Cognitive test performance of English language learners

English language learners have fallen behind monolingual English-speaking peers academically (National Center for Education Statistics, 2015), and they can be disproportionately represented in special education (Sullivan, 2011), which is, in part, accounted for by inadequate assessment measures. To date, research on the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) has consistently shown that ELLs perform lower than monolingual English-speakers, particularly on verbally loaded subtests (Atlus, 1953; Cathers-Shiffinan & Thomson, 2007; Murphy, 1990, Nieves-Brull, 2006; Palmer et al., 1989; Styck & Watkins, 2013; Styck & Watkins, 2014), which suggests that language, and to some extent acculturative knowledge, directly affect performance. One tool developed to aid in evaluating the validity of results from the Wechsler Scales and other tests is the Culture-language Interpretive Matrix (C-LIM). The purpose of the current study is to use archival data from a sample of ELLs to evaluate ELLs' performance specifically on the WISC-V to assist in guiding the C-LIM's respective test classifications for it, particularly for the new subtests. Visual analyses and paired samples t-tests revealed that, as expected, ELL performance demonstrates a general declining pattern as cultural/linguistic loading of subtests increases, which further supports the underlying principles of the C-LIM. Moreover, the results suggest improvements to the current WISC-V classifications in the C-LIM which will assist and enhance practitioner's decision-making about the validity of ELL's test results with the WISC-V.