Are we slipping them through the cracks? The insufficiency of norm-referenced assessments for identifying language weaknesses in children with hearing loss.

Children with hearing loss who use listening and spoken language increasingly reach performance within or above the average range on norm-referenced assessments of language ability prior to entering school; however, they continue to perform below expectations on language-based academic skills, such as reading. The purpose of this article was to identify limitations of making service provision decisions primarily on the basis of norm-referenced assessments for children with hearing loss. We offer evidence from a group of children with hearing loss who scored within 1.5 standard deviations of the mean on a norm-referenced omnibus language measure. These children with hearing loss performed more poorly than age-matched children with normal hearing on several measures derived from a naturalistic language sample. Based on the limitations of norm-referenced assessments and the findings of this study, we propose that language sample analysis should be used as primary evidence of language weakness for children with hearing loss.