Symposium: Language Assessment in Standards‐Based Education Reform

Abstract

SYMPOSIUMThis symposium brings together international scholars to discuss issues arising from current practices in the design and use of language assessments for students designated as English language learners in standards-based contexts. We asked each of the contributors to comment on a particular aspect of language assessment, with a particular focus on validity. The authors use England and the United States as two case studies to demonstrate ways in which this topic is highly relevant to current and future scholarship and policy in TESOL. This symposium article, to which three authors contribute distinct parts, presents the rationale for standards-based language assessment and examines both the uses and misuses of language assessments in English-speaking countries that are engaged in standards-based education reform. Specifically, they focus on the assessment of emergent bilinguals (also referred to as English language learners or English as an additional language students). The first part lays out the intentions and challenges of standards-based language assessment for emergent bilinguals, focusing on validity concerns. The second part describes classroom-based teacher-led assessments of emergent bilinguals in England, which carry high stakes along with the national standardized tests. This contrasts with what is happening in the United States where, as the third part describes, the main focus is on high-stakes standardized testing for purposes of accountability. In

Transnational English language learners fighting on an unlevel playing field: high school exit exams, accommodations, and ESL status

“…It is not reasonable to take a tenth grader with only sixth-grade English reading skills, label him ''English-proficient'', and withhold all accommodations on that basis. The present study reinforces researchers' argument that using ELP tests as a predictor for ELLs' performance in academic contexts, and making high-stakes decisions accordingly, entails validity concerns and ethical problems (e.g., Menken, Hudson and Leung 2014;Solórzano 2008).…”

“…English-medium content tests fail to accurately assess ELLs' content knowledge, because they have not yet developed proficiency in the language of the tests and ''any test that employs language is, in part, a measure of their language skills'' (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association and National Council on Measurement in Education 1999: 91). In other words, for ELLs, any English-medium content test acts as an ELP test, and their test performance will be affected by construct-irrelevant variance; ELLs consistently underperform on content tests as compared to their native English-speaking peers (Abedi 2002;Menken 2008;Menken et al 2014). A strong correlation between the ELP levels of ELLs and their content test performance has been reported in previous studies such as Butler and CastellonWellington (2005).…”

“…Researchers have questioned the validity of this practice, indicating the mismatch between the language tested on ELP tests and that used on content tests as the latter include more advanced vocabulary and more complex sentence-structure and grammatical constructions (Butler and CastellonWellington 2005;Stevens et al 2000). Researchers have reported cases where only a small portion of students who have passed ELP tests go on to pass Language Arts content tests, as well as cases where those who have passed Language Arts tests still fail ELP tests (Menken et al 2014). One problem is that each state defines ''proficiency'' differently and there is no consensus on the definition of ''academic language,'' which both researchers and practitioners agree ELLs need to acquire in order to perform well in academic contexts (Valdés 2004).…”

Dynamic Bilingualism as the Norm: Envisioning a Heteroglossic Approach to Standards‐Based Reform

“…With the reforms in the 1980s, mainstreaming became common practice, and certain interpretations of the policies held emergent bilinguals to the same National Curriculum standards as all students. These policies surrounding the standards-based movement in England emphasize that content teaching in mainstream classrooms is made accessible to all students without any specific attention paid to the unique needs of emergent bilingual students (Leung, 2005;Menken et al, 2014). The result has been that the needs of emergent bilinguals have been ignored by policymakers, with teachers left to navigate their increasingly diverse classrooms with little support (Costley, 2014).…”

“…However, the development of these truly heteroglossic ideological and implementation spaces within the context of the CCSS are threatened by the potential development of assessments based on monoglossic language ideologies that will be used to measure student mastery of the standards (see also Mislevy &Durán, 2014, andMenken et al, 2014). Two testing consortia have formed to create standards-based tests that are aligned with the CCSS: the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness of College and Careers (PARCC).…”