Speech-Sound Discrimination Ability on Linguistically Unbiased Tests

Traditional testing practices have been considered by some educators as discriminatory against minority groups. These practices are thought to have led to a disproportionate number of black and Spanish speaking children being placed in special classes as a result of their “poor performance” on tests standardized on white, middle class populations and/or in standard English. In response to this problem, one particular language ability, speech-sound discrimination, was assessed using a bilingual perspective rather than one stressing the rightness of standard English. Three parallel forms of speech-sound discrimination (standard English, black English and Spanish) were each administered to a sample of lower socio-economic white, black and Puerto Rican children. The results indicated that each language group did best on the discrimination form that most closely approximated the phonological structure of its language. Also, there were no significant differences in speech-sound discrimination ability among the three groups when performances across all language forms were considered. Educational implications for assessment were discussed.