Perhaps we don't need to administer such tests when LEP students succeed on tests in English. But when LEP students struggle with tests in English, we need to routinely administer and interpret language-proficiency tests, perhaps along with achievement tests in students' native language. Unfortunately, many language-proficiency tests are flawed. Multimodal measurement is important because of the longer time it takes to acquire language proficiency needed for academic learning than for ordinary communication. This ideal rarely is possible, however.
Few tests are available in languages other than English.
In all testing situations, we need to understand the cultures that test takers come from so we can consider their behavior from their cultural perspective. Under the best conditions, we should be able to communicate in students' native languages when necessary. Researchers have recommended other ways to test LEP students. But this technique is hard to quantify, standardize, and validate, as well as being time-consuming. Still, it may informally describe a student's learning ability.