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The latest data on how English-learners around the country fared in their language development during the pandemic are out. But there's a major catch: About 30 percent fewer students took a widely used standardized assessment in 2021 than did two years prior, making the data difficult to analyze over time.

Students also took the test at different points in the school year, with some taking it up to 15 months later than their peers in other places, according to a new report from the WIDA consortium that offers the online assessment. Thirty-six states, several United States territories, and agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Education use WIDA assessments, with nearly half of all English-learners nationally taking those tests.

While it's tempting to look at the aggregate results, which show overall declines, particularly in speaking skills, and indicate that English-learners are worse off than they were before the pandemic, experts caution that the test results are skewed and have limited uses. The WIDA data problems are indicative of a pervasive challenge educators and researchers are facing right now in trying to pin down student achievement across the subjects: The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted assessments, leaving major asterisks on most data collection.

English-proficiency tests, offered by WIDA and others, are required by state and federal law for ELL students in kindergarten through 12th grade. They measure students' English-proficiency in four domains-listening, speaking, reading, and writing-and are used to determine if a student will remain in an English-learner program.

Because the WIDA test is generally given in the spring, schools were largely able to administer the 2020 assessment prior to shutdowns that year.

WIDA, one of the nation's largest English-learner testing programs, required that its 2021 assessment be taken in person-even in places where students were still learning remotely. That move, stemming from concerns about the validity of a take-home test and students' inability to access the internet, caused some uproar. Advocates claimed it was unfair and possibly dangerous to ask these students-most of whom are Latino, Asian, and Black-to go into school buildings with COVID-19 raging in their communities.

While the 2021 WIDA data show where test-takers were in terms of their language skills at the time of the test, experts say using the data to make assumptions about English-learners' proficiency and growth as a population is problematic.

"I would not use [2021] test data to say, 'Oh, this is where we're going as a nation,' other than to see if it aligns with something that we have some evidence of locally," said Kristina Robertson, the English-language-development program administrator at Roseville Area Schools in Minnesota.

Instead, the main value in the latest WIDA scores, experts say, is in considering them a starting point in assessing English-learners' language proficiency and growth during the pandemic.

There are major caveats in reviewing results

The 30 percent decline in English-learners taking the language assessment in 2021 raises a number of questions both in terms of students tested and those whose scores are missing.

For instance, the results may be rosier or worse off than the true results depending on whether the students who happened to be tested had higher or lower levels of language proficiency than those not tested, said Gary Cook, senior director of assessment at WIDA. This prevents an apples to apples comparison to both past and future aggregate results.

There are even concerns among state education agencies that the most vulnerable English-learners weren't tested, said Amaya Garcia, deputy director of preK-12 education at the think tank New America.

In the Roseville district there was a 17 percent drop in the number of English-learners taking the 2021 WIDA test from the year before, and that's despite outreach efforts such as providing transportation to school for the test during their remote learning year, said Robertson.

While she can't definitively say why these students didn't participate, she identified possible disconnects.

"It's not a test that they need to graduate. And parents are sort of, like, why am I sending my kid to take this test when they're not even coming to school to learn?" she said.

English-learner advocates in some states last year were pushing for parents to be able to opt-out of the in-person test, or for tests to be delayed due to COVID safety concerns. The federal government encouraged this testing to proceed in 2021, even if it meant extending the testing window.

School closures forced some schools to administer the test well into the current academic year as opposed to the traditional spring testing window, Cook said, possibly giving some students more time than others to develop their language skills before being assessed.

Robertson said bringing students into school buildings may also have affected their performance. Many students who had been stuck at home for remote learning were seeing their peers for the first time in a while on test day, which was likely exciting and distracting.

Even with the caveats in mind, the 2021 test results do have one potential use, said Derek Briggs, a University of Colorado Boulder professor and president of the National Council on Measurement in Education, whose members design and study K-12 assessments: They're a tool for helping figure out where individual students are with English proficiency, and what their needs are moving forward.

But because of the major changes in who got tested overall, you can't make inferences about English-learners as a population, even at a district level, he added.

What do we know from the results?

Amid all the caveats, aggregate student data from 2021 revealed an overall downward trend in language proficiency and growth compared to 2020 and 2019.

The pandemic's impact as seen in the 2021 scores varied by grade and each of the four language domains. There were relatively larger declines in speaking, according to WIDA's report, and in 1st and 6th grades.

