Test Review: Bayley-III

Leaders Project Academic Language, Accuracy (Discriminant Accuracy), Achievement Gap, African American English (AAE)/ African American Vernacular English (AAVE), Age Equivalency, Assessment and Evaluation, Bias, Clinical Judgment, Confidence Interval, Criterion Referenced Test, Cultural Bias, Dialect, Document, General Education, Language Delay, Language Difference, Linguistic Bias, Norm Referenced Test, Normal Distribution/ Bell Curve, Normative/Standardization Sample, Percentile, Reference Standard, Reliability, Scaled Score, Sensitivity and Specificity, Socioeconomic Status (SES), Special Education, Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Specificity, Standard American English (SAE)/ Mainstream American English (MAE), Standard Deviation (SD), Standard Error of Measurement (SEM), Standard Score, Standardization Study, Standardized Test, Test Reviews, Test Validity, Vocabulary

Bayley-III_11.25.13

The Bayley Scale of Infant and Toddler Development (Bayley-III) is designed to assess the developmental functioning of infants and young children 1-42 months of age. The Bayley-III attempts to identify suspected developmental delays in children and to provide information to plan and develop appropriate interventions rooted in theory and research in the area of child development. However, results obtained from administration of the Bayley-III are not valid due to lack of an adequate reference standard and lack of sensitivity and specificity data. This seriously limits the test’s discriminant accuracy and ability to properly identify children with a developmental delay or disorder. Furthermore, there are other issues of concern that call into question the validity and reliability of the Bayley-III. The test contains significant cultural and linguistic biases, which preclude it from being appropriate for children from diverse backgrounds. Even for children from mainstream, SAE speaking backgrounds, the test has not demonstrated adequate validity and diagnostic accuracy. According to federal legislation, testing materials are required to be “valid, reliable and free of significant bias”(IDEA, 2004). Therefore, scores should not be calculated or used to diagnose speech and/or language delay/disorder or to determine special education services.