The Assessment of Emergent Bilinguals

Supporting English Language Learners

Kate Mahoney

• Publisher: Multilingual Matters
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781783097258
• eBook ISBN: 9781783097289
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

A practical guide to testing for teachers of English Language Learners. This textbook is a comprehensive introduction to the assessment of students in K-12 schools who use two or more languages in their daily life: English Language Learners (ELLs), or Emergent Bilinguals. The book includes a thorough examination of the policy, history and assessment/measurement issues that educators should understand in order to best advocate for their students. The author presents a decision-making framework called PUMI (Purpose, Use, Method, Instrument) that practitioners can use to better inform assessment decisions for bilingual children. The book will be an invaluable resource in teacher preparation programs, but will also help policy-makers and educators make better decisions to support their students.

1 A Decision-Making Process Called PUMI

Themes from Chapter 1

(1) Teachers have to compromise along a continuum of assessment practices leading to deficit or leading to promise.

(2) Good assessment practices for emergent bilingual (EB) students are grounded in four guiding principles or assumptions.

(3) A useful tool called PUMI can assist teachers in making informed and appropriate decisions about assessment.

Key Vocabulary

• Assessment or testing
• Assessment lens of promise
• Assessment lens of deficit
• Translanguaging
• PUMI (purpose, use, method and instrument)

PUMI Connection: Purpose, Use, Method, Instrument

This chapter introduces the concept of PUMI – ‘purpose, use, method, instrument’ – which will be used in each chapter for the remainder of the book. PUMI is a decision-making process to help stakeholders make better decisions about assessment for emergent bilingual (EB) students. The author recommends that when you are unsure about what questions to ask and what is important, start asking PUMI questions. What is the purpose? How will the results be used? What is the best method? What is the best instrument? Finding the answers and understanding PUMI help slow down the process of assessment and lead us to using fewer and better assessments.

This foundational textbook has three primary objectives. First, it helps teachers and administrators understand the challenges with assessment and accountability for EB students that dominate the field today. Second, it prepares teachers, administrators and leadership teams to make decisions about how to use and select appropriate assessments for EBs. Third, this book prepares educators to advocate on behalf of EBs in regard to appropriate test-use policies and practices.

It’s a Continuum: Promise to Deficit

Valid assessment for EBs is a complex scientific challenge, especially in a monolingual schooling context. The various approaches to assessing EBs in the field today draw on contrasting views of assessment and bilingualism. This section briefly reviews a continuum of views, followed by guiding principles that teachers and administrators can draw on as they make practical decisions about assessing EBs.

There are many ways to view the assessment of EBs, and these can be best understood as a continuum – a wide range of approaches with extremes on either end – ranging from deficit to promise. Promising approaches to assessment highlight what the student knows and can do relative to multiple measures; on the other hand, deficit approaches highlight what the student doesn’t know, usually relative to one measure. What is especially challenging is whether and how educators can look at EBs through a lens of promise within an accountability system focused on what children cannot do (Figure 1.1 and Table 1.1). Understanding this continuum will prepare the ground for better EB assessment policy, practice and advocacy.

The lens of promise is grounded in the ideas of dynamic bilingualism (García, 2009) and sociocultural assessment (Stefanakis, 1999), and is typically used in assessment courses and popular textbooks to guide educators in how to assess (and instruct) EBs within a meaningful and culturally relevant context. However, more often than not, and in contrast to a promising lens, deficit views of assessment dominate the policies and accountability system under which educators must perform. Deficit and promise are strikingly different, and educators are required to negotiate them in a public-school setting in order to maintain good evaluations of their own teaching and do what is best for students. These two views are presented here as a continuum; that is, one end of the continuum differs extremely from the other end, but points near one another on the continuum may not be that noticeably different. These two views are not a dichotomy – mutually exclusive of one another, where educators must choose one view or the other. What is most common in schools today is a mix of both deficit and promising assessment approaches; state and district accountability systems are more often connected to looking for deficits or areas where children are lacking, whereas classroom assessment is more connected to the approach of promise. Usually, teachers negotiate both views. Table 1.1 illustrates in more detail both ends of the continuum.

