Improving Testing For English Language Learners

More than any book to date, this one provides a comprehensive approach to designing, building, implementing and interpreting test results that validly measure the academic achievement of English language learners. It scaffolds the entire process of test development and implementation and discusses essential intervention points. The book provides the type of evidence-based guidance called for in federal mandates such as the NCLB legislation. Key features of this important new book include the following... Comprehensive – This book recommends methods for properly including ELLs throughout the entire test development process, addressing all essential steps from planning, item writing and reviews to analyses and reporting. Breadth and Depth of Coverage– Coverage includes discussion of the key issues, explanations and detailed instructions at each intervention point. Research Focus – All chapters include an extensive review of current research. Emerging Trends – The chapters summarize guidance appropriate for innovative computer-based assessments of the future as well as the paper-and-pencil tests of today. This book is appropriate for anyone concerned with the development and implementation of fair and accurate testing programs for English language learners. This includes university based researchers, testing personel at the federal, state and local levels, teachers interested in better assessing their diverse student populations and those involved in the testing industry. It is also appropriate for instructors teaching undergraduate and graduate courses devoted to testing the full range of students in todays schools.

The revised PreK-12 English Language Proficiency Standards build on the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessments (WIDA) Consortium's English Language Proficiency Standards for English Language Learners in Kindergarten through Grade 12 (Wisconsin, 2004). The WIDA Consortium is a group of ten states, formed in 2002 with federal monies, that has developed comprehensive English language proficiency standards. This volume also uses grade-level clusters that reflect current educational configurations in the United States. Each of the five language proficiency standards is divided into the four language domains of listening, speaking, reading and writing. The five levels of language proficiency reflect characteristics of language performance at each developmental stage and include: starting (L1), emerging (L2), developing (L3), expanding (L4), and bridging (L5).

"Students with disabilities must overcome unique obstacles in order to learn, and the pressure of testing often exacerbates existing challenges. With increased focus on accountability for all, how can educators properly prepare students for tests without sacrificing meaningful learning? In Improving Test Performance of Students With Disabilities ... On District and State Assessments, Second Edition, authors Elliott and Thurlow offer numerous strategies for improving instruction, student accommodations, and test preparation, all with the goal of improving the test performance of students with disabilities. Emphasizing practical application, this comprehensive resource delineates the key elements district, school, and state professionals must consider in order to maximize the academic performance of students with disabilities. The second edition of this insightful text addresses the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act on instruction and assessment practices for students with disabilities, including those who are also English Language Learners. Featuring inserts and easy-to-follow worksheets, tables, and appendices, this indispensable resource will enable all educators to help students with disabilities learn more effectively and show what they know on the day of the test."--Publisher's website.

This book focuses on central issues that are key components of successful planning, development and implementation of LSAs. The book's main distinction is its focus on practice- based, cutting-edge research. This is achieved by having chapters co-authored by world-class researchers in collaboration with measurement practitioners.

This guide has the broad purpose of improving large-scale academic assessments for limited-English-proficient (LEP) students. It was written because large-scale assessments are studded with problems that affect not only how equitable the achievement of LEP students can be measured, but also how effectively LEP students' mastery of content is assessed. LEP students may understand more than they are allowed to demonstrate under the confines of large scale tests designed for mainstream use with students sharing common cultural experiences. This guide is designed to provide both practical, research-based information for individuals and groups developing and administering tests of academic achievement for LEP students. It is also intended to provide lucid, easily accessible knowledge for policymakers that clarify the complex issues facing LEP students. The guide is organized into 10 chapters with two appendices. Chapters cover the following topics: issues of alignment, inclusion, and participation; alignment of performance standards to content standards; test specifications and the accessibility framework for LEP students; accessibility on writing terms; writing accessible rubrics; promising administrative and response accommodations; expanded bias reviews; scoring constructed response items; demonstrating the technical merit of assessments; and accessibility considerations when reporting and using test results. The appendices offer a technical discussion of issues related to accessibility and the highlights of key research on assessment of LEP students. (Contains 60 references.) (KFT)

For many teachers of English language learners, the field of assessment is foreign territory. Assessment has its own culture, traditions, and terminology. This training guide is intended to help classroom teachers become more comfortable creating and using assessments. A Practical Guide to Assessing English Language Learners provides helpful insights into the practice and terminology of assessment. The text focuses on providing the cornerstones of good assessments—usefulness, validity, reliability, practicality, washback, authenticity, transparency, and security—and techniques for testing. It devotes a chapter to the assessment of each of the four main skill areas (reading, writing, listening, and speaking), and also covers placement testing, such as using TOEFL® and MELAB, diagnostic testing, evaluation, and instructional decision-making with regard to testing. Tips to improve students’ test-taking strategies are offered, and each chapter ends with a helpful list of Ten Things to Remember, as well as informative case studies featuring two teachers and their assessment decisions. Incorporating its own principles, A Practical Guide to Assessing English Language Learners opens with a short quiz for the reader called Are You Testwise? that quickly determines how each teacher will benefit from this indispensable guide.

English Language Proficiency Assessments for Young Learners provides both theoretical and empirical information about assessing the English language proficiency of young learners. Using large-scale standardized English language proficiency assessments developed for international or U.S. contexts as concrete examples, this volume illustrates rigorous processes of developing and validating assessments with considerations of young learners’ unique characteristics. In this volume, young learners are defined as school-age children from approximately 5 to 13 years old, learning English as a foreign language (EFL) or a second language (ESL). This volume also discusses innovative ways to assess young learners’ English language abilities based on empirical studies, with each chapter offering stimulating ideas for future research and development work to improve English language assessment practices with young learners. English Language Proficiency Assessments for Young Learners is a useful resource for students, test developers, educators, and researchers in the area of language testing and assessment.

Assessing English Language Learners explains and illustrates the main ideas underlying assessment as an activity intimately linked to instruction and the basic principles for developing, using, selecting, and adapting assessment instruments and strategies to assess content knowledge in English language learners (ELLs). Sensitive to the professional development needs of both in-service and pre-service mainstream teachers with ELLs in their classrooms and those receiving formal training to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students, the text is designed to engage readers in viewing assessment as a critical part of teaching appreciating that assessments provide teachers with valuable information about their students’ learning and thinking becoming aware of the relationship among language, culture, and testing understanding the reasoning that guides test construction recognizing the limitations of testing practices being confident that assessment is an activity classroom teachers (not only accountability specialists) can perform Highlighting alternative, multidisciplinary approaches that address linguistic and cultural diversity in testing, this text, enhanced by multiple field-tested exercises and examples of different forms of assessment, is ideal for any course covering the theory and practice of ELL assessment.