Diversity Roundtable I

Chapter Five
Assessment of Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students: Considerations for the 21^st Century
by Aida Walqui, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

If the K-12 school system is to be supportive of students who are English language learners, more attention must be given to issues facing these students. This paper explores several such issues and examines the role that opportunity-to-learn standards and standards for English as a Second Language can play in promoting the achievement of English language learners. An explanation of the role of authentic assessment and examples of its effective use also are provided.

Dr. Aida Walqui is an assistant professor in the Division of Education at the University of California at Santa Cruz. She has extensive experience in the field of foreign and second language teaching at the elementary and secondary levels. Dr. Walqui has authored two books on the teaching of Spanish for Spanish speakers and a book on teaching Spanish as a second language in intercultural, bilingual programs.

INTRODUCTION

Two major trends have characterized the field of American education in the last three decades tremendous changes in school demographics that have rendered American students the most diverse of any country in the world and calls for reform that have as their central goal the attainment of higher standards by all students. How these two forces interplay, the possibilities they present for the increasing number of English language learners ¹ (ELL) in K-12, the advantages and the dangers in using standards and new forms of assessment with these students, and other tensions connected to standards-based reform are the primary concerns of this paper.

CHANGING DEMOGRAPHICS

Growth in the number of English language learners in the school system was triggered by three major policy changes in the United States: (1) the immigration reform of 1965, which permitted significant increases in the number of immigrants from Asia and Latin America; (2) the 1986 amnesty program, which allowed three million formerly unauthorized immigrants to legalize their situation in the United States; and (3) the Immigration Act of 1990, which increased regular immigrant visas by 40 percent over the levels reached in the 1980s (Portes & Rumbaut, 1996).

According to the 1990 U.S. census, 14 percent of the total school population were language minority children — children who lived in a home where a language other than English was spoken. Many of these students did not speak English or did not speak it well enough to succeed academically in classes conducted exclusively in English. The top nine languages spoken by students in U.S. schools were Spanish, representing 73 percent of the total ELL population; Vietnamese, 3.9 percent; Hmong, 1.8 percent; Cantonese, 1.7 percent; Cambodian, 1.6 percent; Korean, 1.6 percent; Laotian, 1.3 percent; Navajo, 1.3 percent; and Tagalog, 1.3 percent (August & Hakuta, 1997).

A recently released study conducted by the U.S. Bureau of the Census (1998) found that in 1995 there were 2.4 million school-age children who spoke a language other than English at home and who had limited proficiency in English, up from 1.25 million in 1979. These 2.4 million students represented 5 percent, on average, of all school-age children in the country, a number that varied from 2 percent in the Midwest to 11 percent in the West. The majority of English language learners, 67 percent, were concentrated in five states: California, Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois. However, the increase in diversity that these statistics reflect has been felt all over the country. In fact, one can argue that the educational impact caused by the presence of a few immigrant students who do not speak English, in an area that is unaccustomed to or unprepared for them, can be more overwhelming than the presence of many in areas that have already developed response mechanisms to try to meet their needs (Walqui, 1999).

English language learners overwhelmingly come from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, a situation that is worsening. For example, between the late 1970s and the early-to-mid l990s, the poverty rate for young children increased by 30 percent among the White population, while it grew by 54 percent among Hispanics (who, as we have seen, constitute the largest percentage of ELLs) and by 15 percent among Blacks (National Center for Children in Poverty, 1998). Seventy-seven percent of ELLs in schools were eligible for reduced or free meals, compared with 38 percent of all students (August & Hakuta, 1998). Prospects (a congressionally mandated, national longitudinal study of representative students in Chapter 1/Title I) found that a large percentage of ELLs attend schools where 75 to 100 percent of their classmates live in poverty.

Given these dramatic statistics, as well as the increases that are estimated to continue over the next two decades (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1998), it is important to ask how ELLs are faring in the education system. Unfortunately, useful data on education outcomes for these students are extremely sparse, in part because ELLs were exempted from participation in tests due to their limited proficiency in English. In addition, some of the data that are available are not valid given students' limited proficiency in the language in which they were tested. The little information we do have paints a bleak picture of school achievement. For example, prospects offers some measure of ELLs' achievement in the lower grades. Students were tested using the Comprehensive Test of Basic Skills in its English (CTBS) or Spanish (SABE) version, depending on their language proficiency. Scores showed that ELLs performed significantly below general population norms in reading and math (Moss & Puma, l995). For both tests, performance was strongly correlated to the concentration of students from poor families; thus, the higher the concentration of poor children in the school, the lower the learner's performance. However, when the data were disaggregated between language minority students who spoke English and ELLs, it was possible to see how students' limited English proficiency contributed to their lower scores. For the third-grade cohort, for example, English-speaking language minority students in high poverty schools scored at the 26.9 mean percentile; ELLs in the same schools scored at the 15.5 percentile. This same low pattern of performance, which is further affected by limited English proficiency, is repeated across other grades that were studied.

Another statistic that reveals the dire situation in which ELLs find themselves is the high dropout rate, especially among Spanish-speaking students. For example, in 1989, 31.3 percent of Spanish speakers dropped out of school, compared to 10.5 percent of English-only speakers. Still another revealing measure is the small number of ELLs who graduate from high school with the prerequisites to attend a four-year institution. In addition, many students who do make it into college have to enroll in remedial courses.