Garcia, with New America, found it concerning that there were more declines in language growth in the younger years since there's the hope that children will become proficient early enough to exit out of an English-learner program by 4th grade to avoid the risk of becoming a long-term English-learner, who may end up stagnated academically.

And while Garcia was surprised that the decline in reading wasn't as big as in the other domains, opening up the question of how much reading was involved in virtual learning, the decline in speaking wasn't a shock.

"Virtual learning didn't necessarily lend itself to a lot of speaking and practicing talking," Garcia said.

While the return to in-person school itself can address the need for more opportunities to develop speaking skills, the decline is of note considering how key speaking is to learning a language overall, she added.

Educators should look at multiple factors

As Robertson's team in Minnesota reviews local English-learner assessment results, they're keeping in mind that students can do more in a classroom setting than they can in a standardized testing situation.

Standardized tests can't, for instance, track advances students make in their home languages, Robertson said. And the test results alone shouldn't be used to make assumptions on student progress.

"I just think there has to be a broader conversation about triangulation of data, how we look at the multiple factors that go into this," she said.

Robertson is also mindful of the continued outreach staff within her district are doing to determine how the pandemic impacted students beyond academics. She's aware, for instance, that there were several COVID-related deaths in their English-learner community.

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The Complicated Picture of English-Language Learners' Progress During the Pandemic

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The latest data on how English-learners around the country fared in their language development during the pandemic are out. But there's a major catch: About 30 percent fewer students took a widely used standardized assessment in 2021 than did two years prior, making the data difficult to analyze over time.

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CELEBRATE WHAT’S RIGHT WITH THE WORLD! | Dewitt Jones | TEDxSouthLakeTahoe

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The new question-of-the-week is:
What are effective teaching strategies for newcomers?
Newcomers to the United States often have low-proficiency in English but, depending upon their age, might have had considerable education in their home language.

What are the most effective teaching strategies educators can use with this population, which is certain to grow under President Biden's immigration policies?

Several experienced educators are contributing responses to this question: Michelle Shory, Irina McGrath, Luisa Palacio, Sean McWherter Ed.D., and Ciera Walker. Michelle, Irina, and Luisa were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

Before we get to today's guest contributors, I'd like to share a few of my favorite strategies:
1. Picture Word Inductive Model (PWIM)
In the PWIM, students and teachers first label an image with words, then categorize them, followed by using the words to write sentences about the picture. They next categorize the sentences, turn them into paragraphs, and finally, write a title.

You can learn more about the PWIM here and here.
2. Games
You can't go wrong with games. In the classroom, zillions of different ones can be played with mini-whiteboards, and they can be modified for online use by using a tool like Whiteboard.fi. Quizizz is also great for online use, and it has countless games already premade for just about any topic you want to teach!
3. Dialogues 4.Freire's Learning Sequence 5. Language Experience Approach (LEA)
Promoting Interaction
Michelle Shory and Irina McGrath are Google Certified trainers and co-creators of ELL 2.0, a website that offers tools and resources for teachers of English-learners. Irina V. McGrath, Ph.D., works for the Kentucky education department as an education recovery specialist. She is also a co-director of the Louisville Writing Project (LWP) and the University of Louisville and Indiana University Southeast adjunct who teaches ESL/ENL instruction as well as assessment, literature, and cultural- and linguistic-diversity courses. Michelle Shory, Ed.S., is a district ESL instructional coach in the Jefferson County public schools, Louisville, Ky. She is passionate about literacy and helped establish Dolly Parton's Imagination Library in Louisville.
Teaching students who are newcomers (students in their first year of enrollment in a U.S school) is a privilege-it changes an educator's outlook, practice, and heart forever; however, working with newcomers requires a lot of cognitive, physical, and emotional energy. But we challenge you to find a more rewarding experience in all of education. Where else do you get to see such incredible growth and change? And you will probably keep relationships with these students long after they leave your classroom.
Research
In order to support newcomers in the most effective way, teachers should do their homework on students-research their cultures, history, language, and education systems. You can find resources here and here.

Learning about newcomers will help you connect with your students and their families, give you ideas on how to make your curriculum culturally relevant, and help you address your own assumptions and misconceptions.
Relationships, Self-Advocacy, and Routines
Before starting with the first "real" lesson, begin with relationships, self-advocacy, and routines.

