m
participate (in the learning process) in Spanish.
Such an improved method will identify the children
according to their ability to speak, read, write,
and comprehend English and Spanish .... (Board
of Education of the City of New York, 1976, p. 4)
According to the same source, content validity was a main objective for
the test producers. All items were reviewed extensively and pilot
tested on approximately 7,500 children in the New York City school
system. Numerous tables are available in the technical manual. These
tables indicate item difficulty, means, standard deviations, reliability
coefficients, and standard errors of measurements across grade levels.
Intercorrelations of subtests and total scores were computed within,
but not across, languages.
At the time the manual was published a larger study involving
students in other parts of the U.S. was being conducted with the LAB.
A special report on this project was expected in 1976-77. Currently,
that report or other technical data on the 1976 LAB does not exist at
the Board of Education of the city of New York. No other information
was available from the test publishers on other research utilizing the
LAB (Abbott, 1983). The Board of Education of the city of New York
is currently revising and pilot testing a 1982 version of the LAB
which is expected to be available soon. The technical manual has not
yet been prepared (Abbott, 1983).
Language Assessment Scales
The Language Assessment Scales (LAS) have been reviewed by many
researchers. As of June 1981, 17 studies or journal articles on the
LAS were located by BRS (1981). Most information located by this