Fifty poverty-level Mexican American bilingual children in first and fourth grade were tested for verbal facility in both English and Spanish to determine which language was dominant at the initial grade level and an advanced grade level. An East Los Angeles almost all of its students lived in the same Federal Housing project, thus ensuring low income status and reasonable homogeneity in terms of language and culture. Students were individually given the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test in both English and Spanish by a bilingual member of the community who was not informed as to the purpose of the testing. Since some of the Spanish stimulus words were not meaningful for this particular region and dialect, bilingual educators from the community helped to substitute stimulus words for the less appropriate ones. If form A of the test were given in English, then form B was given in Spanish. This variable was counterbalanced as was the order of the language used. Results indicated there was no significant difference between verbal facility scores in English and Spanish at either the first or fourth grade level. This indicates that placement into bilingual programs without assessing language dominance may be a mistake. (Author/NQ)