ESL Assessment Toolbox

1
ESL Assessment Toolbox

• By
• Denise Forrest
• Edu 525
• 6/26/08

2
Table of Contents

• Immigration, CLD and ELL Trends
• Pros and cons of high stakes testing
• Categories and types of tests
• 3 components of a Good Assessment
• Cultural Bias
• Authentic Assessments
• Formal vs. Informal Assessment
• Acculturation Theories
• My Assessment Philosophy

3
Immigration Trends in the U.S. (pg 7)

• Its been going on since at least the 1500s, from
  Spanish and French explorers and missionaries, to
  English settlers, to immigrants from around the
  globe coming here, by choice or by force.
• Immigrants are coming to live in non-traditional
  receiving communities (like Omaha, rather than
  New York).
• By 2010, it is estimated that foreign-born
  immigrants will make up 13 of the U.S.
  population.
• (But consider In the 1800s, during the height of
  European immigration, foreign-born immigrants
  made up 15 of the population.)

4
CLDs in the Classroom Trends (pg. 9-10)

• There are ever growing numbers of Culturally and
  Linguistically Diverse (CLD) students in American
  classrooms (many of whom were born and have lived
  their whole lives in the U.S.)
• The fastest growing immigrant nationality is
  Mexican.
• Hispanics are becoming the ethnic majority (in
  terms of population size) in many cities and
  states.
• CLD students are statistically more likely to
  come from poverty-stricken homes.
• Many CLD students have parents who are living in
  America as undocumented workers.
• More CLD students enter American schools in
  middle or high school, rather than elementary
  school.

5
ELLs in the Classroom Trends (pg 11)

• There are higher numbers of CLD students whose
  first languages are not English than there used
  to be.
• Over 66 of CLD students whose first language is
  not English come from Spanish-speaking home.
• The number of ELLs who come from Asian
  language-speaking homes is also increasing.

6
ESL Students in NE (Edu 525 6/17/08)

• Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) defines an
  ESL eligible ELL student as one who
• Has sufficient difficulty in understanding,
  speaking, reading or writing the English language
  to deny him the opportunity to learn successfully
  in classrooms in which the language of
  instruction is English.
• Was not born in the US or has a native language
  other than English
• Comes from a home in which a language other than
  English is most relied upon for communication
• Is an American Indian or Alaskan Native student
  and comes from an environment in which a language
  other than English has had a significant impact
  on his level of English language proficiency.

7
High Stakes Testing in the U.S. (Edu 525 6/17/08)

• Student academic proficiency for all students in
  America is assessed these days through High
  Stakes testing.
• ELLs are NOT exempt from these high stakes test,
  which are only administered in English, though
  ELLs are allowed to take an English-Proficiency
  test instead of a Language Arts test during their
  FIRST year in an American school.

8
Why to have High Stakes Testing

• Encourages teacher accountability
• Because NCLB says so, and your school doesnt get
  federal funding/could get into a lot of trouble
  if they dont administer the tests and report the
  scores on the tests
• If tests show that a school is not serving its
  students well, NCLB says parents have greater
  educational options for their students, like
  receiving free tutoring services or sending their
  child to a different school.
• In theory, the instructional practices that grow
  out of high-stakes testing ought to help close
  the achievement gap between minority and white
  students
• Can be used to assess teacher effectiveness, and
  be used to determine how to improve classroom
  instructional practices.

9
Why NOT to have High-Stakes Testing (pg 13/Edu
525 6/16/08)

• They can be really stressful for students!
• They encourage teachers to teach to the test,
  focusing on low-level, basic skills, with lots of
  redundancy of instruction, rather than letting
  teachers focus on teaching content-standards
  and/or higher-level thinking skills
• They are easy for ELL students to fail, pushing
  them out of the educational system and making the
  learning process feel hopeless and pointless.
• Testing is really expensive for schools, and many
  instructional days are lost to test prep and
  administration
• The extreme monetary incentives and penalties
  motivates schools and districts to manipulate
  test results.
• Because each state/district makes its own test,
  standards of scoring are not uniform. So,
  sometimes students arent learning more, they are
  just being assessed differently.
• If schools fail to make Adequate Yearly Progress
  (AYP) for two years in a row, funding is removed
  from poor performing schools, then standards will
  be lowered. Nobody wins neither students nor
  educators..

