Misidentification: How Language Proficiency Exams Missed Out On One Child’s Bilingualism

Language proficiency exams have been used since the development of bilingual education. The purpose of the following case study is to demonstrate how the English and Spanish proficiency exams given to a child for admission into a dual language (Spanish-English) program framed a child in a deficit view and missed the proficiency the child had across languages. The following manuscript takes three different positionalities: 1) that of a former elementary bilingual teacher, 2) Latina mother working to raise her children bilingually, and 3) a bilingual teacher educator (i.e., university professor) to show the complexity and problematic nature of such exams.