Whose Judgment Counts? Assessing Bilingual Children, K-3

Grades K - 3

Despite the rising number of bilingual students, few teachers have been trained to make sense of these students' learning and language differences. Consequently, bilingual children are often misunderstood and misdiagnosed, when in reality they are limited only in English language proficiency. Whose Judgment Counts? was written to provide some help. It empowers teachers with the skills they need to make informed assessments of bilingual children–examining social, cultural, and language issues first, then focusing on learning.

Evangeline Stefanakis offers a clear introduction to the issues involved for bilingual students and the role that classroom assessment plays in their school experiences. She summarizes what the research tells us, then provides case studies of a group of highly skilled teachers assessing bilingual children. These success stories capture the intricacies of classroom assessment and provide real-life examples of what effective teachers know about informally assessing young children on a day-to-day basis. They are written within a sociocultural framework, which takes into account the complex social, cultural, and linguistic issues involved in learning.

Whose Judgment Counts? is an important contribution to the literature available on bilingual students. It urges teachers to never stop looking, listening, asking questions, or compiling student work. Only then, Stefanakis maintains, can we fully understand who our students are and what we can do for them.