This book meets a critical assessment need which is the need to develop legally and educationally defensible assessment procedures for use with non-English language background students who are still in the process of learning English. The purpose of this text is to provide educators with both the information on which to make effective educational decisions and the knowledge and insight to enable them to apply this information in both theoretical and practical contexts. The chapters in this volume are: Chapter 1, "Concepts of Instructional Assessment"; Chapter 2, "Understanding Second Language Performance"; Chapter 3, "Assessing Oral Language Performance"; Chapter 4, "Differentiating Language Disorders from the Effects of Limited Opportunities for Language Learning"; Chapter 5,"Towards an Integrative Academic Performance Assessment"; Chapter 6, "Assessing Academic Performance through Contextualized Measures"; Chapter 7, "Advocacy in the Assessment Process"; Chapter 8: "Identifying Special Needs"; and Chapter 9 "Using Assessment Information To Promote Instructional Effectiveness." An appendix with guidelines for instructional assessment is included. (Contains 671 references.) (CK)