10
High Stakes Tests are usually scored as

• Norm-Referenced
• or
• Criterion-Referenced

11
Norm-Referenced Tests

• The percentile score compares a students raw
  score to the raw scores of all the other students
  who took the test that year, in that
  district/state/the country. A student scores in a
  certain percentile based on the average raw test
  scores. (ex. If you are in the 78th percentile,
  you probably did not get 78 of the questions
  right, but rather, you scored better than 78 of
  all the students who took the test).

12
Criterion-References Tests

• The score indicates how much a student knows on
  a subject. The students should be given the test
  as a pre-test, to determine what they already
  know, and as a post-test, to determine what they
  learned through the teachers instruction. The
  test should reflect content-standards for the
  subject being tested.

13
Classroom- Based Assessments can be

• Selected Response multi-choice and matching
  tests. Also referred to as forced-choice
  format.
• or,
• 2)Constructed Response essay, fill-in-the-blank,
  and every form of authentic assessment.

14
Classification of Assessments

• 1) Standardized Assessments Everything about
  the test is the same for every student who takes
  the test directions, setting, content, format,
  scoring, etc.
• 2) Authentic Assessments (a.k.a. Alternative
  Assessments There is variation in testing
  procedures. Numerous examples giving in slides
  that follow.

15
What is an assessment of Academic Achievement?

• An assessment that measures the students
  conceptual skills and knowledge of the core
  content area standards and objectives.
• Students need a chance to learn the material,
  then demonstrate that they know the material

16
3 Qualities of a Good Assessment

• 1) Reliability Consistency. If 2 different tests
  of the same type were be given to the same group
  of students, they would get the same results.
• 2) Validity the test is actually assessing what
  you mean it to be assessing (ex. This Civil War
  social studies test is assessing my students on
  what they know about the Civil War, not on what
  they know about WWII, nor on whether they can
  write a good 5-paragraph essay.)
• 3) Fairness There is no cultural, gender,
  language, etc. bias in the test.

17
What is Cultural Bias?

• When a test does not take a students culture or
  language background into account, making a
  question unfair. It can lead to incorrect answers
  because the questions are invalidly assessing on
  knowledge that is not taught in the curriculum.
• Examples Questions that
• require you to already know how many people are
  on a baseball team. (ex. If two baseball players
  are home sick, how many players are in the
  dugout?)
• expect you to recognize English literary
  references.( ex. Multiply the number of gables on
  the house in the book by Hawthorn by the number
  following the name Henry in the Shakespeare
  play involving the battle of St. Crispins Day.)
• assume a knowledge of Christian practices. (ex.
  What day of the week will it be two days after
  Jim goes to church?)

18
Assessment Alignment

• Assessments are aligned when they match
• 1) teacher training (ex. the teacher knows how
  to properly administer and grade the test)
• 2) content-standards for the class (ex. It is a
  chemistry class. You are testing them on their
  understanding of covalent bonds, not on their
  understanding of bonds in Romeo and Juliet.)
• 3) Classroom curriculum (ex. You do not spend the
  unit teaching them about Spanish preterit verbs,
  then test them on the pluscuamperfecto).

19
Why Use Authentic Assessments?

• Sometimes standardized and formal tests are
  inadequate means to assess ELLs English
  Proficiency and growth. These alternative
  assessment methods let you identify and build on
  students strengths, such as their language
  proficiency, prior experience, and pre-existing
  academic knowledge.
• These alternative assessment methods are an
  accommodation for ELLs, so that their language
  proficiency is not a stumbling block to their
  demonstrating their actual knowledge on a
  subject.
• A problem Scoring is often subjective, and
  sometimes difficult to quantify

20
Types of Authentic Assessment

• Performance-based
• Portfolio
• Self-Assessment/ Peer-Assessment
• Interview-based
• Play-based
• Cooperative-group
• Dialogue Journal
• Scaffolded Essay

21
Performance-based (pg. 27)/Edu 525

• Knowledge is constructed through learning, so you
  assess as the students discover knowledge for
  themselves. (ex. Assess the students process of
  carrying out a science experiment.)

