STANDARDS-BASED
ASSESSMENT
EID STANDARDS
The process of designing and conducting appropriate periodiC reviews of ELD standards involves dozens of curriculum and assessment speCialists, teachers, and researchers (Fields, 2000; Kuhlman, 2001).
There is a tremendous responsibility to carry out a comprehensive study of a number of domains:
- literally thousands of categories of language ranging from phonology at one end of a continuum to discourse, pragmatics, functional, and sociolinguistic elements at the other end;
- specification of what ELD student’s needs are, at thirteen different grade levels, for succeeding in their academic and social development;
- A consideration of what is a realistic number and scope of standards to be included within a given curriculum;
- A separate set of standards (qualifications, expertise, training)jor teachers to teach ELD students successfully in their classrooms; and
- A thorough analysis of the means available to assess student attainment of those standards.
ELD ASSESSMENT
The development of standards obviously implies the responsibility for correctly assessing their attainment. As standarcfs..based education became more accepted in the 1990s, many school systems across the United States found that the standardized tests of past decades were not in line with newly developed standards.Thus began the interactive process not only of developing standards but also of creating standards-based assessments.
CASAS AND SCANS
At the higher levels of education (colleges, community colleges, adult schools, language schools, and workplace settings), standards-based assessment systems have also had an enormous impact.The Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS), for example, is a program designed to provide broadly based assessments of ESL curricula across the United States. The system includes more than 80 standardized assessment instruments used to place learners in programs, diagnose learners' needs, monitor progress, and certify mastery of functional basic skills. CASAS assessment instruments are used to measure functional. reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, and higher-order thinking skills. CASAS scaled scores report learners' language ability levels in employment and adult life skills contexts.
TEACHER STANDARDS
In addition to the movement to create standards for learning, an equally strong movement has emerged to design standards for teaching. Cloud (2001,p. 3) noted that a student's "peformance [on an assessment] depends on the quality of the instructional program provided, ... which depends on the quality of professional development."
Professional teaching standards have also been the focus of several committees in
the international association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages
(TESOL)
TESOL's standards committee advocates penormance-based assessment of teachers for the following reasons:e
Teachers can demonstrate the standards in their teaching.
- Teaching can be assessed through what teachers do with their learners in their classrooms or virtual classrooms (their performance).
- This performance can be detailed in what are called "indicators": examples of evidence that the teacher can meet a part of a standard.
- The processes used to assess teachers need to draw on complex evidence of penormance. In other words, indicators are more than simple "how to" statements.
- Performance-based assessment of the standards is an integrated system. It is neither a checklist nor a series of discrete assessments.
- Each assessment within the system has performance criteria against which the performance can be measured.
- Performance criteria identify to what extent the teacher meets the standard.
- Student learning is at the heart of the teacher's performance.
THE CONSEQUENCES OF STANDARDS-BASED
AND STANDARDIZED TESTING
The widespread global acceptance of standardized tests as valid procedures for
assessing individuals in many walks of life brings with it a set of consequences that fall under the category of consequential validity discussed in Chapter 2. Some of those consequences are positive. Standardized test offer high levels of praticality and reliability and are often supported by impressive construct validation studies.
Test Bias
It is no secret that standardized tests involve a number ot types of test bias.That bias comes in many forms:language, culture, race, gender and learning styles (Medina & Neill, 1990)
Test-Driven Learning and Teaching
Yet another consequence of standardized testing is the danger of _test-driven learning and teaching. When students and other test-takers know that one single measure of performance will determine their lives, they are less likely to take a positive attitude toward learning.The motives in such a context are almost exclusively extrinsic, with little likelihood of stirring intrinsic interests.Test-driven learning is a worldwide issue.
ETHICAL ISSUES: CRITICAL lANGUAGE TESTING
The issues of critical language testing are numerous:
- Psychometric traditions are challenged by interpretive, individualized procedures for predicting success and evaluating ability.
- Test designers have a responsibility to offer multiple modes of performance to account for varying styles and abilities among test-takers.
- Tests are deeply embedded in culture and ideology.
- Test-takers are political subjects in a political context.
These issues are not new. More than a century ago, British educator E Y. Edgeworth888) challenged the potential inaccuracy of contemporary qualifying exam.inations
for university entrance. In recent years, the debate has heated up. In 1997, an entire
issue of the journal Language Testing was devoted to questions about ethics in language testing.
References:
Brown, H. Douglas. 2004. Language Assessment: Principle and Classroom Practices. New York: Pearson Education