PREVAILING MISCONCEPTIONS ABOUT THE EDUCATION OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

There are at least two reasons that it is important to firmly establish the connection between poverty and low levels of education achievement for English language learners. First, many people think that the only "problem" to be solved in the education of ELLs is their lack of English proficiency — that once students "learn English," everything else will fall into place for them. California has witnessed this lack of understanding of the complex issues involved in the school failure of ELLs with the passage of Proposition 227 — an attempt to legislate an English-only education so that immigrant students learn English and succeed in life. Although education is important for the future success of all students, many other societal issues must be resolved before minority populations can have access to occupational and economic success. As Kaplan (1997) reminds us:

The concept that . . . providing a transition for a disadvantaged segment of the population to be admitted to the corridors of power via language instruction is fallacious . . . it cannot accomplish the implied purpose since access to social mobility and political power is only partially a function of language proficiency. (p. xii)

Another prevailing misconception is one that Warren and Rosebery (1995) describe as "equity in the present tense," that is, the idea that it will be a great day when English language learners learn English because they will be able to catch up with the mainstream. However, performance similar to that of the majority of English-only speaking students in the American education system would be an insufficient accomplishment, given the current state of mainstream education. Kozol (1988) asserts that the current American education system is characterized by "savage inequalities," that is, that a small percentage of the population — the "haves" — receive high-quality education, while an increasing proportion of the population — the "have nots" — attend schools that have inadequate resources, low morale, and inadequate pedagogy. A 1988 report by the Commission on Minority Participation in Education and American Life (quoted in Miller, 1995) painted a gloomy picture of the consequences of these major differences in educational, social, and economic attainment between majority and minority populations:

America is moving backward — not forward — in its efforts to achieve the full participation of minority citizens in the life and prosperity of the nation.

In education, employment, income, health, longevity, and other basic measures of individual and social well being, gaps persist — and in some cases are widening — between members of minority groups and the majority population.

If these disparities are allowed to continue, the United States inevitably will suffer a compromised quality of life and a lower standard of living. Social conflict will intensify. Our ability to compete in world markets will decline, our domestic economy will falter, and our national security will be endangered. In brief, we will find ourselves unable to fulfill the promise of the American dream. (p. 2)

Changes in the demands placed on schooling have come from varied sources — from historical changes, from the realization that the country was falling behind other leading nations in the world, and from developments in our understanding of the teaching/learning process.

During the industrial period, the United States did not educate all of its citizens alike. One of the coping mechanisms used by schools to try to balance societal demands for a unified citizenry was educational triage — investing resources only in those students considered likely to succeed. There were two ways of legitimizing this "creaming" of students: (1) through a functional ideology, which stated that schooling was the way in which more capable individuals were chosen for important positions; and (2) through a conflict ideology, which maintained that investing more resources in some students was justified by virtue of their station in life (Pallas, Natriello, & McDill, 1995). Whatever the rationale, society agreed that this was the way things were supposed to be. In addition, an emphasis on low-level skills in the education of most students was not perceived as very problematic because, at the time, there were plenty of jobs, especially for unskilled workers.

As the United States moved from an industrial to a knowledge- and communications-based society and as the position of the country changed in the world economy, demands on schools changed. Successful high school graduates today are required to have higher levels of literacy and be able to generate, use, and transfer knowledge. Those who can generate, use, and communicate knowledge are more likely to obtain, hold, and advance in jobs. Those who have not developed sophisticated knowledge and skills take up the responsibilities of earlier servant classes (Heath, 1995). A great percentage of English language learners hold these lower types of jobs, which condemns them to a life of poverty. In addition, fewer and fewer unskilled jobs are available today. For all of these reasons, attaining higher levels of education levels is unquestionably important.

Calls for reform of educational processes and content also resulted from the realization that focusing on students' development of basic skills was no longer sufficient in a world in which the requirements for success had increased. In addition, there was an acknowledgment that the United States suffered from a comparative economic disadvantage in world markets, a situation that needed to be corrected. Education critics have emphasized the need for national success primarily because of a concern about the country's standing in international comparisons of educational achievement. Yet, the American democratic participatory system requires the attainment of higher education standards by all students.

A third impetus for education reform has resulted from changing views of learning, language, and knowledge. Unlike the behavioristic, transmission-oriented understanding of learning, sociocultural educators consider learning a process of apprenticeship in which children grow into the intellectual lives of those around them (Vygotsky, 1978) through a social process of modeling and appropriation (Brown & Campione, 1994; Tharp & Gallimore, 1988). Similarly, language, knowledge, and skills are considered today to be jointly constructed by human beings. Based on this view, language becomes perceived, noticed, used, and elaborated on as part of the activity of the learner in tasks, projects, and interpersonal relationships that are meaningful, challenging, interesting, and well scaffolded (Walqui, 1999). These views challenge static notions of a "banking" form of education (Freire, 1974) in which the teacher is the depository of knowledge and teaching is the transmission of this knowledge to a passive, receptive student.

Responding to these three primary forces for change, the Goals 2000: Educate America Act was signed into law by President Clinton on March 31, 1994. This act codified the national education goals and provided resources to states and communities to help them develop and implement education reforms aimed at helping all students reach challenging academic standards. The passing of this act was based on the recognition that the education system must serve all students equally well and that in order to carry out system-wide reforms, a "carrot and stick" approach needed to be implemented — thus the emphasis on accountability. Standards and assessment became rallying terms around which educators nationwide expressed their support for or disapproval of the new reform concepts.

Reform issues were also on the minds of educators concerned about the impact on ELLs of the Goals 2000 legislation. In September 1993, a group of scholars met at Stanford University to discuss the implications of a standards-based reform for these students; they subsequently published a report on their deliberations and consensus (August & Hakuta, 1993). These meetings were followed by others that more specifically addressed the research and development needed to incorporate ELLs into the thrust of school reform. Two overarching principles guided their work:

1. Language-minority students must be provided with an equal opportunity to learn the same challenging content and high level skills that school reform movements advocate for all students.

