Predicting school achievement for bilingual pupils.

Abstract

Teachers, and other school i>ert>oniicl of the Territory of Guam have long been aware of the need for adequate predictors of school achievement for their bilingual pupils. In December of 1956, Guam's Department of Education authorized a study to discover to what extent, if any, currently available tests would provide such predictions. Guam is a territory whose cultural patterns are rapidly changing. From a Spanish type of church-dominated society, from a military paternalism, Guam is becoming infused with current American ideas, trends, and practices. The local language, Chamorros, is slowly giving way to English. However, English is spoken only in the school classroom, infrequently on the playground, and rarely in the home and community. Consequently, because of the unique cultural and language factors, currently available Measures of intelligence must lie in the realm of questionable validity until demonstrated otherwise.This study endeavored to determine the predictive ability of six tests of intelligence for certain fifth-grade pupils of Guam. Only those tests which were wholly or partially performance or nonverbal were considered. In order to hold cultural Factors constant, four relatively isolated communities were selected. The villages of Inarajan, Merizo, Talofofo, and Umatac have had no electricity (and consequently no television) until quite recently; no Matcsiders (persons whose usual abode is mainland, U.S.A.) as residents; no telephones; few movies. Books and magazines are not commonly found. These four villages enrolled a total of approximately 'A research supported by a grant from the James McKeen Cattell Fund.

Columbia Mental Maturity Scale as a test of concept formation.

“…The rank-order correlation of the two tests is .42 which is significant at the .05 level. Cooper (1958) published a correlation of .62 for these two tests with a sample of fifth graders.…”

Rationale for a Field-Based Research and Development Project for Multicultural-Bilingual Education

“…This paper proposes the creation of a fieldbased project consisting of two or three experimental and two or three control schools for the development of the design. In the late fifties and early sixties, immediately prior to the rebirth of U.S. bilingual education C. A1?-dersson' and Boyer, 1970), psychological and educational researchers had show substantial interest in U.S. bilingual students and on the effects of bilingualism on the individual (Bovet, 1963;Cooper, 1958;Darcy, 1963;Diebold, 1961;ErvinTripp, 1961;Jensen, 1962;Lado, Lambert and Andersson, 1962;Lambert, 1966;Lambert, Ha-.velka and Crosby, 1958;Lambert, Havelka and Gardner, 1959;Love, 1962;Mackey, 1962;Morrison, 1958;Peal and Lambert, 1962;Pike, 1969). The federal government has set the pace for growth and has determined the character of bi lingual education in the nation, and yet, the Bi lingual Education Act of 1968 did not even provide a definition of bilingual education (U.S. Com mission on Civil Rights, 1975).…”

The present status of the culture fair testing movement

“…It is composed of a number of items which require no reading nor attention to instructions written on the test forms. Several studies (Cooper, 1958;Richie, 1954;Rosenblum, 1955) have questioned the cultural bias of the test and some of the initial claims for socio-economic fairness are no longer made. The test may have value for use with poor readers (Justman, 1955), but Smith (1956) has indicated that auding ability (ability to understand spoken language) is a major source of bias in the test.…”