CHAPTER 5
STANDARD-BASED ASSESSMENT
Standardized testing is the presupposition of an accepted set of standards on which to base the procedure.
In the middle of the twentieth century, standardized test enjoyed a popularity and growth that was almost unchallenged. Standardized instruments brought with them convenience, efficiency, and an air of empirical science. In school, for example, millions of children could be led into a room, seated, armed with a lead pencil and a score sheet, and almost instantly assessed on their achievement in subject-matter areas in their curricula.
Approprietly, the last 20 years have seen a mushrooming of efforts on the part of educational leaders to base the plethora of school-administered standarduzed tests on clearly specified criteria within each content area being measured. Fro example, most departments of education at the state level in the United States have now specified (or area in the process if specifying) the appropriate standards (that is, criteria or objectives) for each grade level (kindergarten to grade 12) and each content area (math, language, science, arts).
In the broad domain of language arts, teachers and educational administrators began the painstaking process of carefully examining existing curricular goals, conducting needs asessments among student, and designing appropriate assessments of those standards. A subfiled of language arts that is of increasing importance in the United States, with its millions of non-native users of English, is English as a Second Language (ESL), also known as English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), English Language Learners (ELLs), and English Language Development (ELD. (Note: The once- popular term Limited English Proficient [LEP] has now been discarded because of the negative connotation of the word limited).
ELD STANDARD
The process of designing and conducting appropriate periodic of ELD standards involves dozens of curriculum and assessment specifialists, teachers, and researchers (Fields, 2000; Kuhlman, 2001). In creating such “bencmarks fro accountability” (O’Malley & Valdez Pierce, 1996), there is a tremendous responsibility to carry out a comprehensive study of a number domains:
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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;
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Specification of what ELD student’s needs are, a thirteen different grade levels, for succeeding in their academic and social development;
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A consideration of what is a realistic number and scape of standards to be included within a given curriculum;
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A separate set of standards (qualifications, expertise, training) for teachers to teach ELD students successfully in their classroom; and
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A thorough analysis of the means available to assess student attainment of those standards.
Standards-setting is a global challenge. In many non-English-speaking countries, English is now a required subject starting as early as the first grade in some countries and by the seventh grade in virtually every country worldwide. In Japan and Korea, for example, a “communicative” curriculum in English is required from their grade onward. Such mandates from ministries of education require the specification of standards on which to base curricular objectives, the teachability of which has been met with only limited success in some areas (Chinen, 2000; Yoshida, 2001; Sakamoto, 2002).
California, with one of the largest populations of second language learners in the United States, was one of the first states of generate standards. Other states follow similar sets of standards. The preamble to about 70 pages of “strategies snd applications” of the California standards sets the tone:
The Listening and Speaking standards for English-language learners (ELLs) identify student’s competency to understand the English language and to produce the language orally. Students must be prepared to use English effectively in social and academic settings. Listening and speaking skills provide one of the most important building blocks fro the foundation of second language acquisition. These skills are essential for developing reading and writing skills in English; however, to ensure that ELLs acquire proficiency in English listening, speaking, reading, and writing, it is important that students receive reading and writing instruction in English while they are developing fluency in oral English.
To ensure that ELLs develop the skills and concepts needed to demonstrate proficiency on the English-Language Arts (ELA) Listening and Speaking standards, teachers must concurrently use both the ELD and the ELA standards. ELLs achieving standards for their own and all prior grade levels. This means that all prerequisite skills needed to achieve the ELA standars must be learned by the Early Advanced ELD proficiency level. ELLs must develop both fluency in English and proficiency on the ELA standards. teachers must ensure that ELLs receive instruction in listening and speaking that will enable them to demonstrate proficiency on the ELA Speaking Application standards.
An example of standards for listening and spekinag, beginning level, is reproduced in Table 5.1
ELD ASSESSMENT
The development of standards obviously implies the responsibility for corrects assessing their attainment. As standards-based education became more accepted in the 1990s, many school systems across the United States found that the Standardized test 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. The comprehensive process of developing such assessment in California still continues as curriculum and assessment specialists design, revise, and validity numerous tests (Morgan & Kuhlam, 2001; Stack et al., 2002. Between 1999 and 2000 the California English Language Development Test (CELDT) was developed. The CELDT is a battery of instruments designed to assess the attainment of ELD standards across grade levels. (For reason of test security, specifications for this test are not availableto the public)
CASAS AND SCANS
At the higher levels of education (colleges, community colleges, adult schools, language schools, and workplace setting), standards-based systems have also had an enormous impact. The Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS), for example, is a program designing 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 reading, writing, listening, and speaking skill, and higher-order thinking skills CASAS scaled scores report learners’ language ability levels in employment and adult life skills contexts.
