Introduction

This work will look at the assessment environment for English learners (ELs). Of the three dimensions of assessment as described by Kalantzis and Cope (2002) - assessment, evaluation, and research - I will be looking at the interplay between assessment and evaluation. I will look at how each learner are assessed to judge performance and what innovations in methods and technologies apply on an individual basis.

Sections of this work were originally delivered as updates in the Summer 2024 session of EPOL 534 at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. I have amended sections and expanded others since those original posts. 

Fig. 1: Department of Education. (n.d.). Academic performance and outcomes for English learners. Retrieved May 20, 2024, from https://www2.ed.gov/datastory/el-outcomes

I want to also look at how evaluation and research imagine English learners. What objectives frame the expectations for learning by ELs and how does our society value non-English speakers in educational settings? For example, the graphic above shows the graduation rates for EL cohorts across the United States - what hypotheses can we form from the information given? Given that graduation rates for EL are significantly lower than for non-EL students, it's almost banal to state that there is an equity issue in the United States that systematically disadvantages EL students. However, there are also huge variations in the graduation rates across states - what are the origins of those differences? What are the commonalities of experience?

My library career began in a branch library that is a district literacy center, and I learned a great deal about the challenges that adult learners face in attempting to improve their lives and take part more fully in their communities. Despite living in a very diverse part of the country and in a city and county that has a large percentage of Spanish speakers, these adults are seeking out better English skills to carry out their every day goals and establish foundations in their communities. They want to be ready for medical bills that don't make sense, school reports that suggest issues with their children, or job interviews that lead to better outcomes for themselves.

My spouse also faced many of the challenges that non-native speakers encounter when attempting to make sense of the world as a young person in new educational contexts. As a native speaker of Farsi, she emigrated to Sweden at the beginning of the 1990s. At the time she was at a level of schooling comparable to late middle school or early high school. In the remote, small town in northern Sweden where her family established their new lives, she had to learn Swedish immediately. There were no translators from the Swedish localities to help make sense of the new culture and society that she found herself in. There was certainly no chance to really develop her native language in school. Once in school, her own education suffered because of reduced access to the kinds of classes and opportunities that Western culture expects of valued citizens. She grew to distrust schools all while learning Swedish, caring for her family, and working from a young age. Her capabilities were not connected to school because, I believe, the schools could never see her as a person of value with language skills beyond those of her schoolmates.

The ways that young people are categorized, assessed, and channeled by educational systems has lifelong effects, and I want to understand and share how these processes work. I also want to suggest further directions for English learners.

The standards-based testing environment in California
In this section I will discuss the two most commonly administered tests for English learners. California requires testing of ELs in every examination that English-proficient speakers take. These exams are the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) and the English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC). The main test administered to both EL and English-proficient students is the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP). CAASPP serves as the state's internal testing apparatus for tracking students and local systems over time. Note that English learners receive no help for the exam in languages other than English and take the test in English as well.

I'll let the state of California's webpage on the test describe the purpose:
The primary purpose of the CAASPP System is to assist teachers, administrators, students, and parents by promoting high-quality teaching and learning through the use of a variety of assessment approaches and item types (CA Dept of Education, n.d.-a).

And, further, the structure and content of the test:

Content and Format: The Smarter Balanced Summative Assessments, which are delivered by computer, consist of two sections: a computer adaptive test and a performance task (PT) based on the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) for ELA and mathematics. The computer adaptive section includes a range of item types, such as selected response, constructed response, table, fill-in, graphing, and so forth. The PTs are extended activities that measure a student’s ability to integrate knowledge and skills across multiple standards—a key component of college and career readiness (CA Dept of Education, n.d.-).

The ELPAC exam comes in several formats with different purposes for each. There is the Initial ELPAC, the Summative ELPAC, and the Alternate ELPAC. The Alternate ELPAC serves to monitor and categorize the English learning of students with severe cognitive disabilities and will not be discussed in the present work. The Initial ELPAC is required for any student who is entering California schools for the first time and comes from a family that has indicated through an intake screening that the primary language spoken at home is not English. The Summative ELPAC is the exam taken annually to monitor the progress of ELs as their skills in English develop. It should be noted that English learners receive no help for the exam in languages other than English and take the test in English as well.

