EIPA Assessment System: Written Test vs Performance Test, Purpose & State Standards

EIPA Assessment System: Written Test vs Performance Test, Purpose & State Standards

Quick Answer: The Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment (EIPA) is an evaluation system administered by the Boys Town National Research Hospital Diagnostic Center in Omaha, Nebraska. It comprises two distinct tests: a 176-question, 4-hour computer-based Written Test (scored pass/fail with a 75% cutoff) assessing foundational child development, linguistics, law, and ethics, and a video-recorded Performance Test that typically runs two to two and a half hours (scored on a 0-to-5 scale) evaluating real-time expressive and receptive interpreting against authentic classroom and child-signing stimuli. Both tests are offered in four quarterly testing sessions each year. The Written Test fee is $260 and the Performance Test fee is $365, with possible additional proctor or local-test-administrator fees. Boys Town also offers a third, non-credentialing product, the EIPA Screener, which agencies order and pay for when hiring interpreters; it is not available to individual interpreters directly. The EIPA is an assessment agency, not a certifying or licensure agency, which is why there are no prerequisites for either test. Most states mandate a minimum Performance score of 3.5 (some requiring 4.0) for K-12 employment. Candidates select an Elementary (grades 1-6) or Secondary (middle and high school) assessment and the sign language they use; Boys Town currently describes the Performance Test as evaluating interpreters whose students use predominantly ASL or PSE.

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1. The Origins and Mission of the Boys Town Diagnostic Center

Educational interpreting operates within a pedagogical and developmental framework distinct from general community, legal, or medical interpreting. In the late 20th century, pioneering research by Dr. Brenda Schick, Kevin Williams, and colleagues at the Boys Town National Research Hospital (BTNRH) in Omaha, Nebraska, revealed that many interpreters placed in public schools lacked the specialized skills required to convey grade-level academic instruction or comprehend developing child signers.

To address this systemic crisis, the Boys Town Diagnostic Center established the Educational Interpreter Performance Assessment (EIPA). The EIPA was engineered to evaluate whether an interpreter can facilitate genuine linguistic, academic, and social access in elementary and secondary environments. Rather than evaluating general adult conversational fluency, the EIPA specifically measures an interpreter's ability to handle instructional pacing, teacher demonstrations, complex academic terminology, and child-to-adult discourse dynamics.

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2. Federal Special Education Context: IDEA, FAPE, and LRE

The legal necessity for qualified educational interpreters stems directly from federal disability statutes:

• Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA): Under IDEA Part B, eligible children with disabilities are entitled to a Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) delivered in the Least Restrictive Environment (LRE). For deaf and hard-of-hearing students educated in general education classrooms (mainstream settings), the educational interpreter functions as the essential linguistic bridge enabling FAPE.
• Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 & Title II of the ADA: These civil rights statutes mandate equal access to public educational programs. When a school places an underqualified interpreter with a student, the student is effectively denied equal access to the curriculum, violating federal statutory protections.

If an interpreter misinterprets mathematical operations, obscures historical cause-and-effect relationships, or fails to voice a deaf child's questions, the student experiences linguistic deprivation and cognitive fatigue. The EIPA provides state departments of education and local school districts with a standardized, psychometrically validated instrument to verify interpreter qualifications.

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3. The Dual Assessment Structure: Written Test vs. Performance Test

The EIPA assessment system consists of two separate, independently administered evaluations: the Written Test and the Performance Test.

The EIPA Written Test

The EIPA Written Test evaluates the interpreter's understanding of information critical to performing with students in an education setting.

• Format & Length: 176 multiple-choice questions, delivered online by EIPA-approved proctors at approved sites.
• Time Allotment: A four-hour limit is enforced; the average candidate finishes in about two and a half hours.
• Scoring Model: Pass/fail. A score of 75% or above is required to pass. Candidates are told whether they passed or failed at the test site.
• Fee: $260, due at registration. Proctors are permitted to charge an additional proctor fee, so confirm before registering.
• Content Domains: Nine reported domains — Child Language Development, Culture, Education, English, Interpreting, Linguistics, Literacy and Tutoring, Professionalism, and Technology — with items developed from the Boys Town EIPA Content Knowledge Standards.

The EIPA Performance Test

The EIPA Performance Test evaluates the ability to expressively interpret classroom content and discourse and to receptively interpret student sign language, using recorded classroom and child/teen-signing stimuli.

• Format & Length: A recorded session that typically takes two to two and a half hours from the candidate's arrival, including a warm-up period.
• Evaluation Scope: Both expressive skills (voice-to-sign: interpreting the recorded classroom lesson and discussion into sign) and receptive skills (sign-to-voice: voicing authentic child or teen signing into spoken English).
• Scoring Model: Criterion-referenced sub-skill ratings on a 5-to-0 scale, averaged into a composite reported to one decimal place, assigned by a three-member evaluation team that includes at least one deaf evaluator.
• Fee: $365, due at registration. An additional fee of up to $85 may be charged by the approved local test administrator.