22
Portfolio (pg 29)/Edu 525

• Samples of student work are collected, to show
  both the best of the students work, and the
  progression of the students improvement over the
  course. Shows how product matches criteria and
  objectives.

23
Self-/Peer-Assessment (pg. 32-33)/Edu 525

• Students use a grading rubric to assess their own
  and their peers work. Students, on their own,
  learn to identify the traits of good work.

24
Interview-based (pg 34)/ Edu 525

• Teachers can assess students background
  knowledge and skills by directly interviewing
  them or giving them questionnaires.

25
Play-based (pg 37)/Edu 525

• Role-playing and literacy-rich play-settings (ex.
  Restaurant, where there are menus and someone
  takes orders, or home with newspapers to read).

26
Cooperative Group (pg 38)/Edu 525

• Students work in teams, and are assessed on their
  group work skills and their group-produced final
  product.

27
Dialogue Journal (pg 40)/Edu 525

• Students write, and the teacher writes back,
  writing correctly formed sentences and words that
  the student had made errors with in the previous
  journal entry.

28
Scaffolded Essay (pg 41)/Edu 525

• Rather than have a student write an essay on a
  topic from scratch, the teacher provides a basic
  outline and/or cloze sentences for the student to
  fill in.

29
Informal vs. Formal Assessment

• Formal Assessment Usually a summative assessment
  at the end of a unit, used to attain a summary of
  what the student has learned.
• Informal Assessment A students daily work,
  showing the formation of their knowledge
  throughout the learning process during the unit.

30
Acculturation vs. Enculturation

• Enculturation Becoming a part of the culture you
  are born into. This is an unavoidable, natural
  process.
• Acculturation The process of entering into a
  culture different from the one you were born and
  raised into.

31
Acculturation is NOT Fun

• The U-Curve Hypothesis explains the Acculturation
  process as starting up, dipping down, then
  coming up again (like an upper case letter U).
• The Adoption/Adaptation Hypothesis is another
  explanation of the process, which is possibly
  better able to explain a long-term acculturation
  process.

32
U-Hypothesis of Acculturation (pg 58)

• 1) Honeymoon You feel novelty in the unfamiliar
• 2) Hostility You get angry and frustrated at
  constant misinterpretations of the culture.
• 3) Humor You see the humor of cross-cultural
  experiences, from both sides.
• 4) Home You feel at home in your old and new
  culture

33
Adoption/Adaptation Hypothesis (pg. 83-84)

• Acculturation is a very long 4-stage process
• Euphoria You are excited and curious about the
  new culture
• Culture Shock You become frustrated with the
  new culture and may suffer depression.
• Anomie You begin to get a sense of yourself in
  the new culture, while losing a sense of yourself
  in your home culture. You feel completely
  estranged/in a cultural no mans land. (This
  period can last a life-time if the socialization
  process is overall a negative one, such as
  entering a society that is prejudiced against
  you).
• Adoption/Adaptation You may assimilate (adopt
  the new culture in the place of your old one
  which can be problematic if your parents/family
  still live in the old culture, as well as give
  you life-long identity issues), or integrate
  (function equally well in your old and new
  cultures).

34
My Assessment Philosophy

• The culture shock and acculturation processes
  that CLD students and ELLs go through can cause
  them immense physical and psychological stress.
  Between language barriers, affective filters, and
  even biological adaptation factors, there are any
  number of reasons that CLD students or ELLs
  perform poorly on traditional, standardized,
  English-only tests, and are unable to show their
  actually capabilities on such tests.
  Standardized tests can be useful tools for
  assessing students progress and determining how
  to modify and enhance my instruction. I am sure I
  will use standardized tests in my classroom at
  times, as well as give my students the skills
  they need to succeed on NCLB-driven tests.
  However, because of all the unique needs of my
  ELLs and CLD students, I am sure I will sometimes
  provide them with authentic assessments as
  opportunities for them to show me what they are
  capable of, outside of the strict confines of
  traditional essay or forced-choice format tests.

35
References

• Herrera, S.G., Murry, K.G., Cabral, R.M.
  (2007).Assessment Accommodations for Classroom
  Teachers of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse
  Students. Boston Pearson Education, Inc.
• Edu 525 ESL Assessment, Summer 2008, College of
  St. Mary, class slides