2. Proficiency in two or more languages should be promoted for all American students. Bilingualism enhances cognitive and social growth, competitiveness in a global marketplace, national security, and understanding of diverse peoples and cultures. (August, Hakuta, & Pompa, 1994, p. 6)

STANDARDS AND ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

It has become commonplace in education to say that all students can achieve high standards. But what do we mean when we repeat this mantra of school reform with reference to English language learners, who are currently languishing in the system? (August & Hakuta, 1997; Olsen, 1995). Perhaps we should consider how the Stanford Working Group phrased the need to hold students to high standards: "Language-minority students must be provided with an equal opportunity to learn the same challenging content and high level skills that school reform movements advocate for all students" (August, Hakuta, & Pompa, 1994, p. 6). There are several points that should be highlighted here in order to clearly understand how standards may affect ELLs and native speakers of English differently.

First, ELLs must acquire English language skills and knowledge that students who arrive in school speaking English already possess. This knowledge encompasses not only linguistic knowledge, but also cultural understandings that are essential for effective participation in the life of the school and the community. English language learners, then, must develop sociolinguistic proficiency in addition to literacy and subject-matter knowledge. The key focus of efforts, both in the teaching and assessment of ELLs, has been on English language proficiency, as if this was the sole purpose of schooling. Learning school subject matter, work skills, and the skills needed to effectively participate in a democratic society were seen as secondary or nonexistent from this myopic perspective. This practice was primarily determined by the push for accountability of bilingual programs from state governments and the federal government, which narrowed their concern to the question: Are students learning English?

This restricted focus on English language learning also has led teachers and administrators to assume that the general English developed in ESL classes provides students with the linguistic tools necessary for successfully understanding complex subject matter. However, different subjects have different core structures, or epistemologies, thus making different demands on the learner (August & Hakuta, 1997; Warren & Rosebery, 1992). Consequently, learning to speak about daily routines — typically the core of ESL classes — does not necessarily prepare the learner to discuss a lab experiment conducted in the science class or to engage in other academic activities. Furthermore, it is also possible that the discourse patterns used in a discipline in English may differ from the preferred structure given to the same discipline in other languages. For example, a comparison of high school history textbooks in English and in Spanish reveals two very distinct ways of approaching and discussing the subject matter.

Another issue raised by the potential differences in subject discourse practices across languages is that courses taught in a student's native language may not sufficiently prepare the student for later success when the same courses are taught in English. For example, teaching a Spanish-speaking student history in Spanish may not necessarily be the bridge that enables the student to immediately and successfully shift into history instruction in English once he or she has achieved an acceptable level of development in English. To help ELLs succeed, it may be necessary to first take the time to help them become aware of some of the primary differences between the two languages in the organization of discourse.

The situation is compounded by the highly tracked nature of the current education system. On one hand, ELLs often are offered low-level courses and anemic teaching, resulting in higher dropout rates, especially among Hispanics and Native Americans, than for other groups (August, Hakuta, & Pompa, 1994). On the other hand, the practice of teacher tracking is also well-established — that is, good teachers who have tested themselves teaching ELLs are "promoted" to mainstream classes, thus leaving less-experienced and less-qualified teachers with these students (Minicucci & Olsen, 1992; Olsen, 1995; META, 1995; Walqui, 1999). In this situation, it can be beneficial to have clearly articulated standards of excellence in teaching, content, classroom practices, and results and a system of accountability based on the achievement of these goals. The next section of this paper discusses how the different types of standards can positively impact the education of ELLs.

Content Standards

Content standards are broad, curricular goal statements that "describe the knowledge, skills, and other understandings that schools should teach in order for students to attain high levels of competency in challenging subject matter" (National Council on Education Standards and Testing, 1992, p. 13).

There is no single view of what content standards should include, how detailed they should be, or what presentation format may be most useful. A recent study of academic standards developed and used by different states confirms this variability both in format and in quality (National Education Goals Panel, 1998). This report also states that given the amount of work accomplished by different groups to develop standards, the time may be right to begin discussions across projects and seek consensus on the essential features of good standards. This process may also establish a common framework and terminology for future work in the area.

Some people have argued that the same language arts standards should apply to both English native speakers and to English language learners from the time they begin their education in the United States. (For an example, see the California Language Arts Standards, California Department of Education, 1997.) Such a perspective ignores the fact that English language learners arrive in this country at all ages, many of them as middle or high school students. They have developed a level of proficiency in their own language that is appropriate for their age, but they usually have no proficiency in English. We should ask ourselves if it is reasonable to expect a ninth-grade student who speaks no English to enroll and participate in a freshman English class. Many would argue that it is not reasonable and that ESL standards are needed to ensure that the process of teaching students to speak English is rigorous and that students learn what they need to know to communicate in the variety of situations they will encounter in the United States.

This argument does not mean that the same rigorous language arts standards should not apply to English language learners. Indeed, these students must be educated to the same standards; however, to achieve these standards in the English language arts, English language learners must first meet prerequisite, or preliminary, ESL standards. The relationship between these two sets of standards is a key question that must be continually addressed within and between groups involved in English language development and subject-matter standards.

The members of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), the largest professional organization of teachers of English as a foreign or second language, believe that there should be separate standards for English language learners that feed into standards written for the mainstream population. This was also the recommendation of The Stanford Working Group on Federal Programs for Limited English Proficient Students (August, Hakuta, & Pompa, 1994) and of a national panel on standards-based education reform (McLaughlin & Shepard, 1995).

TESOL recently published (1997) the first set of standards after several years of concerted work by many of its members nationwide. Their work identified three goals for sociolinguistic development:

1. to use English to communicate in social settings; 2. to use English to achieve academically in all content areas; and 3. to use English in socially and culturally appropriate ways.

The TESOL standards for K-12 students (TESOL, 1997) set out clear and unambiguous learning objectives for English language learners, while delineating progress indicators for English language development. Discussing these standards and their adaptation and implementation at individual sites can be very beneficial for teachers, and the standards can provide clear goals and coherent objectives to address the needs of English language learners. For example, TESOL (1997) Goal 2, Standard 3 states:

To use English to achieve academically in all content areas: Students will use appropriate learning strategies to construct and apply academic knowledge. (p. 135)

Apart from the TESOL standards, no state has yet published standards in this area. However, a number of school districts have worked to develop their own ESL standards based on the experience of TESOL and a truncated California project to develop standards for English language development.

