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There are major issues involved with the disaggregated No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act in terms of its adequate yearly progress reporting for students with limited English proficiency (LEP). Inconsistent LEP classification, as well as the sparse population of LEP students in many states, threatens the validity of adequate yearly progress reporting. The LEP subgroup's lack of stability also threatens accountability, since students attaining English proficiency move out of the subgroup. The linguistic complexity of assessment tools may lower LEP student performance in areas with greater language demand. Finally, schools with larger numbers of LEP students with lower baselines may require greater gains. Thus, NCLB's mandates may unintentionally place undue pressure on schools with high numbers of LEP students. Continuing efforts to remedy these issues should bring more fair assessment and accountability.

Increased attention to large-scale assessments, the growing number of English language learners in schools, and recent inclusionary policies have collectively made assessment accommodations a hotly debated issue, especially regarding the validity of test results for English language learners. Decisions about which accommodations to use, for whom, and under what conditions, are based on limited empirical evidence for their effectiveness and validity. Given the potential consequences of test results, it is important that policy-makers and educators understand the empirical base underlying their use. This article reviews test accommodation strategies for English learners, derived from “scientifically based research.” The results caution against a one-size-fits-all approach. The more promising approaches include modified English and customized dictionaries, which can be used for all students, not just English language learners

Using existing data from several locations across the U.S., this study examined the impact of students' language background on the outcome of achievement tests. The results of the analyses indicated that students' assessment results might be confounded by their language background variables. English language learners (ELLs) generally perform lower than non-ELL students on reading, science, and math-a strong indication of the impact of English language proficiency on assessment. Moreover, the level of impact of language proficiency on assessment of ELL students is greater in the content areas with higher language demand. For example, analyses showed that ELL and non-ELL students had the greatest performance differences in the language-related subscales of tests in areas such as reading. The gap between the performance of ELL and non-ELL students was smaller in science and virtually nonexistent in the math computation subscale, where language presumably has the least impact on item comprehension.The results of our analyses also indicated that test item responses by ELL students, particularly ELL students at the lower end of the English proficiency spectrum, suffered from low reliability. That is, the language background of students may add another dimension to the assessment outcome that may be a source of measurement error in the assessment for English language learners.Further, the correlation between standardized achievement test scores and external criterion measures was significantly larger for the non-ELL students than for the ELL students. Analyses of the structural relationships between individual items and between items and the total test scores showed a major difference between ELL and non-ELL students. Structural models for ELL students demonstrated lower statistical EDUCATIONAL ASSESSMENT, 8(3),

How can we make effective accommodations for nonnative English speakers taking mathematics measures? What kinds of accommodations are useful and what kinds are not? Where does this research need to go in the future?