When focusing on relationships, start with names. Teachers should know how to pronounce student names-and students should know how to pronounce each other's names. Also, students need to be fully seen. Educators must take time to learn about their students' interests, families, and topics they love to study. Teachers should also share about themselves-share hobbies, family pictures, etc. Classrooms (especially newcomer classrooms) need to feel safe because we are encouraging students to be vulnerable each day when they are using a new language.

Dr. Stephen Krashen instructs educators to "lower the affective filter" as a way to increase comprehension. Lowering the affective filter includes helping kids feel comfortable by speaking more slowly, using gestures, and including high-interest materials. All of this is most effective when classrooms are warm and comfortable.

Educators will want to begin by teaching independence on day one. Show students how to use technology like Microsoft's Immersive Reader, Google Translate, or Socratic from Google. Demonstrate planning and organization skills (like using a digital calendar or Google Keep). It is also a good idea to make sure that students know how to ask for help from a teacher when they don't know the answer to a question.
Instructional Supports and Considerations
One last addition is to set up strategies to support interaction. WIDA researchers found that ELs spend on average less than 10 minutes per day speaking in class. This is unacceptable from a social-emotional and academic lens-ELs need to engage frequently in classroom conversations. When thinking about structures, consider Kagan structures or QSSSA from Seidlitz.

When facilitating lessons, always remember to include visuals, gestures, and repetition. ESL consultant and teacher Carol Salva's students report these strategies as the most helpful.

It is also important to consider teaching themes. Krashen's research demonstrates the power of "deep reading" on a topic and how it supports ELs in acquiring language. Themes boost engagement and confidence because students are continually building their expertise about a topic. Additional research (highlighted in Natalie Wexler's work) has proven that reading comprehension is largely based on background knowledge. So, whenever teachers build students' knowledge of the world, they are also supporting comprehension.

Finally, when teaching newcomers, educators should not discount the expertise in the room. Be sure to tap into students' "funds of knowledge," a term coined by Dr. Luis Moll that represents cultural resources and knowledge that students bring to the classroom. Always include at least one entry point for newcomers to bring in their cultural and linguistic expertise. One example might be a unit on religions, holidays, or education systems around the globe.

In conclusion, teachers play an important role in ensuring social, emotional, and academic success of newcomer students. The more effort teachers put into getting to know their students, teaching them self-advocacy skills, and building on their funds of knowledge, the greater chance their students will have of reaching their highest potential and succeeding personally and professionally.

ELLs 'Need to Feel Safe'
Luisa Palacio is an ESL and Spanish teacher from Colombia with 19 years of teaching experience. Luisa holds a bachelor's degree in modern languages: English and French, and an M.A. in TESOL from Greensboro College. Currently, she teaches K-12 at Northampton County schools in North Carolina and Spanish with South Carolina Virtual Education:
We always consider content relevancy, the use of visuals, vocalization, facial expression, among others. However, what ELs need at first is to feel safe, comfortable, and confident in their new environment.

The school system works in a completely different way in every country. I believe one of the first things we need to do with newcomers is to show them how school works, classroom routines, how to sign in and out of school, how to move around campus, how to get their meals, how to login on their technological devices, explain schedules, share possible extracurricular activities in which newcomers could participate, etc. Newcomers need modeling, not only for the language but also for the culture. Newcomers need to be shown what to do and how to do it, what to say and how to say it. As teachers, we need to be aware of the cultural shock newcomers go through so that we can help the process to run a bit smoother.

Every newcomer should have a mentor to shadow him/her during the first days of school, someone who can introduce them to their teachers, who makes teachers aware that this EL is in their class and will need some extra attention. In my opinion, cultural awareness should be the first teaching strategy. Newcomers are facing a new culture, and they also need to feel their own culture is valued. Thus, it is important to generate activities that allow students to share their culture, so they make comparisons and connections by sharing about a subject they master and a subject that is relevant.

'Language-Learning Goals'

Sean McWherter, Ed.D., is the director of restart programs for the Guilford County schools in North Carolina. He is the author of A Road Map to PLC Success published by Routledge Eye on Education, 2017, and Unpacking your Learning Targets: Aligning Student Learning to Standards, published by Routledge Eye on Education, 2020:

With the rapidly increasing population of English-language-learners in many schools across the U.S., it is becoming ever more important for regular education teachers and administrators to know how to support these students and their families.