Performance Standards

Performance standards are concrete examples and explicit definitions of what students should know and be able to do to demonstrate proficiency in the skills, knowledge, and understanding framed by the content standards (McLaughlin & Shepard, 1995). Consider the following mathematics example from the high school volume of Performance Standards, developed by the New Standards Project (1997b):

The student uses the language of mathematics, its symbols, notation, graphs, and expressions, to communicate through reading, writing, speaking, and listening, and communicates about mathematics by describing mathematical ideas and concepts and explaining reasoning and results; that is, the student:

• is familiar with basic mathematical terminology, standard notation and use of symbols, common conventions for graphing, and general features of effective mathematical communication styles.
• uses mathematical representations with appropriate accuracy, including numerical tables, formulas, functions, equations, charts, graphs, and diagrams.
• organizes work and presents mathematical procedures and results clearly, systematically, succinctly, and correctly.
• communicates logical arguments clearly, showing why a result makes sense and why the reasoning is valid.
• presents mathematical ideas effectively both orally and in writing (p. 56).

As discussed previously, problems arise when we consider requiring students who do not speak English to meet English language arts standards. Consider, for example, an English language arts task found in the elementary school volume of Performance Standards, developed by the New Standards Project (1997a). The task requires students to develop a picture book from an entry in their writer's notebook. Students first recite the stories in small response groups then write drafts of their stories, and, finally, create their picture books. Table 5.1 includes some of the standards that the students are expected to meet.

The goals described in Table 5.1 are excellent goals for all students, but when they guide the performance of the English language learner student in English, they should vary depending on the level of proficiency that the student has developed in English. A well-defined continuum of developing proficiency using performance standards can only add rigor to ESL classes and promote smooth transitions into rigorous subject-matter courses taught exclusively in English.

Opportunity-to-Learn Standards

Students cannot be held fairly to the same standard of performance if they are given unequal opportunities to learn. (Koretz, Madaus, Haertel, & Beaton, 1992)

Having clear standards can only be useful in the educational experience of English language learners if these standards are coupled with opportunity-to-learn (OTL) standards and with the availability of authentic assessment. ESL standards in and of themselves will not guarantee that students achieve:

Given the existing vast inequalities in resources available to American youth — both inside and outside of school — educators, reform advocates, and others worried that higher standards, particularly if combined with high stakes assessments, would further disadvantage large numbers of already underserved students. OTL standards were thus conceived as a way to protect students from being further penalized for inequities in the system. (McLaughlin & Shepard, 1995, p. 42)

Table 5.1
Sample Assessment for Language Arts Standards

Standards

Writing: Produce a narrative account
Conventions: Demonstrate a basic understanding of the rules of the English language
Literature: Produce work in at least one literary genre that follows the conventions of the genre

The Task

Students were asked to take an entry from their writer's notebook and develop it into a picture book. This student chose two entries describing her grandmother's house. After reciting them as a story in a small response group, she wrote a rough draft that eventually developed into the picture book she titles "The Stained Glass Tree."

Circumstances of Performance

This sample of student work was produced under the following conditions:

x alone
x in class
x with teacher feedback
_ timed
_ in a group
x as homework
x peer feedback
x opportunity for revision

What the Work Shows

Writing: The student produces a narrative account (fictional or autobiographical) that:

• engages the reader by establishing a context, creating a point of view, and otherwise developing reader interest;
• establishes a situation, plot, point of view, setting, and conflict (and for autobiography, the significance of events);
• creates an organizing structure
• includes relevant details and concrete language to develop plot and characters;
• excludes extraneous details and inconsistencies;
• develops complex characters;
• uses a range of appropriate strategies, such as dialogue and tension or suspense; and
• provides a sense of closure to the writing.

The work engages the reader by establishing the point of view of the narrator walking the reading through her grandmother's home while providing a detailed description of the house. (p. 40)

Note: From Performance Standards (p. 40), by the New Standards Project, 1997, Washington, DC: National Center on Education and the Economy, and the University of Pittsburgh.

One of the most important rationales offered for the existence of opportunity-to-learn standards is the belief that underserved students should not be further penalized by a system that remains vastly unequal and that has been detrimental to their success. In order to guarantee the success of ELLs in schooling, it is vital to offer them

• teachers who are well prepared in the content area and who know how to effectively teach discipline-specific English;
• teachers who have opportunities for professional development that engage them in reflecting and establishing significant opportunity-to-learn standards in their teaching contexts;
• the same accountability systems that apply to all other students; and
• challenging curriculum, adequate resources, and ongoing monitoring of student progress.

English language learners must have teachers who are well prepared in the content area and who know how to effectively teach discipline-specific English. As noted earlier, the "problem" for ELLs has been narrowly defined as purely linguistic, one of acquiring enough English so that students can effectively participate in classes taught solely via the medium of that language. Left out of this appraisal is the fact that at the same time, students need to develop subject-specific knowledge and academic skills. Furthermore, students should learn that knowledge in-depth — they must be able to build intricate networks of concept relationships and organize and reorganize their understandings in light of new information. There should be an adequate number of qualified teachers assigned to provide this instruction. A school that has a high percentage of ELLs should make a concerted effort to attract and retain teachers who are highly prepared to work in English language development and deep disciplinary work.

However, teaching English language learners is not just a matter of technical expertise, but also of commitment to the present and future lives of the students and of having a vision of society that builds on diversity to create an American cultural dialogue. Issues of teacher motivation, knowledge of self, collegiality, the ability to reflect, and the ability to learn from that reflection are as indispensable to the making of a good teacher as pedagogical knowledge, subject-matter expertise, and pedagogical content knowledge (Walqui, 1999).

