NJPSA TESTIMONY REGARDING

ASSESSMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE LEARNERS

Thank you for the opportunity to share the views of the New Jersey Principals and Supervisors Association regarding the issue of alternative assessments for limited English proficient (LEP) students. NJPSA is committed to promoting equity and excellence in academic achievement for all students, including English Language Learners. Our members welcome accountability for all students, as long as it is fair accountability. Unfortunately, for students who are limited English proficient, our current system of testing and accountability is unfair to both the individual students involved and to the school districts that serve these students.

New Jersey’s current state testing system often gives a misleading picture of the extent to which LEP students are proficient on our standards. As indicated in the research compiled by the New Jersey Department of Education, native language and sheltered English assessments have the potential to yield far richer data, by allowing educators to hone in on the academic content that the student has not yet mastered, rather than trying to determine if the student’s performance is the result of a lack of English proficiency or lack of content knowledge. Research shows that other accommodations, such as increased time or use of dictionaries, are not effective for most LEP students.

Of course, another critical component of accountability for LEP students is the degree to which such students achieve English language proficiency. NJPSA supports the efforts of the NJDOE in working with the Council of Chief State School Officers and a consortium of states to pilot a rigorous English Language Proficiency Assessment. All school districts should be accountable for ensuring that LEP students achieve proficiency in English. However, the state’s content area examinations designed to measure the Core Curriculum Content Standards should not be expected to serve the dual role of measuring English language proficiency.

The accountability goal can be furthered by focusing on the degree of improvement in student achievement over time for students who are continuously enrolled in a given school/district. NJ SMART, the student database that will soon be in place for New Jersey, will allow for such an analysis. By tracking student progress over time, we can effectively capture the long-term impact of ESL and bilingual programs on student achievement, including documenting the gains in achievement made after the student has exited the ESL or bilingual program.

With the enactment of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, it is more important than ever that New Jersey look to develop alternative assessments for LEP students. NCLB imposes significant consequences for schools where any subgroup fails to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress. At the same time, NCLB specifically calls on states to develop assessments for limited English proficient students “to the extent practicable … in the language and form most likely to yield accurate data on what such students know and can do in academic content areas.” The Act goes on to limit the option for native language assessments to students who have not yet attended school in the United States for three consecutive years, with the ability for case-by-case waivers up to an additional two years. Unless New Jersey acts now to develop appropriate assessments for LEP students, more and more schools are destined to be identified as failing to achieve Adequate Yearly Progress because of state assessments that do not accurately measure the content knowledge of LEP students.

In light of the above considerations, NJPSA recommends the following steps be taken by the NJDOE:

- Develop native language assessments and Sheltered-English assessments in math, science and language arts literacy;

- continue participation in the CCSSO consortium that is developing a rigorous English Language proficiency assessment and use this assessment to hold all school districts accountable for ensuring that LEP students achieve English language proficiency over time;

- permit districts the ability to identify native Spanish-speaking students who should be administered a native language assessment in Spanish, with this option available for students where appropriate during the first two years that the student is in a public school;

- permit districts to identify students who are English Language Learners who should be administered a Sheltered-English version of state assessments, with this option available for students where appropriate during the first three years that the student is in a public school;

- provide a process so that districts may allow students to be administered either a Spanish native language assessment or a Sheltered-English assessment during their fourth or fifth year in a public school where appropriate, such as when the student did not enter the public school with basic literacy skills in the student’s native language;

- develop a mechanism for tracking the progress of individual LEP students on state assessments for up to three years after the student has left a bilingual or ESL program, and incorporate into the state monitoring system recognition of gains in student achievement that such LEP students make after exiting the bilingual or ESL program; and

- develop a mechanism for tracking the gains in mean test scores for continuously enrolled LEP students over time and incorporate into the state monitoring system recognition of gains in mean test scores even where such students have not yet achieved proficiency on a state assessment.

NJPSA appreciates the opportunity to share our views on this important issue. By acting now to develop appropriate assessments for LEP students, New Jersey can ensure that our state assessment system provides rich and meaningful information for educators and valid data for accountability purposes.

Submitted: January 26, 2004

(David Nash)