Test Review: CELF-4 Spanish

Leaders Project Accuracy (Discriminant Accuracy), Age Equivalency, Assessment and Evaluation, Bias, Clinical Judgment, Confidence Interval, Cultural Bias, Culturally and/or Linguistically Diverse (CLD) Child, Dialect, Document, 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), Spanish/Español, Special Education, Specific Language Impairment (SLI), Speech Community, 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, Test-Retest Reliability, Vocabulary

TestReview_CELF 4 Spanish_1.8.14.pdf

The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals Spanish, Fourth Edition [CELF-4, Spanish] is a standardized test designed to assess the presence of a language disorder or delay in Spanish speaking children aged 5-21.

The test contains a variety of tasks, designed to assess the child using a comprehensive and flexible manner. However, results obtained from administration of the test are not valid due to a lack of information as to how tasks and items were deemed appropriate, an insufficient reference standard, and insufficient accuracy in determining the presence of a language disorder. In addition, the test contains many inherent cultural and linguistic biases, rendering it inappropriate for use with bilingual and bicultural children. For example, the test relies heavily on vocabulary knowledge, prior knowledge and experiences, and exposure to books. Children from lower SES homes, and/or diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds may not perform as well as their peers due to these biases and may be inappropriately identified as having a language disorder. For these reasons, the CELF-4 Spanish should be used to probe for information and not to identify a disorder or disability.