Abstract:
The Brigance Diagnostic Assessment of Basic Skills (Spanish) is designed for use with bilingual, ESL, migrant, and bilingual special education students in grades K-6 for whom Spanish is a first language. It can be used to establish language dominance, to determine whether a student is performing at grade level in academic subjects in his native language, and to distinguish whether or not a student's weaknesses are due to limited English proficiency or to a specific learning disability. The test has the following sections: 1) Readiness; 2) Speech; 3) Functional Word Recognition; 4) Oral Reading; 5) Reading Comprehension; 6) Word Analysis; 7) Listening; 8) Writing and Alphabetizing; 9) Numbers and Computation; and 10) Measurement. Not all parts of the test are administered to every student because the teacher/test administrator is encouraged to check off skills that she knows the student has mastered. It is recommended that testing begin at the skill level one year below that which is anticipated as the student's actual level. The test is administered individually and some test items have illustrations. Necessary materials include a watch, paper, scissors, a pencil, and copies of the student pages. Scoring is done on a record sheet by the test administrator as the test is in progress, and the record sheets also serve as guides for setting subsequent instructional goals. They can be kept and updated to serve as documentation of student progress and evidence of the assessment process related to establishing an individual education plan in compliance with federal law. Scoring guidelines for most items allow for a variety of appropriate answers. A score of 60% or higher at a given grade level indicates that the student will probably be successful at that grade level. The test is criterion- rather than norm-referenced, and claims of content validity are based on a survey of teachers and popular textbooks. No claims of reliability are made. The test is also available in Portuguese.