I feel that oftentimes educators mistakenly believe that ELLs have trouble learning or that they learn differently from native English speakers and that their education is best left to the English as a second language or ELL teacher. This could not be further from the truth; the educational barriers ELL students face are accentuated by language and cultural barriers, not an inability to learn.
Utilize Language-Learning Goals
Many educators are aware that the use of learning targets in the classroom is an instructional best practice and that students learn better when teachers utilize clear daily learning goals (Marzano, 2009; Reeves, 2010; Kareva & Echevarria, 2013). For ELL students, it is especially important to include both lesson and language-learning goals.

The lesson objectives should be focused on the grade-level content while the language objective should align to one of the four domains of English-language development (ELD), which are listening, speaking, reading, and writing. A teacher's experience with creating and using language objectives in their instruction is important to ensure that ELLs have equal access to the curriculum (Hudson, Miller, & Butler, 2006; Short, Echevarría, & Richards-Tutor, 2011; Marcos and Himmel 2016). When planning a lesson, everything should intentionally lead students to mastery of the learning targets while providing students with a variety of meaningful activities and high-quality instruction.
Increase Student Engagement and Interactions
To support student engagement, as well as the lesson and language objectives, liberally employ the use of visuals to reinforce both spoken and written words. Capitalize on the use of gestures, often exaggerated, for added emphasis, speak slower and be sure to enunciate your words, repeat important words or phrases, and be sure to use fewer idioms. Many ELL students have not attended schools in their new county and may be unfamiliar with cultural references. Take the time to thoroughly review texts to identify potentially confusing language and concepts so that you can build the background knowledge of your ELL students prior to exposing them to potentially confusing material (Kareva & Echevarria, 2013).

Incorporate high-frequency vocabulary words throughout all content areas and be sure to provide instructions and other important information in multiple formats. Don't just tell the students what you want them to do, write it, provide an example/exemplar, and act it out or model the activity if possible.

Provide multiple opportunities for ELL students to interact with their peers in small groups where they can practice speaking and listening in low-risk settings that will produce language-learning outcomes (Saunders & Goldenberg, 2010).
Build Positive Relationships and Cultural Connections
Building relationships with your students is the foundational component of successful teaching and learning, and there is a multitude of research that supports this idea. According to a review of 46 research studies, students that feel valued and appreciated are more likely to demonstrate both short- and long-term improvements in academic engagement, attendance, grades, and behavior, while also having a reduced dropout rate (Sparks, 2019).

Begin forming relationships with your ELL students by learning about their individual culture, traditions, religion, hobbies, family dynamic, and background. Stay respectful of their personal boundaries and understand that they may need time to settle into their new environment before opening up. (National Clearing House for English Language Acquisition, n.d.). Having a positive relationship with a student's family can also help support their education.

Remember some of the families may only have very little or even no formal schooling experience in this country, so taking the time to show them what school is like and how they can get involved are critical first steps to forming a parent partnership. (Short & Boyson, 2012)

Stations
Ciera Walker is a sixth-year systemwide ELL teacher in east Tennessee:
Newcomers that might have the same level of English do not necessarily grow and learn at the same rate. This is due to many factors, such as previous schooling experience and the background of the student and their family. I use stations as a strategy to meet the needs of all of my newcomers.

What? Stations provide students with an opportunity to work with a partner on specific skills to boost their language learning and language acquisition.

When? We do stations most Thursdays and every Friday.

How? Students eventually work their way up to a goal of 12-15 minutes per station. The teacher starts a timer, and students rotate through the stations with their partner.

Who? I generally group my students by ability in English (homogeneous groups), but occasionally, if they have a great ,I will let them choose their partners (in more heterogeneous groups).

Why? The purpose of stations is to provide students with practice in skills they are learning in the ESL classroom and the general education classroom. Students have opportunities to practice skills during stations while the teacher provides individualized mini-lessons to help with the language-learning process. Stations are practical and provide teachers with opportunities to use best practices in teaching students a new language. It is extremely important to be purposeful, organized, and use a system to make stations go smoothly! It takes a lot of planning to teach students the stations so they can work independently. I take a lot of time to "front-load" the expectations and provide students time to practice. Students generally start stations independently after fall break.

