A Critical Examination of Standardised Testing of Minority Language Children

Abstract

In this dissertation I critically examined the performances of children who had English as an additional language (EAL) on standardized tests and compared their performances to the performances of their peers who had English as a first language (Non-EAL). The study compared the performances of the EAL and Non-EAL groups on standardised tests of literacy and numeracy, from 1st to 6th class, in a Dublin primary school. It also compared the performances of the groups on other commonly used standardised tests, the NRIT (Non-Reading Intelligence Test) and the NVRT (non Verbal Reasoning Test). Patterns of statistically significantly lower scores were identified in the performances of the EAL groups on tests that had strong verbal components. The findings from this study question the validity, fairness and careful consideration of using such standardised tests with EAL children.