Moving Toward Social Justice for Hispanic Children using a Neurocognitive Method for the Assessment of SLD

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to present legal aspects related to the evaluation processes of Hispanic students with SLD and other related health diseases and propose a neurocognitive approach in the diagnostic process of them. Health Inequities have been evidenced in Hispanic population. Federal regulations, regarding special education eligibility services, encourage the inclusion of measures of psychological processes to identify SLD’s.  The laws also establish that these assessments must not be discriminatory on a racial or cultural basis.  Research-based assessment approaches, such as the Discrepancy/Consistency (D/C) Method (Naglieri, 2011; Naglieri & Otero, 2017), to identify students with different diagnosis using neurocognitive measures have been suggested as reliable and valid method to serve populations with cultural diversity (Sotelo-Dynega, Flanagan & Alfonso, 2011).