Each year, I change up my stations depending on my students' needs or new ideas I find. Below are some of my favorites that are easy to maintain and enjoyed by the students. I recommend teachers keep stations simple and choose one activity per station, especially in the beginning. As students become more familiar, you can add on to the complexity of each station.

Teacher: Students meet with the teacher and work on individualized needs (letter work, word work, reading stories, fluency, comprehension, etc.). I like to use Reading A-Z or ReadWorks to help structure this station.

Listening: Students work on EPIC books, Unite for Literacy, or listen to books on tape/cd. You can get a headphone splitter from Amazon for pretty cheap if you have limited devices so students can listen together.

Library: Students read a book and complete a simple graphic organizer about what they read.

Computer Station: Choose a safe website for students to play on. I like starfall.com for my primary students and I am hoping to implement typing websites for my older students next year.

Speaking: I use Vocaroo or Flipgrid. For Vocaroo, I usually have picture cards with vocabulary words students might need; students retell the story. For Flipgrid, I usually have a video for students to watch or I ask them a question and they must respond.

Writing: This station is the one that evolves the most throughout the year. Using picture prompts, sentence stems/frames, and word banks is crucial for the writing station.

Word Work Games: This station has many games that work on foundational reading skills. Eventually, students have different boxes/baggies they pull from (depending on their level).

1. Bang: Have different sets of 10-12 words (letters, sight words, vocabulary words, etc.). Label 1-2 cards "Bang." Students pour cards out of baggies into a box. They reach in the box and grab a word, say the meaning or read the word. If they pull "bang," then all their cards must go back in the box.

2. Roll, read, write: Create a 7x6 table. Type in the target words that correspond with a number on a die. Put the sheet in a pocket protector and have students write the word with an Expo marker when they roll the die.

3. Oodlu.org: Create vocabulary sets. Students answer questions and get to play premade video games. Easy to use and create-a class favorite!

Stations are a versatile and practical way to provide students with practice on new skills they are learning and to differentiate instruction for newcomers with varying levels of language acquisition.

Thanks to Michelle, Irina, Luisa, Sean, and Ciera for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.
Just a reminder; you can subscribe and receive updates from this blog via email (The RSS feed for this blog, and for all Ed Week articles, has been changed by the new redesign-new ones won't be available until February). And if you missed any of the highlights from the first nine years of this blog, you can see a categorized list below. I am also creating a Twitter list including all contributors to this column.

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Thirteen Instructional Strategies for Supporting ELL Newcomers (Opinion)

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Five educators share effective instructional strategies to use with English-language-learner newcomers, including using images and games.

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This week's new question-of-the-week is:
What are effective assessment strategies for multilingual learners?
Assessment is a key element of teaching-we need to know where our students are in the learning process, how effective our instructional strategies have been, and if there are additional challenges we need to be aware of as we plan future lessons and student support.

Assessments, however, cannot be used in a one-size-fits-all strategy.

Today, Margo Gottlieb, Vivian Micolta Simmons, Cindy Garcia, and Karen Nemeth, Ed.M., share strategies educators can use to effectively assess English-language learners. Margo, Vivian, and Cindy were also guests on my 10-minute BAM! Radio Show. You can also find a list of, and links to, previous shows here.

Maximizing 'Linguistic and Cultural Equity'

Margo Gottlieb, WIDA co-founder and lead developer, introduces assessment as, for, and of learning in her 2016 book, Assessing English Language Learners: Bridges to Equity, and expands on the approaches in subsequent books, chapters, and articles. Her most current publication is Classroom Assessment in Multiple Languages: A Handbook for Teachers (Corwin, 2021):

When thinking about effective assessment strategies for multilingual learners, what if we switched our attention away from school or district scores generated from testing that leave "gaps" in student performance and revisit data through the lens of stakeholders? Let's start with a series of questions about multilingual learners, our most important stakeholders, to help position their centrality in the assessment process and provide a context for interpreting assessment data.

What are the languages, cultures, and educational backgrounds of your multilingual learners?

To what extent does your language program leverage your multilingual learners' languages and cultures in curriculum and instruction?

To what extent do your multilingual learners connect their personal interests and their home/community life to school?

The first step in planning classroom assessment is to determine its purpose. How might you prioritize the primary reasons for assessing multilingual learners in one or more languages?

Do you want to get a pulse on multilingual learners' thinking, how they are feeling, and their self-reflection on learning? Being more inclusive of students' views and encouraging student agency are features of assessment as learning.

