JUNE JPA 2005.qxp

Nonverbal measures of cognitive ability are playing an increasingly important role in psychoeducational assessment, based in large part on the changing demographics of American schools. Racial/ethnic minority students currently comprise approximately 40% of all students in the schools; and between 1972 and 2000, racial/ethnic minority student enrollment in public schools increased by 17%, with Hispanic students being the fastest growing student group in the nation's public schools (National Center for Educational Statistics [NCES], 2002). Moreover, in 1999, almost 20% of all 5-to 24-year-old students spoke a language other than English in the home, which is more than twice the number of students who spoke a language other than English in the home in 1979 (NCES, 2003). Some states report that as many as five dozen languages are spoken within a single school system (Unz, 1997). As the racial/ethnic and linguistic diversity of children and youth continues to increase, language-and culture-reduced measures of cognitive ability will play a larger and more central role in psychoeducational assessment than today. To address these urgent needs, a number of nonverbal measures of cogni-tive ability have recently been developed, including the Universal Nonverbal Despite the fact that these and other nonverbal tests of cognitive ability are among the most frequently used instruments with bilingual and limited-English-proficient students (Ochoa, Powell, & Robles-Pina, 1996), research on their validity has been minimal. Further This study examined the construct validity of the Comprehensive Test of Nonverbal Intelligence (CTONI) in two separate investigations. The first study examined criterion-related evidence of validity across racial/ethnic groups on the CTONI and the Woodcock-Johnson Psychoeducational Tests of Achievement (3rd edition). The second study examined the comparability of the standard and computerized forms of the CTONI. Results of the first study revealed that the CTONI overall score did not correlate significantly with reading achievement and correlated moderately with math achievement. The CTONI also showed significant racial/ethnic group differences, despite the absence of these differences on achievement. Results of the second study revealed that average scores on the standard form of the CTONI were significantly higher statistically than those on the computerized form. Correlations between raw scores on the computerized form of the CTONI and age were statistically significant, although generally low. In sum, results of this research raise concerns and questions about the validity of the CTONI. The CTONI should be used with caution , if at all, until further research is conducted .