What are my ethical responsibilities related to assessing and treating children from culturally diverse populations?
Evaluations of students from culturally diverse backgrounds should be based on current preferred practices providing an estimate of the child’s functioning level in the various areas assessed using information elicited during the evaluation and your clinical judgment. Test scores should not be reported when using translated tests not normed on the population representing the student, nor should you use tests containing biases that will negatively affect a child’s performance and may erroneously indicate the need for special education services. It is also important to discriminate between communication problems that may be relative to learning English as a second language versus those that are truly considered to be a speech-language disorder. See The ASHA Leader article by Catherine J. Crowley, “The Ethics of Assessment With Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Populations,” and the Cultural Competence Issues in Ethics document, both on the ASHA Web site. For additional information on
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