Do you want to provide feedback to multilingual learners to move their learning forward? Acting on insight from the interaction between students and teachers during instruction reflects assessment for learning.

Do you want to contribute to programmatic or schoolwide accountability? Using student projects, performances, and products, along with uniform criteria for success formulated by teachers with input from students, are representations of assessment of learning.

Now that you have a purpose and a corresponding approach to assessment in mind, let's explore their associated effective strategies.

Assessment as learning as a classroom practice is a student-driven activity that broadcasts multilingual learners' voice, empowerment, and identity. Assessment as learning can occur face to face or online when multilingual learners interact with their peers in the language(s) of their choice to:

explore topics or issues of mutual interest

contribute to crafting classroom activities or tasks

engage in self- and peer assessment

pursue learning from their own perspectives

select preferred mode(s) of communication (e.g., oral, written, graphic, visual) for processing information and expressing learning.

Assessment for learning might begin with teacher and student conversations leading to collaboration in making mutually agreed upon learning goals. Both are keenly aware of where multilingual learners are in their learning that is anchored to grade-level academic content and language proficiency/development standards. In assessment for learning, multilingual learners interact with their teachers in English or their shared language(s) to:

co-construct criteria for success and types of acceptable evidence for their work

apply criteria for success to give criterion-referenced feedback

plan differentiated instruction for content and language learning

give feedback in real time to student performance or needs.

Assessment of learning at a classroom level is shaped by teachers, individually or as a department or grade-level team, with input from students. It represents what students have accomplished at the culmination of a period of instruction, such as a unit of learning. Assessment of learning is geared to determining student growth over time and centers on collaboration among teachers with support of school or district leaders to:

match evidence for assessment with learning targets

document extent of meeting standards for units of learning

share of learning for products, performances, or projects

guide student production of capstone projects or portfolios

Together, assessment as, for, and of learning offers a comprehensive system that optimizes opportunities for multilingual learners to participate as educators strive to maximize linguistic and cultural equity for their students.

'Formal and Informal Assessments'
Vivian Micolta Simmons was born in Colombia and has been in the U.S. for seven years. She has been a teacher for 14 years and is currently working as a ESL/DLI lead teacher for the Iredell-Statesville schools in N.C:
When assessing my culturally and linguistically diverse students, I always like to think about my own experience as a language learner. We all function differently; we are all smart with certain dominant areas or language skills. For instance, I consider myself good at speaking and pronunciation, but writing is an area where I need extra help. That does not mean that I cannot produce in a second language. It only means that I need to polish specific language skills.

I like to rely on both formal and informal assessments and make my recommendations-to homeroom teachers and parents-based on the data I can gather from these instruments.

Listening and reading activities, writing prompts (that provide sentence starters), formal and informal conversations (my favorite), and role-plays are some of my preferred activities to assess my students.

Pop quizzes, games, note-sketching, prior knowledge questions, video recordings (like Flipgrid), and formal pretests and post-tests are all part of my assessment arsenal. You can pick and choose from a great selection of data-collection options. For sure, I loathe paper-pencil assessment as the only performance measurement (for children and adults). They do not show what we are all capable of in terms of language production.

Rubrics, Portfolios, & Conferences
Cindy Garcia has been a bilingual educator for 15 years and is currently a districtwide specialist for PK-6 bilingual/ESL mathematics. She is active on Twitter @CindyGarciaTX and on her blog:
When assessing multilingual learners, teachers have to keep in mind both content and language. Teachers also have to be focused about what they assess and academic-language development might not always be something they need to assess.

Rubrics can be an effective way to assess student understanding because there are multiple indicators that students are trying to meet. Rubrics are also a good tool for assessing multilingual learners because they provide a consistent criterion for grading when tasks or projects might be subjective. This criterion helps teachers ignore other factors and use only the criteria in the rubric to assess student learning. Instead of multiple-choice type of assessment where there is only one correct response, a rubric allows the teacher to pinpoint what the student is understanding and what the student has yet to master. A rubric has a rating scale that provides the teacher with a way to provide feedback for students that will help them think about their work, ask questions, seek clarification, and improve their work. Rubrics also help students take ownership of their learning, because they are able to use the rubric to evaluate their work before they submit it for grading.

