Spanish and English Early Literacy Profiles of Preschool Latino English Language Learner Children

Modeling Floor Effects in Standardized Vocabulary Test Scores in a Sample of Low SES Hispanic Preschool Children under the Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling Framework

“…Samples in which 15% or more score at or near to the lowest level in the instruments measurement range may indicate the potential existence of the floor effects which may impact analyses when using traditional analytic methods (Lim et al, 2015 ). Given the culturally, linguistically and ethnically diverse populations have been shown to perform poorly on the PPVT-4 and the EVT-2 (e.g., Champion et al, 2003 ; Gonzalez et al, 2015 ), researchers should attend to with the potential problem of floor effects when using these measures. With increasing populations of language-minority populations (e.g., ELLs, DLLs), considering floor effects in measures warrants close attention.…”

“…The PPVT, in particular, has sparked much controversy over alleged inappropriateness with culturally and linguistically diverse populations (Haitana et al, 2010 ). Numerous studies have shown ethnically and linguistically diverse populations to score one to two standard deviations below normative expectations (e.g., Washington and Craig, 1992 , 1999 ; Champion et al, 2003 ; Laing and Kamhi, 2003 ; Qi et al, 2003 ; Restrepo et al, 2006 ; McCabe and Champion, 2010 ; Terry et al, 2013 ; Gonzalez et al, 2015 ), highlighting possible bias in these tests. African-American, Hispanic and Native American populations, in particular, have been shown to score much lower on standardized vocabulary tests than do the normative samples (Thernstrom, 2002 ; Buly, 2005 ; Rock and Stenner, 2005 ; Thomas-Tate et al, 2006 ; Horton-Ikard and Ellis Weismer, 2007 ).…”

“…African American children, for example, have been shown to score about one standard deviation below the mean scores compared to their White counterparts (e.g., Rock and Stenner, 2005 ; Restrepo et al, 2006 ). Latino preschoolers have been found to approach two or more standard deviations below normative standards (Lonigan et al, 2013 ; Gonzalez et al, 2015 ).…”

The Home Numeracy Environment and Measurement of Numeracy Performance in English and Spanish in Dual Language Learners

“…Researchers frequently assess the mathematics performance of Spanish-speaking DLLs in Spanish (Landry et al, 2019), in English (Choi et al, 2018), or separate Spanish and English measures (Foster et al, 2019; Méndez et al, 2019; Miller, 2017), but not a composite measure that simultaneously takes Spanish and English knowledge into account. Given varying language and mathematics performance among Spanish-speaking DLLs (e.g., J. Gonzalez et al, 2016; Hong & You, 2012; Kim et al, 2018; Lonigan et al, 2018), measures that only assess DLLs’ mathematics performance in one language may not adequately account for unique knowledge that DLLs acquire at home or at school, thereby underestimating their true knowledge (Pitoniak et al, 2009) and contributing to the appearance of an achievement gap between DLLs and monolinguals.…”

“…Given varying language and mathematics performance among Spanish-speaking DLLs (e.g., J. Gonzalez et al, 2016;Hong & You, 2012;Kim et al, 2018;Lonigan et al, 2018), measures that only assess DLLs' mathematics performance in one language may not adequately account for unique knowledge that DLLs acquire at home or at school, thereby underestimating their true knowledge (Pitoniak et al, 2009) and contributing to the appearance of an achievement gap between DLLs and monolinguals. Thus, examining DLLs' knowledge of numeracy skills in both English and Spanish, as well as accounting for their combined knowledge across languages, may provide a stronger foundation by which to understand their mathematical performance.…”