Very true. We had an event about language assessment just last week where experts working with minority hearing and/or deaf groups discussed this question and also whether it is enough to rely on normative assessments when looking at groups that are very heterogenous. Also, there is a lot of informal assessing going on in many classrooms with deaf children some of which may actually be quite successful. Obviously, we don't really know about any of these informal assessments unless we spend some time in schools observing what goes on. What I would like to see is more of a dialogue between researchers and practitioners working in schools, exchanging ideas and experiences about ways to measure deaf children's langauge skills. Without a doubt, there 's a lot we can learn from these exchanges. An easy start would be to get some teachers and/or speech language practitioners/therapists involved in this forum..