Assessing Assessments

Assessments seek to inform future instruction and to identify which students may need extra attention. When developing questions for summative assessments, teachers consider numerous facets, including Bloom’s taxonomy level, class-time spent on topic, wording, etc. Making truly fair assessments is virtually impossible; exams are inherently flawed and therefore cannot fully measure student knowledge. It would be reasonable to assume that standardized tests drive curriculum in most classrooms. Therefore, questions on standardized tests should measure knowledge in the content area they seek to test. In this document, a colleague and I analyzed an exam question from the New York State Regents in Living Environment. This analysis includes background knowledge necessary to understanding/ answering the question, its validity to ELLs, and strategies to help ELLs demonstrate their content knowledge despite linguistic barriers.

One of the most significant barriers in summative assessment items for ELLs is reading; pencil-and-paper tests often require a significant amount of reading in order to answer questions (Fenner and Snyder, 2017). While students with disabilities are often given extra time to decipher meaning from text, ELLs have no legal requirements for similar accommodations. Apart from necessary background knowledge, tier-2 words may pose a barrier to ELL students under the constraint of time (Fenner and Snyder, 2017).

While standardized tests provide little opportunity for teacher intervention, teacher-made assessments can be designed to help ELLs demonstrate content knowledge despite linguistic barriers. Assessments may contain a list of key terms that students may wish to use in formulating answers. Sentence stems may be implemented in short-response-type questions so ELLs can focus on expressing only essential content knowledge. Further, visuals may supplement wordy test questions to provide an overview of the scenario being described (Fenner and Snyder, 2017). While all teachers have a responsibility in supporting language development, assessments that are intended to indicated a student’s mastery of content knowledge should test only content knowledge to provide an accurate representation of understanding among ELLs.

Here is an interesting article about standards and how they affect ELLs.

Elia, M. (2018). Regents High School Examination Living Environment (United States, State University of New York, Department of Education). Retrieved April 28, 2019, from http://www.nysed.gov/common/nysed/files/programs/curriculum-instruction/livingen.pdf

Fenner, D. S., & Snyder, S. (2017). UNLOCKING ENGLISH LEARNERS POTENTIAL. Place of publication not identified: CORWIN Press.

IT Learning and Development. (2017, August 8). [Assessment Word Cloud]. Retrieved April 30, 2019, from http://tutorials.istudy.psu.edu/testing/testing.jpg