Data on the ELs and test results in California
In a 2018 report for the Public Policy Institute of California, Hill provides an excellent summary of the results of these tests. ELs made up 21 percent of California's student population at the time (p. 1). According to the current dashboard metrics available at the California School Dashboard, that number has shifted slightly to 19 percent (CA Dept of Education, n.d.). Those percentages, in concert with the total student population of close to 6 million students, mean that there are over a million EL students in California. This large number makes the enormous bureaucracy surrounding testing in the state make some sense. How else could so many individual students be classified, tested, prepared, assessed, and incorporated into educational planning?

Fig. 2: CA Dept of Education. (n.d.-b). California state summary. Retrieved June 20, 2024, from https://www.caschooldashboard.org/reports/ca/2023

Other interesting data in Hill's report show that most EL students (82 percent) are born in the United States and that the overwhelming majority of California's EL students speak Spanish at home, 83 percent (p. 3). The goal of instruction tailored towards ELs is reclassification from English Learner to Reclassified Fluent English Proficient (RFEP). While this goal is determined locally by individual schools and school systems it is measured by the Summative ELPAC exam. Schools with higher levels of EL students and worse scores on the ELPAC are eligible to receive more funding to support learning interventions for reclassification (p.2). More funding does not necessarily mean that ELs spend less time in specialized learning environments as many students spend 4-6 years classified as EL learners. Hill cautions that numbers for high school students who spent years under this classification should be considered carefully as those students are "more likely to drop out of high school" (p.5).

Fig. 3: Hill, L. (2018). K–12 reforms and california’s English learner achievement gap. Public Policy Institute of California.

Analysis - What is testing for?
Given this background information about the ELPAC, I wonder about the real purpose of these testing regimes. I've swum around the California Department of Education's website and it is labyrinthine. Nearly every bit of the labyrinth that encloses information resources about these two exams serves administrators of the test. Few resources are designed to provide context or understanding about the test or the results to parents or other interested parties, only a brief handout for parents.

In the introduction to Educational Assessment in the 21st Century: Connecting Theory and Practice, Patricia Broadfoot describes these testing regimes as the product of "apparently unquenchable international obsession with traditional examinations and tests" (p. ix). As I indicated earlier, I can understand the wish to make sense of the large and complicated matter of understanding the state's obligation to provide transformative education to its students. I'm not so sure, however, that these tests really do so much in assisting teachers, parents, and students as they claim. Large, nearly indecipherable systems like state boards of education begin to serve their own needs first. This means more policies and more changes and ever more interest in data. Indeed, in the Public Policy Institute report, Hill notes six different standard changes for reclassification in 4 years ending in 2017 (p.7). Who's interests rise to the top by this practice?

In the next section I will look at some of the critiques of these standardized tests and begin to point at ways to use learning designs that are more authentically oriented towards the needs and goals of the learners themselves.

Fig. 4: Blunnie, C. (2022). English is a language, not a way to measure someone’s intelligence. [Digital Illustration]. https://www.instagram.com/p/Cet_aT6J86H/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

There are many criticisms of standardized testing that go far beyond questioning the purpose and infrastructural demands that a testing regime imposes on schools, teachers, and students. This section will look at some of the many criticisms of standardized testing.

Testing as political performance

In his book, A Measure of Failure, Mark Garrison investigates the history of standardized testing with a socio-historical perspective. Garrison's conclusions are far too numerous to be summarized in this work, but some distinct points are worth sharing as they amount to criticisms of standardized tests as tools for learning. In fact, they are, for Garrison, almost exclusively tools for projecting political power and beliefs.