Professional Development Opportunities

In a recent study, Darling-Hammond and Ball (1997), using information from a study by Ronald Ferguson, demonstrated that teachers' expertise, as measured by education level, scores on a licensing examination, and experience, "accounted for far more variation in students' achievement than any other factor (about 40 percent of the total), and that every additional dollar spent on more highly qualified teachers netted greater increases in student achievement than did any other use of school resources" (p. 2).

Professional development is key to ensuring that ELLs have highly qualified teachers. The nature of that professional development, however, is quite different from what has traditionally characterized professional development. English language learners must have teachers who have opportunities for professional development that engage them in reflecting about and establishing significant opportunity-to-learn standards in their teaching contexts. These opportunities are essential to the development of a teacher's knowledge base and expertise. This professional development is premised on moving from transmission-oriented inservices to meetings where teachers actively construct their understandings and enact major changes in practice, self-perception, and professionalism. Teacher learning must be reconceptualized along the same lines as student learning — as active, long term, purposeful, reflective, collegial, and powerful. In this respect a key question to ask is, "Do schools offer new ways to support the individual and organizational learning of teachers and other school personnel involved?" As concepts of teacher professional development change, so do the structures that support them.

A Single Accountability System

English language learners must be included in the same accountability systems that apply to all other students. When students are not performing well, the question arises, "Do their schools have the same capacity and commitment to offer quality education as other schools in which students succeed?" Exploring answers to this question could lead to closer monitoring and support of schools, instead of blaming the students. Currently, large numbers of students, including many who are ELLs, are not given local and state exams that count for school accountability. Although this may superficially seem to be good practice, in reality it disengages schools and teachers from the responsibility of teaching these students. On the other hand, if state exams are given to all students with consequences for the school and not the children, positive change could result. As McLaughlin and Shepard (1995) explain:

When performance standards and assessments are used for school accountability purposes, individual students are not at risk. In fact, students are likely to benefit if instructional inadequacies are identified and remedied in response to assessment results. (p. 40)

Challenging Curriculum

English language learners must have a challenging curriculum, specifically designed to meet their needs, adequate materials and resources, and ongoing monitoring of their progress. There should be a specific distinct curriculum for English language development that follows high-level standards. This curriculum should cover the needs of beginning, intermediate, and advanced ELL students and have adequate materials and other resources to support English as a Second Language instruction. ELLs should be properly assessed and placed in English language development classes. In addition, to facilitate movement to higher-level classes when warranted, an ongoing system for monitoring individual student development should exist.

English language learners need access and opportunity to become engaged with the core curriculum in their native language or through sheltered English or Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) classes. (SDAIE classes are subject-matter classes taught in English, using mainstream materials and special scaffolding, to students who have developed an intermediate level of proficiency in English). SDAIE classes and courses taught in the students' native language (when a critical mass of these students is present in the school) should have the necessary materials and equipment for each student.

The curriculum should include advanced courses, for example chemistry, that are open to all students, including English language learners. In all classes, students should have opportunities to express their understandings by using extensive oral and written discourse. Through the curriculum and other practices and policies, schools should create stronger, long-term relationships between school staff and the children and families with whom they work.

Advantages to Establishing Standards for English Language Learners

One of the primary advantages to establishing content, performance, and opportunity-to-learn standards for English language learners is that these standards can help teachers focus on what they value and on what they want students to know. The teaching of English language development has typically focused on the more atomistic components of language: sentence structure, grammar, and the learning of discrete vocabulary terms. Even when the focus of English instruction has been on communication, teachers have often followed an unrelated sequence, rather than integrating the teaching of English into increasingly sophisticated levels of language and meaningful discourse. It is just as important to assist ELL students in their communication skills as it is to help them achieve high content standards. Depth of knowledge refers to the number of linked concepts a student has in a domain. In this sense, the extent to which concepts are interconnected reveals the coherence and richness of a student's understanding in a particular domain. It is critical to emphasize the importance of these connections; otherwise, when the different types of knowledge the learner possesses are disconnected, they will remain inert and unusable.

Another advantage to establishing standards for the education of English language learners is that they can lay the foundation for developing coherent ELL curricula — which can lessen the need to use materials and practices designed for younger students or for special education students. It is currently common practice to use materials that were designed for lower grades in the teaching of ELLs. There are vast discrepancies between the curricula offered to English speakers and English learners (Gándara, 1997; META, 1995; Minicucci & Olsen, 1992). Since there is no set of standards for English language development or for the performance of ELLs in subject-matter classes, the curricula for these students vary tremendously.

Clear standards establish the content and level of performance expected of students. The existence of content standards will make it impossible for teachers to over-emphasize lower order, decontextualized skills and will guide them to richer, more accelerated teaching/learning situations.

Still another advantage to establishing standards for ELL students is the resulting increased communication among English language development teachers and other teachers, which can open up opportunities for teaching across disciplines. The process of developing, implementing, and revising standards should be iterative; that is, there should be significant planning, monitoring, and revision over time. Thus, as standards are adopted and refined at school sites, an ongoing dialogue among teachers can take place; in addition, professional discourse about practices with ELLs can develop that focuses on what schools should teach and ELLs should learn.

Another advantage to establishing standards for English language learners is that these standards can help determine English proficiency levels for students and help facilitate student movement from one class to another. There is a tendency in the system to perceive ESL courses as academic courses that students must complete in order to move on to more advanced offerings. Rather than basing advancement on course completion alone, decisions should be based on individual progress (which varies greatly among students). In practice, courses set up to help ELLs end up being traps for them, delaying and, in most cases, impeding their progress to higher and more demanding courses (Valdés, 1998; Walqui, 1999). If progress were measured by the achievement of standards, one could conceive of ELLs moving through three courses in the time it would have taken them to complete one, thus responding to the learning needs of individual students.

ASSESSMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Regardless of the type, tests have an impact on individuals, policies, or practices in the classroom, the school, the education system, and society as a whole (Wall, 1997). Washback, also known as backwash, can be used as a synonym for impact, although its use generally refers to changes in teaching and learning caused by tests. Little empirical work has been undertaken to investigate whether washback really exists or what forms it might take (Alderson & Wall, 1993; Sizer, 1992). Nonetheless, it is generally assumed that "high-stakes" tests ² influence teachers and students. There are many claims about the power of tests to affect what goes on in the classroom. However, the literature in language and general education offers few descriptions of the types of tests that are said to have this power.

Norm-referenced tests negatively impact English language learners since they condemn some to fail and do not provide feedback that students can use to perform better in the future. On the other hand, authentic assessments (criterion referenced) can be powerful tools for student self-assessment if the criteria for success are publicly announced and available for student self-monitoring. This positive impact is demonstrated by three examples of beneficial authentic assessment and standards-based practice presented toward the end of this paper.

Much has been said about the impact of tests on teachers' performance, especially about the fact that good assessments drive teachers' teaching in valuable and substantive ways. Some researchers, however, suggest that teachers may attend to tests not because they help their practice but because they must attend to tests to placate outside interests (Secada, 1992).

In Madaus' (1988) view, the higher the stakes associated with a test, the more it will distort the teaching process. In contrast, Crooks (1988) offers the view that classroom evaluation activities can have a positive effect on learning if instead of emphasizing "surface learning" they focus on "deep learning," if instead of using assessment to judge students, assessment assists them by setting high but attainable standards, and if the tasks used to evaluate students suit the goals assessed. Smith (1991) found that the publication of test scores makes teachers very sensitive and, as a result, more willing to alter their teaching to better prepare their students for the test, even if they do not believe in the tests. This practice seems to be more prevalent with low-income students (Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, & Educational Policy, 1992, quoted in García & Pearson, 1994). Indeed, this is an area in which differing opinions abound.

Assessments are used with English language learners for at least three different purposes: (1) identifying, placing and exiting students out of English language services; (2) monitoring student progress; and (3) measuring school effectiveness. The discussion that follows primarily addresses the monitoring of student progress, the difference between norm-referenced tests and criterion-referenced assessments in terms of their application to ELLs, and the link between authentic assessment and teaching/learning.

Before beginning that discussion, however, it is important to note that students should be assessed in the language in which they are instructed. Many times, in an effort to help students, teachers give them tests in their native language, even though instruction took place exclusively in English. As students acquire new concepts in English, they also develop ways of talking and writing about them in English, not in their native language.

Norm-Referenced Testing

Norm-referenced testing relates individual test performance to other individuals taking the test, with the objective of rank ordering. In the majority of cases, norm-referenced tests focus on right and wrong answers and test very limited levels of thinking and language. Because such testing historically has tended to focus much of its research on comparative statistical procedures for the analysis of test items, it has given the impression of being concerned only with objective testing or with paper-and-pencil tests with items that can be scored "right" or "wrong." (Lynch & Davidson, 1997). Norm-referenced tests suffer from a number of biases that are especially relevant in their application to English language learners: norming bias, content bias, and consequential validity.

By its very nature, the norming process leans toward mainstream culture since minority group samples are underrepresented in probability samples of the nation, and because the items on which low-scoring students score comparatively well disappear from the final versions of most tests (García & Pearson, 1994). In order to score at the mean, an English language learner must outperform native English-speaking students; as Gándara (1997) explains, this is unlikely on tests that are dependent on language skills.

Test content and procedures suffer from content bias when they reflect "the dominant culture's standards of language function and shared knowledge and behavior" (Tyler & White, 1979) and implicitly define success according to their values and criteria. Some of this is done blatantly, as when a child who speaks little or no English is tested in this language. At other times, however, content bias occurs in more subtle ways, as when the "correct" answer directly contradicts the values, practices, and beliefs prized by the English language learner's culture. The following example illustrates this point.

In a vocabulary and reading test for students of English as a Second Language, comprehension is tested by multiple choice questions. Table 5.2 shows an excerpt from a literature selection in the test. According to the test developers, the correct answer is A. However, in many cultures it would be considered quite rude (B) to challenge an older person. Thus, it is possible for a student to understand the linguistic prompt in a test, but not the intended cultural implication. The impact of cultural differences in testing situations, although recognized in the literature, is not reflected in actual tests.

The example shown in Table 5.2 illustrates the unfairness of evaluating students who were socialized into different cultural and linguistic practices, norms, and beliefs on their ability to use another culture's practices unless they have explicitly been taught these practices. In the United States, this recommendation is as valid for native minorities, such as Native Americans or African American students (Delpit, 1995), as it is for foreign-born minorities and their native-born children (Reyes, 1992). Unfortunately, adequate support or teaching before testing is not offered to ELLs, with the dire consequence that they are over-represented in lower-track courses (Harklau, 1994).

Table 5.2
SAMPLE TEST QUESTION

Johnny, son of Scully, in a tone which defined his opinion of his ability as a card player, challenged the old farmer of both gray and sandy whiskers to a game of high-five. The farmer agreed with a contemptuous and bitter scoff.

The pertinent question on this passage reads as follows:

When Johnny spoke he sounded -

A. self-confident
B. quite rude
C. very polite
D. rather angry

Note: From "Cultural Knowledge and Reading," by M. Steffensen and C. Joag-Dev, 1984, in Reading in a Foreign Language (pp. 48-64). London and New York: Longman.

