Evaluating a Bilingual Child in Only One Language?

"This is why evaluating a bilingual child's language in only one language gives you, at best, an incomplete picture, and at worst, a picture that leads to exactly the kind of error that followed Miguel for two years. You are not seeing the operating system. You are seeing one version of the software and reporting it as if it were the whole machine."

Hello everyone! Dr. Paco Usero González (www.druserogonzalez.com) here.
Today I want to talk about a critical error that plagues students like "Miguel" for years in our school systems: evaluating an emergent bilingual student using only one language.
Let's break down this analogy: Think of a bilingual child's brain as a computer. Their overall cognitive capacity, neurobiology, and learning potential represent the Operating System. English and Spanish are simply two different software programs installed on that machine.When a school evaluates a Spanish-speaking student exclusively in English using monolingual standardized tests and the child struggles, the system often panics and assumes the "operating system" is broken (i.e., diagnosing a learning disability).
The Reality: You are testing a piece of software that is still downloading! We are confusing the natural process of acquiring a second language with a cognitive disorder.
Here is why this is both pedagogically flawed and legally unacceptable:
1. The "Monolingual Snapshot" Error Evaluating an emergent bilingual child in English doesn't measure their actual cognitive ability; it often just measures their limited exposure to English. A genuine language or learning disability (like dyslexia) will manifest across all of the student's languages. If a child struggles in English but their Spanish is intact, they don't have a disorder—they are just learning a new language.
2. The Law is Clear (IDEA and the "Exclusionary Factor") Forcing a child to be evaluated in a language they haven't mastered violates federal mandates. The Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires non-discriminatory evaluations that must be administered in a way that is free from racial or cultural bias, using multiple measures, and conducted in the student's native language. Furthermore, the "exclusionary factor" strictly prohibits identifying a child with a disability if the determining factor for their struggle is simply limited English proficiency.
3. The Solution: Look at the Whole Machine! To know if the "Operating System" truly has a bug (a neurodevelopmental disorder), you have to open both software programs. We must use dynamic, cross-linguistic evaluations, gather language samples in the child's native language, and observe them across different contexts.
💡 The Big Takeaway: Evaluating a bilingual child in a single language gives you an incomplete picture that condemns brilliant students to special education labels they don't actually need—simply because the school system didn't know how to speak their language.
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Don't just evaluate half the software. Evaluate the whole machine!

(Share this post if you believe we need fair, bilingual evaluations in our schools. For more information and district presentations, visit www.druserogonzalez.com)