture Versus Traditional Assessment for American Indian Students: An Investigation of Potential Test Item

Third Edition (WISC-III) are frequently used across cultures in standard assessment batteries for learners between 6 and 17 years of age, respectively. Responses of American Indian students on the BSID-II and WISC-III were examined for patterns of performance across items. Information gathered from the BSID-II protocols indicate that expressive language items were lower than scores obtained in other categories and lower than scores on the total group of items. Results from the WISC-III suggest that, in some situa-tions, student performance may be distorted. Issues of poverty, remoteness, access to resources, and health care need to be considered before sweeping conclusions can be made about performance on nationally normed, standardized instruments. Results may indicate that testing of American Indian students results in an inaccurate assessment due to cultural biases of test items. Evaluating young children and adolescents who may be at risk for developmental delay or disability requires gathering accurate and reli-able information as a necessary first step. Precise information about an individual’s functional ability is critical for planning and providing programs. Such information is gained primarily through assessment instru-ments that are designed to be nonbiased and provide the best information possible for all students and across all cultures. However, a disproportionate number of culturally-linguis-tically diverse (CLD) students are unsuccess-ful on traditional test instruments and as a result, are overrepresented in special educa-tion programs (Heward, 2003; Smith, 2001) because their strengths and weaknesses may be misinterpreted. Two highly respected instruments fre-quently used across cultures in standard assessment batteries are the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II (BSID-II; Bayley, 1993) for young children, and the Wechsle