Criterion-Referenced Testing

Criterion-referenced assessments aim to relate individual test performance to a well-defined skill, behavior, or area of knowledge (Lynch & Davidson, 1997). The establishment of clear content and performance standards in the education of English language learners sets up the prerequisites for criterion-referenced testing, since students' performances or products can be judged against the standard. In this situation, the ELL is also judged against his or her own prior performance, and the assessment informs both the learner and the teacher. As the authors of one study (Lynch & Davidson, 1997) explain:

Criterion-referenced assessments can provide the level of detail needed to monitor student progress, would allow for the assessment of student performance in relation to instructional objectives, and would therefore also be useful in program evaluation. (p. 264)

O'Malley and Valdez Pierce (1996) define authentic assessment as "the multiple forms of assessment that reflect student learning, achievement, motivation, and attitudes on instructionally relevant classroom activities" (p. 4). Examples of authentic assessment include the use of portfolios, senior projects, experiments, debates, and inquiries.

Characteristics of Valuable Authentic Work

There are a number of criteria that authentic work must meet in order to be considered valuable. A few are listed below:

1. Criteria are made public, discussed with students prior to their use in the classroom, and refined over time on the basis of these discussions and teachers' discussions with colleagues.

2. Students use the published criteria to assess their own work and that of their peers.

3. Students revise their work to move it closer to meeting quality criteria.

4. Work revision is scaffolded by collaboration with peers and teachers.

5. Within the established classroom culture, students (and the teacher) view themselves as learners, teachers, and researchers, responsible to themselves and to the community.

Collections of student work are not only useful to students for monitoring their own linguistic, conceptual, and academic development, but also can serve as powerful tools for teachers' professional development. As teachers examine the products of English language learners, they can develop the capacity to inquire sensitively and systematically into the nature of learning and the effects of teaching (Darling-Hammond & Ball, 1997).

The emphasis on authentic forms of assessment such as portfolios, performances, and exhibitions attempts "to blur the edges separating learning, teaching, and assessment" (Warren & Rosebery, 1992, p. 296). Authentic forms of assessment recognize that learning is situated. Authentic assessments engage students in complex, multidimensional activities that are representative of the work in a particular discipline.

Authentic Assessment in Action

The following three scenarios are offered as examples of authentic assessment in action. First, we consider the "typical'' high school, followed by International High School in Queens, New York, and, finally, the Senior Project at Calexico High School in California.

The "typical" high school: The dilemma of having students draw their understandings. An ongoing concern in the education of English language learners is the superficiality of much that goes on in their classes because many teachers consider ELLs "nice" but basically incapable of substantial and thoughtful work since they cannot use sophisticated English to express themselves. This point was made poignantly several years ago when I visited a teacher's Specially Designed Academic Instruction in English (SDAIE) freshman English class. There were 28 students in the class, most of who were Mexican Americans who spoke an intermediate level of English. The teacher was reading aloud a selection from Steinbeck's The Pearl, which I thought the students would find enticing.

However, I noticed that no one seemed to be too happy or interested in the novel. After reading aloud for about four minutes, the teacher told the students that they would draw an "Open Mind" of Kino, a character in The Pearl. Students reacted with a bored sigh; a couple of them protested, "An Open Mind once again? We did one last week." Pretending that she did not hear the remark, the teacher passed around paper with a profile of a head drawn on it and colored pencils. Using the profile of the head, students had 30 minutes to draw their understanding of Kino's state of mind at that point in the novel. The teacher announced that Open Minds would be displayed on the walls of the classroom. Looking around the classroom, I saw other barely filled-out Open Minds decorating the room. As students started to work, pretended to work, or openly conversed with one another, the teacher approached the desk where I was seated and explained to me that this was a great activity since it allowed "students who could not speak English to draw their understandings." As she moved around the room trying to convince students to work, I asked the girl next to me how long the class had been reading The Pearl. Three months, she responded, and they had barely read half of the book. No wonder no one seemed to be keen on the book or the task.

We tried the rubric in class ourselves, producing Open Minds in collaborative groups of four, posting them, and then evaluating them according to the pre-set criteria. As students applied the rubric, they realized that it was a valuable tool for accountability, self-monitoring, and improvement. A few days later, most of them adapted the rubric for use in their classes to get their students to self-assess and to assess each other in productive terms.

The Open Mind is just one task in an orchestrated sequence that helps English language learners engage in longer pieces of reading and writing on their own, by using collaborative support and various degrees of teacher intervention.

International High School. At International High School in Queens, New York, a school for immigrant students, authentic assessment is deeply embedded into all activities. Students and teachers alike keep portfolios of their practices and the seams that bind learning. Assessment and the teacher-developed curriculum is organized into 12 interdisciplinary, thematic modules that make it possible for students to accrue the credits they need for graduation. Collaboration is essential for second language learners since in order to develop language, they need to have opportunities to use the language in meaningful, purposeful, and enticing interactions. Collaborative work, however, needs to provide every student with substantial and equitable opportunities to participate in open exchange and elaborated discussions; it must move beyond simplistic conceptions that assign superficial roles to second language learners.

In the Global Studies and Art components of the Structures interdisciplinary cluster, students were researching a world religion. At the beginning of the project, students were asked to select a religion that was unfamiliar to them and to become experts in it. They also were told that they would have to create or re-create a religious artifact typical of the religion, an activity that would be explained during the project's culminating performance. Throughout the project, students worked collaboratively and individually to develop an understanding of their chosen topic, learning and scaffolding for each other so they could perform beyond their initial level of competence. The tasks did not involve learners in routine procedures, but, rather, presented them with problems that had ill-structured solutions, with no single correct answer or standard set of steps (Cohen, 1994). Students were free to choose the theme they would investigate and the focus of their investigation. Students were not given specific questions to be answered. Instead, they were encouraged to approach the task from a personal perspective. To kick off the project, scenes from the film Little Buddha were shown and discussed, after which, working collaboratively, students brainstormed questions that might guide their research.

Questions generated by the groups were collected and distributed to the class in order to support students who might need further direction.

