style="font-size:15px;"> One assessment system, ASSETS – Assessment Services Supporting ELs through Technology Systems (http://www.assets.wceruw.org) – is being developed in collaboration with WIDA and several organizations, including WestEd, the Center for Applied Linguistics, and the University of California, Los Angeles, along with 30 states. This assessment system builds on WIDA's task assessments and will include diagnostic, summative and formative assessment tools. It should be fully operational in 2015–2016.63
Another grant was awarded to ELPA21 – English Language Proficiency Assessment for the 21st Century (http://www.elpa21.org), a consortium of states led by Oregon and in collaboration with CCSSO and Stanford University. As a first step in the assessment development process, ELPA21 developed new ELP standards that we described in the previous section. Subsequently they have designed assessments aligned to these standards. Their diagnostic/screener and summative assessments are intended to be fully operational in the 2015–2016 school year.64
In addition to being “valid, fair, and reliable,” these new assessments must meet the following additional criteria:
• Be based on a common definition of English language learner adopted by all consortium states
• Include diagnostic (e.g., screener, placement) and summative assessments
• Assess English language proficiency across the four language domains (reading, writing, speaking, and listening) for each grade level from kindergarten through Grade 12
• Produce results that indicate whether individual students have attained a level and complexity of English language proficiency that is necessary to participate fully in academic instruction in English
• Be accessible to all ELLs with the exception of those who are eligible for alternate assessments based on alternate academic standards
• Use technology to the maximum extent appropriate to develop, administer, and score assessments65
Other states, including California,66 New York,67 and Texas,68 are not participating in either consortium and are developing their own ELP assessments.
Clearly these ELP assessments, as well as the Common Core assessments, will be challenging for our ELL students, especially if they are administered on a computer. We hope that the next generation of ELP assessments will deliver equitable assessments that teachers can use to inform their instruction.
Key Shifts in Common Core
The Common Core State Standards place heightened content and language demands on all students. ELLs must meet these demands while also developing proficiency in English. Ensuring that students are able to accomplish this goal is a huge task for teachers. The Common Core State Standards document doesn't provide a curriculum or prescribe how teachers should teach; it lays out what students need to be able to do at each grade level.
There is a focus throughout the new standards on extensive language use, not just in English Language Arts, but also in math, history/social studies, and science. Thus, many researchers and educators are calling for a paradigm shift. In the past, ELA teachers have traditionally been charged with literacy instruction. However, teachers in all disciplines must be “language teachers” in order to help students meet the standards in each content area. This new reality makes collaboration among teachers a crucial piece in implementing the Common Core. In later chapters of our book, content area teachers share key Common Core shifts in math, Social Studies, and science and how to address these shifts in their subject areas.
Key Shifts in ELA
In English Language Arts, the standards call for three key shifts that support college and career readiness, according to the Common Core State Standards Initiative.69 These “shifts” represent important differences from previous standards and have an impact on instructional, curricular, and assessment practices. We will begin by summarizing the Common Core shifts and then share four key shifts for ELLs.
Shift 1: Regular practice with complex texts and their academic language. The standards emphasize that students must read increasingly complex texts in order to be ready for the demands of college- and career-level reading. As they gain experience with a variety of complex texts they simultaneously build their reading comprehension skills and academic language. Academic language includes both general academic vocabulary that appears in a variety of content areas (such as “effect” or “correlation”) and domain-specific vocabulary that is specific to a discipline (such as “molecule” or “decimal”). This academic vocabulary is not only critical to comprehension, but also allows students to participate in academic conversations (both oral and written) across content areas and to be able to read increasingly complex texts on their own.
In other words, students need to learn how to navigate the types of challenging texts they will see in college and beyond, and they need to acquire the academic language that will enable them to be successful readers, writers, and speakers.
Shift 2: Reading, writing, and speaking grounded in evidence from texts, both literary and informational. The reading standards focus on students being able to read and understand arguments, ideas, and information based on evidence in the text. Rather than answering questions based only on prior knowledge or experience, students must be able to answer text-dependent questions and make inferences supported by in-text evidence. In writing, there is a focus in the standards on evidence-based writing in order to inform or persuade.
In other words, students need to learn how to identify evidence in a variety of texts and be able to use evidence in their own writing and speaking to support their points.
Shift 3: Building knowledge through content-rich nonfiction. The standards emphasize the important role informational text plays in helping students develop content knowledge and vocabulary. The K–5 standards require a 50–50 balance between informational and literary reading. The 6–12 ELA standards place much more of an emphasis than in the past on informational texts, particularly literary nonfiction (nonfiction that contains literary elements like imagery or sensory details). The 6–12 literacy standards in history/social studies, science and technical subjects require students to learn how to build knowledge through reading and writing independently.
In other words, students need to read more informational text than they have in the past in order to build content knowledge and to inform their writing.
Key Shifts for ELLs
In our state, California, the state board of education adopted the ELA/ELD Framework in 2014 designed to facilitate the teaching of ELLs in light of the CCSS and the new California ELD Standards.70 The framework describes four shifts from previous notions of English Language Development and Instruction.71 Though it comes from California, we believe these shifts apply to English Language Learners navigating “college and career ready” standards everywhere.
Language is seen as a resource for making meaning.
In other words, teachers of ELLs shouldn't teach language as a collection of grammar rules, but as a meaningful resource used to achieve
TESOL International Association. (2013, March).
California School Boards Association. (2014, April).
Common Core State Standards Initiative. (n.d.).
California Department of Education. (n.d.). English Language Arts (p. 12).
California Department of Education, 2014 (p. 30).