The socio-historical origins of standardized testing
Garrison argues that the early creators of intelligence tests, Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon, were not concerned with improving learning outcomes. Rather, their interests lay in assessing the social value of persons. And the value of a person for these creators of standardized tests was those that could be rendered into examinations that "that sought to measure talent or ability, those functional mechanisms given as responsible for successful behavior or achievement" (chapter 7). Additionally, the method or mode of uncovering this social value was in the test subject's use of language. For these language skills, 'successful behavior', and social tracking were designed to fit well into a society that is set for management by the most capable (chapter 7).

Reproducing the political with statewide testing
Further, Garrison also connects one of the earliest efforts at administering a test across a large group of students with political ends. Horace Mann maneuvered within Boston political climes to create a new test that would place the state as the arbiter of testing students. These tests would diminish the power of local agencies to define achievement and transfer the "responsibility of common good" the the test-makers in the statehouse (chapter 6). It is likely not a surprise to learn that Mann was the state's leading educational administrator. His own characterizations of the tests make clear that they reflect the ideologies of the ruling Whig party in 1845 (chapter 6).

Fig. 5: Horace Mann, head-and-shoulders portrait, three-quarters to right. (n.d.). Retrieved June 20, 2024, from https://www.loc.gov/resource/cph.3g07396/

Function problems

Criticisms of standardized testing for ELs go beyond the previous categories. Some scholars have noted ways that the standardized testing regimes aren't even achieving their own stated goals.
Reclassification for ELs into RFEP status happens at the school or district level. The procedures are localized, in other words.

Estrada and Wang have shown how inconsistently this process unfolds. In a meta-study of 7 cohorts in 2 districts, they uncovered the fact that 62 percent of students that met reclassification criteria were not elevated to that status (Estrada & Wang, 2018. p.6). They find several potential reasons for this including distinct variations in philosophy over the importance of timely reclassification and poor information sharing with parents and students about their EL status (Estrada & Wang, 2018).

Not mentioned was the potential for bias by educators. Unfortunately, some educators do hold the idea that EL students have less potential for achievement in testing than non-EL students (Zhu, 2024). Burgess and Greaves similarly demonstrate that students from marginalized backgrounds are "underassessed" compared to white peers, limiting their opportunities and creating an atmosphere for learning that lacks support (2013).

Inconsistencies, errors, and biases in the reclassification process of EL students matter. Reclassification gives students greater access to content-area instruction (Hill, 2018). Flores, et al. make compelling arguments that the persistent labeling of young people as LTEL students goes as far as degrading and transforming their own sense of identity, placing the 'blame' for their ascribed status on a fundamental part of their character and not the structural elements that do not support them (2015). These negative impacts result in detachment from formal educational settings and distrust of the processes of schools and schooling.

FIg. 6: Flores, N., Kleyn, T., & Menken, K. (2015). Looking holistically in a climate of partiality: Identities of students labeled long-term English language learners. Journal of Language, Identity & Education, 14(2), 113–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/15348458.2015.1019787

Finally, the way that reclassification distorts results presents other issues. Saunders and Marcelletti (2013) have shown that once students leave EL summative testing and become RFEP students, a tricky state of affairs develops: Successful students are no longer in progress evaluations to give a full picture of the achievements of EL learners. This means that English learning on the whole looks less effective. The table below from Saunders and Marcelletti can help visualize the point.

Fig. 7: Saunders, W. M., & Marcelletti, D. J. (2013). The gap that can’t go away: The catch-22 of reclassification in monitoring the progress of English learners. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 35(2), 139–156. https://doi.org/10.3102/0162373712461849

The data in Table 1 provide an indication of the proportion of initially classified ELs that are left out of the analysis when the sample includes only “current” ELs and excludes RFEPs. By 5th grade, more than a one third (38% RFEP) are excluded. (p. 147)

Analysis

Garrison's formulation of standardized testing as a way of identifying members of the social classes best fit to serve the administrative and bureaucratic needs of liberal democratic society coheres with the previous section's observation that testing regimes serve themselves first. Learners, families, and individuals seeking to enrich their lifeworlds are not centered. Indeed, they are, in some sense, too much trouble to be assessed as individuals - the old Boston educators before Horace Mann had this issue almost two hundred years ago when "written exams were instituted in high schools in Boston because visiting committees did not have enough time to hear the recitations and performances of the increasing numbers of students" (Haney and Madaus, 1989, as cited in Garrison, 2008).