Other project activities included visiting a museum that exhibits religious artifacts, researching in dyads, and several opportunities to communicate their research in progress to peers. For example, a few days before the project was completed, students were asked to work with a partner to study another religion and to interview each other about their research. This interview served two primary purposes: to inform each student in class about a religion that he or she had not researched, and to informally assess the quality of each student's work. Questions that were not clearly explained or that remained unanswered could now help further define the scope of the work or provide further lines of inquiry for the remaining days.

On the day of the final performance, students sat at tables of six (where each student had researched a different religion) and prepared by sharing their findings. After each presentation, students asked questions and clarified what they were learning. The project's culminating activity was an informal conversation in yet another grouping so that students could learn about other perspectives and about religion in general. This time, five or six students sat at each table with an adult (a teacher, a student teacher, an aide, or a visitor), artifacts in hand, ready to listen to each other and engage in discussion. Although students had their carefully constructed, written reports at hand, they could not rely on them for their initial presentations or during the discussion. The written part of the project consisted of a report, an essay, or a poster. The instructions that students had received emphasized that they should use their own words to demonstrate what they had learned.

In this complex sequence of tasks, collaboration was working at many different levels. Dyadic interaction provides the initial focus that is then bounced off the collaborative efforts of the whole class as represented by the list of questions distributed to all students. During the research process, there were many opportunities for students to work collaboratively and to exchange work in progress (such as when students exchanged different types of expertise as they worked in groups of four or five in a modified version of the jigsaw format). In this case, by exchanging ideas and information, students benefited because they had meaningful opportunities to explain and sharpen their English language skills and understandings; by listening to others, they developed creative solutions to their own assignment; and by discussing details of their work, they discovered principles that underlie diverse religious manifestations.

Note: From Poverty in America: Who are the poor and why are they poor. By T. Kini, 1998, Thematic unit developed for Education 284, Stanford Teacher Education Program, Stanford University.

Assessment is an integral part of complex teaching/learning for second language learners. In the two previous examples, as students engaged in the construction of their cognitive and linguistic development, they were continually self-assessing and assessing the work of their peers. Assessment should not be something that only teachers do, but something that learners do for themselves and for each other as well. There is considerable research that supports the importance of learner self-monitoring in the efficient development of second languages (O'Malley & Chamot, 1989; Oxford, 1990; Rubin & Thompson, 1982).

The Senior Project at Calexico High School. Another way of looking at assessment is the learner's evaluation of his or her own cognitive development. This section considers how this use of assessment was applied at Calexico High School in California, where 68 percent of the students are immigrants and have limited proficiency in English. In 1993, Calexico High School introduced the "Senior Project" as a graduation requirement. The three-part project engaged students in the following tasks:

1. writing a research paper on a topic of their choice;

2. applying the knowledge and skills acquired during their research and general education to the development of a product or to their involvement in some action; and

3. making an oral presentation to a board of judges in which students demonstrate their knowledge and skills, integrating the academic and experiential components of the project. The board of judges, a committee made up of five adults (three teachers and two community members), questions students to assess the depth of their academic and applied knowledge.

The Senior Project is an authentic assessment task because it engages students in self-directed learning, in the construction of their own knowledge through disciplined inquiry, and in the analysis of problems that have value beyond the school and that will be co-constructed and shared with people beyond the school (Newmann, Secada, & Wehlage, 1995). Indeed, as Eréndira (personal communication, 1997) told me a week before her final presentation:

I had always been intrigued by photography, and the project gave me the opportunity to find out about it. I have learned so much: about the photographic process, to develop films, to produce a video, to edit sequences . . . I have learned a lot of new concepts, and the words to talk about them in English.

CONCLUSION

Although not without its problems, the inclusion of English language learners in standards-based reform and authentic assessment can improve the quality of the education they receive if, together with content and performance standards, opportunity-to-learn standards are given center stage. Two critical issues remain unanswered by the research:

1. At what point in the development of ESL standards do students move into mainstream subject-matter courses conducted in English? Does this transition come at different moments depending on the discipline? It used to be common sense that English language learners were first transitioned into math and science, and then into social students and language arts courses, but this scheme was based on the assumption that math and science are highly visual courses that do not require extensive reading or writing. That is no longer the case — the need for robust literacy skills is required in these areas as well. Research is needed in this area to facilitate understanding of when these transitions should occur and under what circumstances.

2. Professional development should be thought of as a lifelong process for teachers. As societal and life conditions change, so do the needs of teachers. These changes must be continually addressed. The post-modern age is a time of the "collapse of certainty in received wisdom and established beliefs" (Hargreaves, 1995, p. 57), requiring the formulation of varied answers. Each of these answers will need to be considered and validated in the particular situation. It is no longer possible to design a staff development program that applies equally well across many varying contexts. The professional growth of teachers must be ongoing and transformational, with teacher input guiding its content. This input could very well be how good, substantive standards inform practice and how practice guides the assessment of linguistic, conceptual, and academic development in English language learners.

Discussion Questions

1. Has the presence of English language learners changed in your context? If yes, how?

2. What new demands are these recent arrivals placing on the system?

3. In general, how do teachers and administrators in your district feel about standards-based reform?

4. In your opinion, what are some of the "stumbling blocks" in establishing standards in the education of English language learners?

5. What arguments, and in what format, can you use to work with reluctant educators? What strategies can be used to change attitudes and ensure inclusion of English language learners in the standards-based reform process?

6. Is your district currently using authentic assessment for CLD and English language learners? If so, how ready are the staff to initiate such a process?

7. In your opinion, what negative reactions can be anticipated in implementing authentic assessment for English language learners? In your state? District?

8. What possible strategies can be used to initiate authentic assessment for immigrant or non-English-speaking students?

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¹ The term English language learners was coined by Lacelle-Peterson & Rivera, 1994.
² High-stakes tests are defined by Madaus (1988) as "those whose results are seen—rightly or wrongly—by students, teachers, administrators, parents, or the general public as being used to make important decisions that immediately and directly affect them" (p. 87).