Chapter III: Psychoeducational Appraisal of Disadvantaged Children

Abstract

This review focuses on the identification of socially disadvantaged children through psychological testing and educational appraisal. Programs and practices such as compensatory education, identification of talent, remediation of learning deficits, and educational planning for disadvantaged children derive some of their meaning and perspective from techniques of measurement, appraisal, and evaluation. If these programs are to be based on the learning patterns of disadvantaged children and adolescents, it is imperative first to gain total familiarity with the sociocultural variables that affect school learning, achievement, and intelligence test performance. At the same time the practitioner must be aware of the restrictions and limitations of his tools when dealing with children who have had widely divergent educational and cultural experiences.Meaningful evaluation and appraisal are basic to the execution of our core programs for the disadvantaged. Herein lie the importance of and necessity for finding methods and techniques appropriate to the disadvantaged child's style of life and cultural milieu. As curriculum design is matched increasingly to the needs of the child, the process of measurement must also be so matched.The profiles, behavioral descriptions, and sociocultural characteristics that have emerged from the literature by no means yield a composite picture of the scope of educational behavior of the disadvantaged child. The more recent investigations concerning cognitive styles, the emphasis on "learning potential," and the study of differential abilities in young children add considerable dimension to our understanding and knowledge of the disadvantaged child. These new developments are of extreme importance because they stress the appraisal of the disadvantaged child within the totality of his cultural and educational experiences.