Figure 1.1 Assessment practices are on a continuum from deficit to promise

Assessment vs. Testing

Oftentimes in conversations that take place in schools, the words assessment and testing are mistakenly used synonymously. Assessment is a much broader concept than testing and can be thought of generally as the use of information from various sources to make decisions about a student’s future instruction/schooling. Testing, on the other hand, is a measuring instrument that produces information we use in assessment. A test can be thought of generally to be like a measuring instrument such as a measuring cup or a scale or a tape measure … used to measure ideas to help make decisions in schools. The example given above is a very simplified view, just to point out the difference between assessment and testing. Measuring flour in a measuring cup is much easier than measuring language in a child emerging as bilingual.

Support for EBs in Measurement Community

It is important to note that stand-alone tests themselves are not bad. However, with the increase of testing and the high-stakes decisions made from test scores, most educators have become very frustrated with the way that tests scores are used. The frustration is usually with the test-use, not the test, and especially for groups of students like EBs. Many times, policymakers, legislators, school boards, etc., use test scores for EBs in wrong – or invalid – ways. Examples of this from current practice include using achievement test scores to judge language ability (wrong construct), using one test score only to reclassify an EB (never use one score to make a big decision) or using test scores from a test that EBs cannot read very well (not a fair measure). It is important to point out that the educational measurement community does not support these types of test-use practices, and they do in fact support promising practices for EBs.

Table 1.1 Comparing deficit vs. promising views of assessment

Leading to Promise	Leading to Deficit
Students are active participants or agents in the evaluation, which takes place in an authentic learning environment. • Example: Teacher shares rubric with students well ahead of assessment and students have the opportunity to ask questions and clarify what is expected.	Students are objects of evaluation – they do not know what is on the test; tests and responses to items are confidential. • Example: Teacher announces a ‘pop quiz’ and students don’t know what to expect. • Example: State achievement tests are kept in locked cabinets until a state-sanctioned time and day.
Assessments look for what students can do – assessing ability. • Example: Teacher uses a portfolio to show writing ability/strengths/potential.	Assessments look for disability or deficit in the child – assessing disability. • Example: Teacher highlights items that are wrong on a multiple-choice test and results are compiled to create an academic intervention plan.
Each child represents an example of difference and complexity. • Students give an oral presentation of recent changes in their family with audio, visual, digital and artistic components.	The learning deficit is in the child/family. • A very low test score in math leads the teacher to say ‘the child is at a disadvantage. He would do better if he had more support at home’.
Assessments are authentic and contextualized. • Unknown to the students, a teacher uses a checklist to observe and document use of English language during math problem-solving.	The assessment is decontextualized from authentic situations. • During an oral language standardized assessment, the administrator reads each item and none of the items are connected or real. For example, ‘How many hands do you have?’ and scores the response.
Several measures are used to make a decision (similar to the idea of triangulation in research). • A teacher uses results of a reading retell, role play and standardized reading assessment to make decisions about what level of reading the student should advance to.	A single measure determines a decision – frequently a high-stakes decision like reclassification or graduation. • A student has to score 65 or better on a state test to graduate from high school.
Instructional decisions are made on an individual basis. • A student with high reading levels in the home language is selected to be the leader of a bilingual dictionary activity.	If a child does not meet an expected norm, remediation is required. • All students below the 50th percentile on an English-only math achievement test are automatically assigned to a pull-out remedial math course.
The assessment occurs over many points in time and with conferences and feedback from teacher and peers. • Writing in the home language is assessed every five weeks of school to look for changes. Results are sent home to parents with a personal note from the student.	The assessment occurs at one point in time. • Testing day is April 10 from 9am to 11am.

The term ‘measurement community’ refers to measurement scientists who have studied...

Table of contents

• Cover-Page
• Half-Title
• Series
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 A Decision-Making Process called PUMI
• 2 History: How Did We Get Here?
• 3 Validity
• 4 Methods
• 5 Content and Language
• 6 Psychometrics
• 7 Accommodations
• 8 Special Education (co-authored with Laura M. Geraci)
• 9 Accountability
• Advice for Instructors on Chapter Activities
• Glossary
• Index