Portfolios are another great way to assess multilingual learners because the teacher is able to see evidence of student work and learning for a longer period of time than an end-of-unit assessment. This allows the teacher to see if the students "got it" right away and have they been able to "keep it" for longer than the length of the unit of instruction. When compiling a student portfolio, there are usually multiple pieces of evidence or student work for each concept, standard, or topic. Student-work samples could be writing prompts, a project, multiple-choice test, etc. This means that student portfolios also show a clearer picture of how a student learns.

Another effective strategy to assess multilingual learners is student-teacher conferences. Conferring with students provides students the opportunity to explain and share what they have learned without the usual stress of completing a formal test. Conferring also allows the teacher to provide more authentic feedback because it's real-time feedback that addresses student questions, wonderings, or misconceptions. Conferring makes it easier for the teacher to focus the conversation just on content, academic-language development, or another area. The goal of each conference can be focused on the precise needs of each student and provide the specific data that teachers need to plan for instruction.

'Portfolio-Based Assessment'
Karen Nemeth, Ed.M., is an author, consultant, and advocate focusing on early-childhood education for ELLs/DLLs. She has leadership roles in NAEYC, NABE, and TESOL. She hosts a resource website, Language Castle:
Developmentally appropriate assessment strategies for young English-/dual-language learners do not focus on one-shot test scores. The truth is, 4- and 5-year-old children are just not that interested in displaying their knowledge on demand. Terms like portfolio, sampling, and multiple measures guide best practices for the early years.

Children who are developing multiple languages have separate language systems for each of their languages. They learn some content in one language and some content in the other language. Even if they seem very strong in English, they may not have English words for all of the knowledge they've developed in their other language(s).

It is important to provide all screening and assessment in both of their languages. Further, the bilingual brain does not function the same way as two monolingual brains. According to research, the best screening and assessment tools would be designed specifically for bilingual thinkers and would capture what they know and can do in both of their languages. These kinds of tools are not available with sufficient quality and in the variety of languages needed. Kindergarten-entry assessments and other district-mandated monolingual assessments are not very accurate for young children who are multilingual learners. The best approach is to gather data about a child's skills and knowledge through a variety of measures over time. I like to say that, in the early years, assessment is not a score, it's a folder. Scores might be in the folder along with lots of other information that teachers can use to chart a child's progress and determine their learning needs.

The solution recommended by most experts is to practice portfolio-based assessment. Instead of focusing on a snapshot or numeric score, portfolios allow teachers to gather authentic evidence about what each child understands and talks about. Portfolio-assessment software is available with some curriculum models or as independent products. They may include prompts, benchmarks, and a variety of ways to enter data on an ongoing basis.

It is very important that teachers should be allowed to use phones or tablets to record language and activity at any time during the day. This is critical for multilingual learners because it is the most accurate way to fully capture what the children actually say when they are talking in a language that is unfamiliar to the teacher. It is also critical that teacher assistants who are bilingual must be carefully prepared to participate in the assessment process as they may be the only adults who have home-language interactions with some of the bilingual children.

Information obtained from families can be another important component of the assessment process. A teacher might not ask the parents of a 7 th grader about how they are doing with algebra at home, but many preschool and kindergarten children show advances in language and learning at home that may not be evident in the classroom. For example, a shy English-learner may not participate in singing activities at school but the family might send a video of the child singing happily with sophisticated lyrics at home. Young children may not always perform on demand or in expected ways at school. Families can also provide cultural context and information about the young child's interests that help the teacher scaffold learning for each individual child. Multiple measures over an array of activities and times of day will make it possible for young children to show more accurately what they know and can do-and what they are ready to do next.

Thanks to Margo, Vivian, Cindy, and Karen for their contributions!

Please feel free to leave a comment with your reactions to the topic or directly to anything that has been said in this post.

Consider contributing a question to be answered in a future post. You can send one to me at lferlazzo@epe.org. When you send it in, let me know if I can use your real name if it's selected or if you'd prefer remaining anonymous and have a pseudonym in mind.
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Education Week has published a collection of posts from this blog, along with new material, in an e-book form. It's titled Classroom Management Q&As: Expert Strategies for Teaching.

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Four educators share practical assessment strategies to support English-language learners.

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Rick Wormeli: Redos, Retakes, and Do-Overs, Part One

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Edutopia is a free source of information, inspiration, and practical strategies for learning and teaching in preK-12 education. We are published by the George Lucas Educational Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization.