The functional issues with state standardized testing for ELs demonstrate even further that such regimes are divorced from the needs of students and learners as individuals. This is not only true in the domain of people's desire to make meanings for themselves or their pursuit of authentic and fulfilling lives, it's also true insofar as the test-making and placing regime sees students as subjects in needs of particular resources. Failures in the reclassification system don't even permit the state board to create accurate portrayals of English learners.

New Learning and English Learners
If the goals of learning designers include the well-being of students and the facilitation of their learning and exploration then where to look for some kinds of possible solutions? Previous sections have shown that while the second of those goals may be, at least in part, a stated goal of standardized testing, the actual practice and structures say something else. Standardized tests tend to serve instead policy analysts, state apparatuses, and the political environment. The result is often poor results. The result is also students mired in unrewarding and oppressive cycles of testing and re-testing without their own agency.

Short of abandoning the tests that systems seem to love so much, some pathways to liberating and transformative learning experiences can be woven together from New Learning and authentic learning methods and theories. New Learning principles articulate the need to value the experiences and backgrounds of learners, not to ignore them in the name of test sample accuracy. This same ethos envisions learners who use their agency in resilient networks of collaboration while individually finding their passion and purpose in the world (Cope & Kalantzis, 2012). Turning specifically to those people designated EL (this work, too, is complicit in the practice of reducing a rich and diverse set of people into an efficient two-letter acronym), what else could the focal point of change be other than the embracing of their linguistic heritage?

Bilingual education as pathway to meaningful, student-centered, development
The idea to teach English learners their native language alongside English and subject area content breaks no new trail alone. However doing so does have numerous significant advantages for the students and their school ecology.

Let's begin by establishing a productive basis for bilingual education. In their meta-analysis of bilingual education studies, Slavin and Cheung calculate a statistically significant, moderate positive impact on English reading performance for Spanish-dominant students (p. 273). Students who were able to maintain the learning and development of their native language alongside increasing instruction in English were successful in measured results of their development in both languages (Slavin and Cheung, 2005).

Morita-Mullaney et al. (2020) conducted a longitudinal study following two groups of children from grades 3-6. Students were either in a dual language bilingual education (DLBE) program or in a more traditional English as a second language (ESL) program. They found:

that emergent bilinguals in DLBEir s programs achieved higher scores on standardized ELA and math exams relative to their peers in ESL programs. These findings were supported by the results in Phase II, where emergent bilinguals in DLBE also performed better in the core academic courses of ELA, math, and science in middle school compared to their peers in ESL programs. (p. 708)

The authors did make an important discovery that does temper some enthusiasm for bilingual education. Bilingual programs did not get the same access to courses. Language class requirements meant that advanced levels electives in the science, social studies and other learning areas weren't offered to these students. A summary table shows the differences:

Fig. 8: Morita-Mullaney, T., Renn, J., & Chiu, M. M. (2020). Obscuring equity in dual language bilingual education: A longitudinal study of emergent bilingual achievement, course placements, and grades. TESOL Quarterly, 54(3), 685–718. https://doi.org/10.1002/tesq.592

Brooks and Karathanos make the point that "Learning most effectively occurs in the language that the learner knows the best. The skills and understandings acquired in the first language are accessible to a learner in the second language" (p.48). They also note that developing students' primary language can serve as a kind of scaffold for extending their proficiency in English (p.48). When viewed in this way, the experience and cultural traditions of English learners take on additional power and importance, forming the foundation of their learning, expression, and development.
 

