Chapter Two Timeline by Joshua Marcks

1916: Publication of The Measurement of Intelligence

marc2529 — 2024-10-17 01:51:10 UTC

Lewis Terman published this book alongside the Stanford-Binet Intelligence test, which was first used in schools that same year. Terman, a eugenicist, used these results to argue that the "dullness" of Spanish-speaking and African American families was inherent in their racial stock. This event is critical because it established a long-standing "genetic argument" that schools used to sort and marginalize MLs based on biased English-only intelligence instruments, and it is the initial drop into the pond that sent deficiency models rippling out for a century after.

2012–2015: National Opt-Out Movement

marc2529 — 2024-10-17 01:51:10 UTC

Led significantly by parents and educators in New York State, this movement saw thousands of families refuse to let their children participate in state-mandated standardized tests (Mahoney, 2024, p. 44). This event is critical to modern assessment because it represents a grassroots rejection of the methods used in high-stakes testing, citing the emotional damage to students and the lack of instructional validity for MLs (Mahoney, 2024). I think this impacts MLs today because it demonstrates the tension between state testing and the students and communities that it impacts.

1974: Lau v. Nichols

marc2529 — 2024-10-17 01:51:10 UTC

The Supreme Court ruled that providing the same facilities and textbooks to MLs as to native English speakers does not constitute equal educational opportunity. This case is the legal bedrock for modern assessment because it mandates the use of ELP assessments to identify students and ensure they have meaningful access to the curriculum. Without Lau, the current NYS Identification Process and its required linguistic supports would have no legal mandate. This case is extremely important, therefore, though its implementation varies state-to-state.

2001: No Child Left Behind

marc2529 — 2024-10-17 01:51:10 UTC

NCLB tied federal funding to English proficiency gains, creating a high-stakes accountability era. This significantly increased the "cost of testing" for MLs and prioritized English-only achievement scores over a holistic view of a student’s actual linguistic repertoire (Mahoney, 2024, p. 42). This shift moved assessment from a focus on validity to a focus on administrative accountability. Ironically, this actually has the effect of moving the focus away from the progress of the child through understanding them on a personal level in favor of assigning a number to their progress.

2015: Every Student Succeeds Act

marc2529 — 2024-10-17 01:51:10 UTC

Replacing NCLB, ESSA shifted ELP accountability from Title III to Title I, making English proficiency a core indicator of school success nationwide (Mahoney, 2024, p. 43). This cements the use of ELP results as a high-stakes metric for school ratings and keeps the focus directly on the identification and reclassification processes of the NYS Identification Process.