Assessment and Instruction of Reading Skills: Results with Mexican-American Students

Mexican-American students often demonstrate a reading delay. This apparent delay may be the result of several factors including inappropriate assessment, irrelevant instructional programs, second-language instruction before students have fully mastered their native language, and an absence of special assistance. Reading ability is critical to academic success, which, in turn, plays an important role in social mobility. This paper includes an examination of the tenets of nonbiased assessment, an evaluation of tests for assessing Mexican-American students' reading skills, and a discussion of research relevant to reading instruction programs for limited-English proficient students. For educational equity to be attained, practitioners and researchers must continue efforts to develop new assessment instruments, standardize informal reading inventories and cloze tests, and explore the use of new instructional strategies for teaching reading to limited-English proficient students.