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In medium and low groups, 10 were ranked the same in both English and
Spanish; in the high group, this occurred with 14. In all three groups,
those who were equally ranked in both languages outnumbered those who
are unequally ranked. Since additional data were not collected on the
nonparticipants, nothing is known about their background. It must be
emphasized that although the students were ranked by English and
Spanish ability, these are not equivalent rankings. Raw scores and
stanine scores in Spanish for the group are higher than English.
All LAB scores for October 1981 and May 1982 were available
for all limited English proficient (LEP) students enrolled in the bi
lingual program who took the tests. However, only the stanines (Table
4-9) and the writing subsections (Table 4-10) are presented here in
tabular form because they show the greatest areas of contrast.
Stanine scores
The stanine scores, which are indicative of overall language
performance on the LAB in English and Spanish, reveal that both groups
are gaining in English. The participants' scores increased by .96,
or almost one full stanine from October to May, while the nonpartici
pants gained .48, or almost one-half stanine for the same period. In
Spanish, the participants' scores decreased by .59, while the non
participants declined by .9, a .31 difference. Although the non
participants scored higher in the fall in English, the participants
surpassed them in the spring. The nonparticipants are gaining less
rapidly in English and losing more rapidly in Spanish. The difference
between the two groups was not statistically significant at the time