Approaches to incorporating skills into the acquisition of English language proficiency

Understanding by Design

One of the main theoretical frameworks that can support New Learning ideas within it is the kind of authentic education described by Wiggins and McTighe in Understanding by Design (2005). In the Understanding by Design theory of pedagogy, understanding, and goals dictate the shapes, practices, assignments, and evidence or assessments. Educators take goals and design learning experiences that will lead to effective learning and deep understanding. The following brief video shows Grant Wiggins discussing this theory of teaching.

Avenues the World School. (2012). Understanding by design [Video]. YouTube.

The main points that can be applied to bilingual learning are to develop skills and repertoires that can be transferred into authentic experiences. Authentic experiences are the vast array of situations, goals, problems, and challenges that people seek out and encounter in their lives. That may be teaching a patient about an illness, giving a presentation to colleagues, or writing a magazine article that wins an award.

As Wiggins and McTighe (2005) put it: "To understand is to be able to wisely and effectively use—transfer what we know, in context; to apply knowledge and skill effectively, in realistic tasks and settings" (p. 7). For English learners, authentic assessment lies closer to the production and demonstration of that understanding than any standardized test. In a bilingual setting, we might seek goals that show the development of mastery of both languages and subtle or sophisticated analyses of how cultures interact with one another.

For example, a bilingual student could produce a zine that collected essays, cartoons, and poetry from their peers in multiple languages, edit the zine, add illustrations, and reproduce it for distribution on campus. Completing the project and presenting it becomes the assessment itself. Having done the thing they prove their understanding.

Numerous other approaches and methods serve to inform a bilingual approach to English language skill development. It must be said, that somewhat curiously, when a bilingual approach - and thus a centering of language as foundational - is taken, there begins to be more emphasis on the full panorama of content, subjects, and topics. The learners no longer are excluded from environments where content learning happens and assignments and projects are challenging - qualities not present in most EL-specific learning environments (Abedi, 2004; Briseño and Bergey, 2022). In other words, teachers without training or competencies in bilingual methods can fall into the habit of "dumbing down the curriculum to make it linguistically simpler or alternating between lessons focused on language and those about content" (Schwartz, 2018).

Some of those methods are described by Ortega and Minchala. They suggest, like Wiggins and McTighe, a greater emphasis on formative assessment which requires close connections between instruction and performance as teachers modify the former based on observations of the latter (p. 163). Another valued technique that they describe is Cooperative Group Assessment (CGA) which sees students collaborate on reviewing each other's work (p. 161). CGA also connects with other examples of group work's importance for English learners. Schwartz describes the San Francisco International High School where a mix of over a dozen languages arises from an international cohort of students. Most projects and learning occur in groups where there are mixes of English language abilities, yet they are expected to help one another construct meanings using their native languages (Schwartz, 2017). The video below shows some of the students from the school.

BAYCAT (Director). (2013, May 30). San Francisco International High School Promo [Video]. YouTube.

Conclusions

These methods are vital to creating learning environments for English learners that honor their existing skills, language, and heritage. California only recently became better situated to begin greater bilingual education. From 1998 to 2017 the state operated under Proposition 227 which essentially eliminated bilingual education in the state except for some waiver exemptions (Garcia, 2020; Hill, 2018). With this provision having been replaced, California's school districts are seeking to replenish positions for bilingual educators according to each locality's needs. Despite many techniques and methods for teaching bilingual students without firsthand knowledge of both languages, gaps remain.

Undoubtedly, bilingual fluency is preferred and cultural knowledge is paramount. Lessons from New Learning and Understanding by Design demand that we look broadly and think critically about students and the dynamics across their languages, expressions of knowledge, and personal histories. Such chains of connected, performative relations are important to attend to. Small differences can be critical. Big ideas matter. 

Flores and Garcia provide an important reminder to not lose sight of the political and hierarchical structures that have sidelined and repressed communities of color in the English learner network. They describe the trend for Dual Language Education which mixes native and non-native English learners in dual language classrooms. Their point is that such classrooms ignore the racial and cultural issues that English learners face while serving mostly white, affluent students in a 'boutique' experience (p.25). Ultimately, what we design for English learners must really be a co-design with these students that shares the vision and production of their authentic selves.