How TELL Helped ELL Students Taking a State-Administered Language Test
by Ryan Downey
Here's the story of how Old Adobe Union School District in California helped its English Language Learners make progress with the state-administered Californian English Language Development Test.
Fifty million students attend U.S. K-12 schools, and this school year more than 10 percent are English language learners (ELLs)—a number that has doubled over the past 15 years. By 2025, it is anticipated that one out of every four students will be classified as an ELL. Schools around the country face the challenge of providing this growing special population with access to instruction that will help build English language skills as well as ensuring they are on track to meet today’s more rigorous academic standards.
No one was more aware of the challenges of measuring English language proficiency for this special population than Craig Conte, curriculum director at Old Adobe Union School District (OAUSD) in Sonoma County, California. Sometimes he felt like he was operating in the dark when it came to getting a handle on where his students were and monitoring progress along the way. He says, “Other than anecdotal information, we didn’t have a good assessment tool to measure where kids were.”
With almost a third of its student population made up of English language learners and no timely data on their progress learning English, OAUSD found itself grappling with an achievement gap.
Timely, Actionable Assessment Results
The digital assessment addressed OAUSD’s concern regarding timely, actionable data. “Before, we were always relying on old data,” explained Kristy Corbett, a teacher on special assignment who administered the test at La Tercera Elementary School. “We took the CELDT at the beginning of the school year, but we didn’t get the scores until December. So we had to rely on the previous year’s data, and then there was a bit of a shuffle when we got the data. It’s nice to have the instant feedback from TELL, so we can shift students to different groups the next week if necessary.” In addition, staff who observed students taking the assessment reported students were engaged with the test.
From an administrator’s point of view, Conte commented, “We noticed the engagement that the students had with the assessment, so we felt that we were getting accurate data in that regard. Often times with the CELDT, which is a one-on-one or small-group paper-and-pencil test, the level of engagement for our students wasn’t as intense as we would have liked it to be.”
In addition, delivering the assessment digitally means that no one needs to be trained to calibrate results. It can be difficult for “human” graders to provide a consistent evaluation of written and spoken English. The automated scoring technology in TELL is always consistent.
Conte also says many of his teachers stated that TELL provides an accurate and more frequent assessment of spoken and listening skills. Many ELL students are shy in class, so it can be difficult for a teacher to evaluate how well they speak or the level at which they understand. But with the digital assessment, they speak into the iPad and their voices are recorded and scored automatically—without fear of being listened to by other students or the teacher.
Finally, the test reveals overall learning trends. For example, if most kids don’t know the English names for common classroom objects, teachers can take immediate action by labeling everything to help students expand their vocabularies.
Conte and his staff will continue to provide feedback on the test’s content and usability to Pearson. In the meantime, administrators look forward to calculating the impact of TELL on the district’s CELDT scores at the end of the 2015-16 school year. So far, teachers have been able to gain more insight and help shift students to different learning groups to better meet their needs.
“Research shows that if students aren’t proficient in English by the time they get to junior high, they’ll be less successful. They have fewer choices and can’t take the more advanced coursework,” says Conte. “We’re going to continue to use TELL to provide the information that can help us reach that goal of having all students proficient by the time they graduate elementary school.”