The EIPA Screener

Boys Town also offers the EIPA Screener, a supplemental screening resource for educational and interpreting agencies. Boys Town describes it precisely, and every part of the description is testable:

• It gives a brief snapshot of a candidate's expressive and receptive educational interpreting skills at the time of review. It evaluates the same general skill domains as the Performance Assessment but is not a comprehensive evaluation and is significantly shorter.
• Results are descriptive indicators — Proficient, Developing, or Not Yet Proficient — not a 0.0-5.0 rating, and they do not constitute a formal recommendation.
• Screener results do not predict performance on the full Performance Test, do not replace it, and do not indicate whether a candidate meets state licensure, certification, or employment requirements.
• It is not available to interpreters directly; a hiring agency must order and pay for it. The Diagnostic Center administers it virtually, typically on Mondays.

Comparative Matrix: EIPA Written Test vs. Performance Test

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4. Assessment and Diagnostic Instrument vs. National Certification

A critical concept tested on the EIPA Written Test is the distinction between an assessment/diagnostic tool and a certification credential:

1. The EIPA is a Diagnostic Assessment: Boys Town National Research Hospital does not grant professional licenses, issue national certifications, or confer legal titles. Instead, Boys Town administers the evaluation and produces a comprehensive Diagnostic Score Report identifying proficiency levels and granular skill needs.
2. State Credentialing Bodies Issue Licenses: Individual state departments of education, state interpreter licensure boards, and credentialing entities determine how EIPA scores are applied. Historically, the Registry of Interpreters for the Deaf (RID) issued an Educational Interpreter (Ed:K-12) Certificate to applicants who achieved an EIPA Performance score of 4.0 or higher together with a passing EIPA Written Test or NIC Knowledge Exam. That certificate has been under moratorium since January 1, 2016, so no new Ed:K-12 applications are accepted; interpreters who already hold it remain RID-certified. The underlying EIPA assessment continues to be offered by Boys Town regardless of RID's moratorium.
3. No prerequisites, by design: Boys Town states directly that EIPA is an assessment agency, not a certifying or licensure agency, which is why there are no prerequisites for either test. A degree is not required, neither test must precede the other, and an interpreter is not required to take both.

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5. State Adoption Patterns and Minimum Competency Thresholds

Across the United States, states have established varied statutory thresholds for educational interpreters:

• The Level 3.5 Benchmark (Standard Adoption): The majority of states regulating educational interpreters mandate a minimum composite of 3.5 on the EIPA Performance Test. Verified examples drawn from state regulatory language include Colorado (3.5 for sign language interpreters seeking initial educational interpreter authorization; 4.0 on the EIPA-Cued Speech assessment, or a passing CLTNCE score, for cued language transliterators), Washington, California, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina, whose statute bars a local education agency from employing an educational interpreter rated below 3.5. Requirements differ by state, change over time, and are absent entirely in some states; the National Association of Interpreters in Education maintains a state-by-state map compiled from regulatory documents, and your own state education agency is the final authority.
• The Level 4.0 Standard (Rigorous Jurisdictions): Several states and forward-thinking school districts mandate a 4.0 minimum, recognizing that complex secondary STEM curricula and advanced literature require advanced linguistic mastery.
• Provisional Permits (Level 3.0 to 3.49): Facing chronic personnel shortages, certain states issue temporary or provisional credentials to candidates scoring between 3.0 and 3.49. These permits are strictly time-limited (typically 2–3 years) and mandate an Individualized Professional Development Plan (IPDP) to reach 3.5. Scores below 3.0 are considered non-functional for solitary classroom interpreting.

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6. Grade-Level Specialization: Elementary (Grades 1-6) vs. Secondary (Middle and High School)

Candidates must deliberately select one of two assessments based on their classroom assignment. Boys Town is explicit that the resulting evaluation is for the grade level and sign system selected, does not imply skills at other levels or in another language or system, and may not accurately reflect performance at other grade levels — a re-evaluation is recommended when changing grade level, target sign system, or language.

1. Elementary Assessment (Grades 1 through 6):
   • Instructional Characteristics: Features narrative discourse, early literacy instruction, concrete visual demonstrations, multisensory activities, and lively teacher affect.
   • Student Language Dynamics: Student stimuli feature authentic elementary-age deaf children exhibiting developing phonology, immature handshape approximations, emerging classifier usage, and non-linear narrative structures.
2. Secondary Assessment (Middle and High School):
   • Instructional Characteristics: Features fast-paced academic lectures, dense discipline-specific vocabulary (e.g., photosynthesis, supply and demand, polynomials), abstract analytical reasoning, and rapid multi-speaker debates.
   • Student Language Dynamics: Student stimuli feature adolescent deaf signers using rapid fingerspelling, contemporary youth idioms, regional colloquialisms, and nuanced conversational register shifts.