A similar set of standards compiled by the U. S, Development of Labor now known as the Secretary’s Commision in Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), our lines competencies necessary for language in the worjplace.
The competencies cover language functions in terms of:
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Resources (allocating time, materials, staff, etc.),
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Interpersonal skills, teamwork, customer services, etc.,
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Information processing, evaluating data, organizing files, etc.,
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Systems (e.g., understanding social and organizational systems), and
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Technology use and application.
These five competencies are acquired and maintained through training in the basic skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking); thinking skills such as reasoning and creative problem solving and personal qualities, such as self-esteem and sociability.
TEACHER STANDARDS
Cloud (2001, p.3) noted that a student’s “performance [on an assessment] depends on the quality of professional development.”
Kuhlam (2001) emphasized the impotance of teacher standard in three domains:
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Linguistics and language development.
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Culture and the interrelationship between language and culture
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Planning and managing instruction
TESOL’s standards committee advocates performance-based assessment of teachers for the following reasons:
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Teachers can demonstrate the standards in their teaching.
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Teaching can be assessed through what teachers do with their learners in their classrooms or virtual classrooms (their performance).
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This performance can be detailed in what are called “indicators”: examples evidence that the teacher can meet a part of a standard.
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The processes used to assess teachers need to draw on complex evidence of performance. In other words, indicators are more than simple “how to” statements.
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Performance-based assessment of the standards is an integrated system. It is neither a checklist nor a series of discrete assessments.
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Each assessment within the system has performance criteria against which the performance can be measured.
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Performance criteria identify to what extent the teacher meets the standard.
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Student learning is at the heart of the teacher’s performance.
THE CONSEQUENCESS OF STANDARDS-BASED AND STANDARDIZED TESTING
Positive
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High level of practically and reliability
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Provides insights into academic performance
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Accuracy in placing a number of test takers on to a norm referenced scale
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Ongoing construct validation studies
Negative
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They involve a number of test biases
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A small but significant number of test takers are not assessed fairly nor they are assessed accuracy
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Fostering extinct motivation
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Multiple intelligence are not considered
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There is danger of the test driven learning and teaching
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In general performance is not directly assessed
TEST BIAS
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Standarddized tests involve many test bias (language, culture, race, gender, learning style)
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National Centre for Fair and Open Testing claims of tests bias from; teachers, parents, students, and legal consultants. (reading texts, listening stimulus)
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Standardized tests do not promote logical-mathematical and verbal linguistic to the virtual exclusions of the other contextualized, integrative intelligence (some learners may need to be assessed with interviews, portfolios, samples of work, demonstrations, observation reports) more formative assessment rather than summative.
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That would solve test bias problems but it is difficult to control it in standardized items.
TEST-DRIVEN LEARNING AND TEACHING
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It is another consequence of standardized testing. When students know that one single measure of performance will determine their lives they are less likely to take positive attirudes towards learning. Extrinsic motivation is not intrinsic.
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Teachers are also affected from tes-driven policies. They are under pressure to make sure their Ss excelled in the exam, at the risk of ignoring other objectives in the curriculum. A more serious effect was to punish schools with lower-socioeconomic neighbourhood.
ETHICAL ISSUES: CRITICAL LANGUAGE TESTING
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One of by-products of rapid growing testing industry is the danger of an abuse of power.
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Shohamy (1997,p.2) further defines the issue: “Tests present a social technology deeply embedded in education, government and business; tests are most powerful as they are often the single indicators for determining the future of individuals.”
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Teachers can demonstrate standards in their teaching.
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Teachers can be assessed through their classroom performance
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Prformance can be detailed with ‘indicators’: examples of evidence that the teacher can meet a part of a standard.
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Student learning is at the heart of the teacher’s performance.
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The issues of critical language testing are numerous.
REFERENCES:
Brown, H. Douglas. 2004. LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT: Principles and Classroom Practices. Pearson Education. Newyork.
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