Entry Testing and the Overrepresentation of Romani ... - UR Research

R12PITFALLS AND BIASINTRODUCTIONThe overrepresentation of pupils from cultural and linguistic minority communities in special education is endemicworldwide, and children from Romani communities in Central and South Eastern Europe are subject to thissegregation and marginalization through their overwhelming placement in special education schools for pupilswith mental disabilities. The purpose of this study is to examine some of the ways in which Romani children fromthe Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, and the Slovak Republic are segregated from their non-Romani peersand placed in the special education system. This is done through school readiness assessment (colloquially, schoolentry testing 1 ), by which children are denied entry to school through a delay of school entry, streamed 2 intopreparatory or transition classes in special schools, or directly assessed with standardized psychological and/oreducational tests 3 for placement in special education classrooms or schools. This study reviews the issues associatedwith such testing, the links with the overrepresentation of Romani children in special education, and therelationships to secondary education and post-school employment opportunities. This study also examinesinternational good practice in the use of school readiness/entry assessments that are used to integrate andnot segregate children and draws conclusions and sets out recommendations about how to address issues aroundschool readiness/entry assessments.SCHOOL READINESS ASSESSMENT AND ITS USESIn the countries discussed in the case studies of this paper, a child is typically considered to be ready to attendschool—either kindergarten 4 or the first year of primary education—when he or she exhibits developmentalmaturity in social, cognitive, and physical abilities that will allow a child to be successful in school. Admittance tokindergarten or to the first year of compulsory primary schooling is usually connected in some way with anassessment of a child’s readiness for school and screening for special educational needs (SEN).1 School readiness, or school entry, testing is the assessment a child typically undergoes before the first year of compulsory schooling, duringwhich the child’s developmental maturity in the areas of physical /motor, social-emotional, language (for example, phonemic awareness,identifying letters), visual discrimination, and fine motor skills.2 “Streaming” is the tracking of pupils into homogeneous academic ability or interest groups. In the context of this study, streaming refersto the process of moving pupils from general education, out of the mainstream, into segregated transition, preparatory, or special educationsettings. This occurs through some form of assessment and subsequent determination of special educational needs.3 Psychological and/or educational assessments are norm-referenced, standardized instruments purportedly designed to provide estimatesof an individual’s intellectual/cognitive abilities and educational achievement levels. An example of an assessment for intellectual ability isthe Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children, Fourth Edition (WISC-IV), while an assessment for educational achievement is theWoodcock-Johnson III Tests of Achievement.4 In this paper, “kindergarten” is used as a general term for preschool, or early childhood education, for children ages three to five or six. Insome countries, as will be noted, the last year of kindergarten is considered the first year of compulsory schooling, but in other countries,kindergarten is not compulsory.