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7. Sign Language and System Options: ASL and PSE

The EIPA Performance Test requires candidates to declare the sign language they use before testing. The choice is consequential twice over: it governs how the expressive sample is judged, and it also determines which child or teen signer you view during the receptive component. Boys Town's current Performance Test page states that the test "is not limited to any one sign language or system" but that EIPA is used to evaluate interpreters working with students who use predominantly American Sign Language (ASL) and Pidgin Signed English (PSE) — and its current student-signer recruitment seeks ASL and PSE signers only. Older third-party summaries still list a separate MCE track; treat the two options Boys Town publishes today as authoritative and confirm your selection on the registration paperwork.

• American Sign Language (ASL): A distinct visual-gestural language with unique grammatical rules, syntax (topic-comment), directional verbs, spatial mapping, and non-manual markers. Candidates are evaluated on authentic ASL linguistic structures.
• Pidgin Signed English / Conceptually Accurate Signed English (PSE / CASE): A contact communication form utilizing ASL signs in predominantly English grammatical word order. Interpreters must maintain high conceptual accuracy, selecting signs for semantic meaning rather than verbatim English morphemes.
• Where Manually Coded English still appears: MCE — the engineered family of sign systems representing spoken English, including Signing Exact English (SEE II) and Signed English — is not one of the two languages Boys Town currently advertises for the Performance Test, but it has not vanished from the assessment. The evaluation form carries the item Consistent Use of English Morphological Markers (English sign systems only), which is marked NA and excluded from the average when the sample is not an English sign system, and Sign Systems is one of the nine Written Test domains. Know MCE as content; do not assume it is a selectable Performance Test track.

What Test Day Actually Looks Like

Boys Town's own description of the Performance Test process adds several details candidates routinely miss:

• A scheduled warm-up period precedes the assessment, used to preview child-signing stimuli, select the classroom stimulus, and complete an EIPA confidentiality agreement and other paperwork. All materials viewed, including warm-up materials, are confidential.
• For the expressive sample you choose between two sets of classroom lesson topics (Option A or Option B), guided by the grade level and content areas each one covers, and you then study the lesson plans for the classroom video you selected.
• For the receptive sample you choose between two child signers (Elementary) or two teen signers (Secondary) after previewing both signing styles, in the sign language or system you use.
• Both portions are video-recorded and sent to the EIPA Diagnostic Center; nothing is scored at the site. Budget the full published window — Boys Town says the test "typically takes an average of 2.5 hours starting when the test candidate arrives."

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8. Realistic K-12 Classroom Scenarios

Scenario A: Elementary Track Science Lesson

An educational interpreter is placed in a 2nd-grade classroom during a unit on plant life cycles. The teacher reads a storybook, then transitions into an interactive lesson describing how roots absorb water from soil.

• Expressive Challenge: The interpreter must utilize descriptive classifiers (DCLs) and spatial verbs to illustrate capillary action visually while conveying the teacher's enthusiastic tone.
• Receptive Challenge: A 7-year-old deaf student raises their hand and signs with imperfect handshapes: ME PLANT WATER HOME DIE WHY. The interpreter must voice: "I watered my plant at home, but it died. Why did that happen?" Voicing the child's question accurately without adding adult vocabulary preserves the student's authentic classroom voice.

Scenario B: Secondary Track Social Studies Debate

In an 11th-grade U.S. History class, the teacher conducts a rapid debate on constitutional checks and balances.

• Expressive Challenge: The interpreter must rapidly fingerspell constitutional terms, establish spatial anchors for the three branches of government (Executive, Legislative, Judicial), and convey shifting teacher questions.
• Receptive Challenge: An adolescent deaf student rapidly counters a peer's point using idiomatic adolescent signing and fast fingerspelling. The interpreter must match the student's assertiveness and teenage register in spoken English.

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9. Exam Traps & Strategic Distinctions

• Trap 1: Assuming the Written Test confers a practice credential. Passing the EIPA Written Test satisfies knowledge requirements but does not grant authorization to interpret in school districts that mandate an EIPA performance score.
• Trap 2: Assuming Elementary and Secondary tracks are interchangeable. A candidate certified on the Elementary track cannot assume reciprocity in secondary high school placements; state boards often require testing in the specific track served.
• Trap 3: Confusing the EIPA with RID NIC certification. The EIPA is a diagnostic assessment administered by Boys Town for K-12 settings; RID NIC is a generalist professional certification.