Bilingual Testing

Re bilingual testing, here’s a suggestion that should please everybody and nobody: Test all students in both English and Spanish, for both language proficiency and subject-matter mastery. That action should eliminate charges of discrimination (except by students whose home language is neither English nor Spanish), provide lots of interesting data for educational statisticians, and demonstrate clearly the inequity of asking students to show they have learned the subject matter when they can’t understand the language.

Widespread thinking about this proposal might lead to a better solution to the whole question of multi-language testing.

THOMAS M. STOUT

Northridge