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Writing is one of the most challenging skills to master in school. Compound this challenge by asking a student to write in their second or third language while meeting benchmarks and grade-level standards, and it's no wonder writing appears to be such a daunting task for many English language learners, resulting in classrooms filled with apathetic and unmotivated students.

Portfolios are assessment tools designed to address these issues by placing students in the driver's seat. The benefits of portfolios are well-documented in both theory and practice: (1) Students are able to select pieces of writing that showcase important milestones in their learning trajectory; (2) students take ownership of their learning through consistent goal-setting, reflection, and other metacognitive processes; and (3) students develop self-regulation skills that empower them with agency. But can portfolios be tailored to the specific learning and linguistic needs of our English language learners?

According to principles in second language writing research, portfolios can break down the writing process by content and language to better engage English language learners. This makes writing much less daunting and allows learners to become more aware of their own development as writers. The downloadable sample portfolio checklist that accompanies this article is one I used as a teacher of elementary-aged English language learners-and it can easily be adapted for use with older students. It covers three critical stages of the writing portfolio: goal setting, monitoring, and reflecting.

1. Goal setting

Student-directed goal setting provides learners with a purpose for writing. While some children might aim to write "the scariest horror story ever known to mankind," English language learners often feel that their creativity is stifled by the errors they will likely make. Let them know that their ideas are important by providing them with a list of goals divided into content and language (page 1 of the download). This encourages them to use their artistic license in their content while maintaining separate, tangible goals for the mechanics of their writing.

Classroom tip: Change the content and language goals according to the genre that children are writing. For example, fables or stories may include characters with speech (content) and past tense (language) goals, while expository texts may include examples (content) and topic sentences (language). Consider setting a class goal so you can hit important features of the writing genre, but allow students to choose other goals or make up their own. Also, make sure students don't check too many boxes, so they can go in-depth and monitor their goals more precisely.

2. Monitoring

Portfolio assessments are distinct from other assessments because they require students to monitor their own learning. Learners need to monitor their goals with each writing piece. As students write, remind them to refer to their content and language goals. When conferencing with students and providing written feedback on their drafts, make sure your feedback relates to their goals. Also, provide rubrics (page 2 of the download) to students before the writing begins-incorporate elements of the content and language goals into the rubrics for reinforcement.

3. Reflection

Finally, after each writing unit, students need to undergo two stages of reflection: first on the recently completed writing piece, and second on their overall writing development. Besides making sure that students reflect on their content and language goals, an important consideration for English language learners is to let them reflect using language(s) they are comfortable with. The goal of reflection is not to practice the new language, but to cognitively engage in the monitoring process.

The second stage of reflection requires students to reflect on all of the writing pieces they've produced thus far. This may vary from classroom to classroom because some portfolios may include student-selected pieces of writing, while others might include all of their writing. Either way, this final step of reflection is critical. To reflect on their language goals, English language learners need to become aware of the types of mistakes they make (e.g., tense, punctuation, spelling). An error log (page 3 of the download) is a wonderful tool that allows students to tally and monitor these errors over time.

Finally, allow students to systematically reflect on previous writing units by using a form or worksheet to serve as a guide (pages 4-5 of the download). Make sure these reflections include both the technical aspects of writing and students' personal enjoyment/reactions toward writing. Reflections should end with a resolution for future writing-related goals.

When English language learners are treated as writers and given the opportunity to understand where they are in their journey to becoming writers, they become much more motivated and excited to write. Moreover, allowing students to assess where they are in their writing, set goals for the future, and then monitor and reflect on how well they've achieved these goals teaches them the invaluable skill of self-regulation.

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A Valuable Tool for English Language Learners

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Writing is one of the most challenging skills to master in school. Compound this challenge by asking a student to write in their second or third language while meeting benchmarks and grade-level standards, and it's no wonder writing appears to be such a daunting task for many English language learners, resulting in classrooms filled with apathetic and unmotivated students.

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Under Student behaviors. This must be updated to reflect current student practices such as utilizing a computer to show "acquisition data". Furthermore standards are supposed to prepare and equip students with real world and useful knowledge skills correct?!

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Web developers require no college/ They require skilled workers with on the job training

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Web developers require no college/ They require skilled workers with on the job training

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Projected future growth: 15% by 2022

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