THEAUTHENTICITYOFTHENYSESLATASSESSMENT 1

TheAuthenticityoftheNYSESLATAssessment

anditsEffectontheELLPopulation

JenniferLirianoQuiros

LehmanCollege

ESC761
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StandardizedAssessments

StandardizedassessmentsposeahugeproblemforEnglishLanguageLearners(ELLs)

forvariousreasons.Themainreasonsbeingthelinguistic,socioeconomic,andcontentbiases

thatsurroundtheseassessmentsinregardtoELLs.AccordingtoLaingandKamhi(2003),the

assessmentscontaincontentbiasbecausetheyaredesignedformainstreamcultureandWhite

middleclassschoolsettings.ThiscontentbiasaffectsELLsgreatlybecausetheymaynothave

beenexposedtothatlifestyleenough,ifever.Therefore,theywouldnotperformaswellasthey

couldbecauseoftheirlackofexposuretomainstreamculture,whichishighlyunfair.This

contentbiastiesintothelinguisticbiasoftheassessments,whichconcernstheassessmentsbeing

writteninstandardEnglish,asopposedtoavernacularthatELLswouldunderstandbetter.This

linguisticbiasisevenanissueforstudentswhouseAfricanAmericanVernacularEnglish

(AAVE)becausetheyareaccustomedtoacertainwayofspeakingandlisteningtoEnglish.In

addition,thedisconnectbetweenthestandardEnglishontheassessmentandtheEnglishusedby

thestudentwillcausethemtoperformpoorly.

Coincidentally,thisbroughttomindhowstudentswhoareaffectedbyasocioeconomic

backgroundmaynotonlyhaveissueswiththeEnglishassessments,butalsothemathematics

assessmentsbecauseofthelanguageusedonthem.ConsistentwithSolanoFloresand

Trumbulls(2003)example,studentswereaskedaquestionthatcouldbemisinterpretedbythose

influencedbyasocioeconomicbackgroundsimplybecauseoftheirinteractionswiththeir

families.Thequestionincludedthephrase,Hismotherhasonly$1.00bills,whichcaused

studentstobelievethatthesaidmotherhadonlyonedollarintotal(SolanoFlores&Trumbull,
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2003,p.45).Therefore,themathwordproblemwouldbesolvedincorrectlybecauseofthe

studentsmisunderstandingofthewordingintheassessment.

Inaddition,theissueswiththeuseofthestandardlanguageconnectstothetesting

accommodationsthatELLsaregivenduringallstateassessments.AsmentionedbyMenken

2000),ELLsaregivenfourtypesofaccommodations,whicharepresentation,response,setting,

andtiming/scheduling.Fromexperience,studentsinabilingualtransitionalsettingaregiven

accommodationsinonlysettingandtiming/schedulingfortheNewYorkStateEnglishLanguage

Artsexam,andMenken(2000)indicatesthatthoseaccommodationsdonotaddressELL

linguisticneeds.Incontrast,allaccommodationsareusedfortheNewYorkStateMathematics

examsinceitisofferedinSpanish,whichmeansthatitdoesaddresstheirlinguisticneeds.Even

thoughthemathematicsexamisofferedinSpanishandtheaccommodationsaddresslinguistic

needs,theexamiswritteninstandardSpanish,whichdoesnotaddressanyofthedialectsthat

wouldexistinanurbanbilingualclassroomsetting.SimilartotheissueswithstandardEnglish,

bilingualstudentstakingtheexaminSpanishhavequiteafewissuesunderstandingsomeofthe

wordingoftheexam.Thisissueresultsinthemperformingmuchlowerthantheirperformance

intheclassroom.

Nonetheless,ColornColoradosParentsguidetostandardizedtesting,(n.d.)explains

howstandardizedassessmentdatacouldstillbeusedtoidentifytheareasthatstudentshave

masteredandstillneedworkin.Byknowingthis,teacherscanhaveabaselineofdatatowork

withandfocusonforthebeginningoftheyear.Moreover,itcandemonstratesomeprogress,not

idealamountsofprogress,butevenslightamountsareasuccess.Schoolscanalsodeterminea

studentsclassroomsettingbasedonthestandardizedtests.Forexample,ifastudentis
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consideredcommandingontheNYSESLATexam,thentheirparentshavetheoptionofhaving

theirchildexitthebilingual,ESL,orsimilarprogramtobeplacedinamainstreammonolingual

generaleducationclassroom.

AuthenticClassroomAssessments

Althoughstandardizedassessmentsareusedlessfrequentlyandcarrymoreacademic

weight,classroomassessmentsareusedmorefrequentlybyteachersanddirectlyaffectdayto

dayinstruction.Thatbeingsaid,educatorsofELLshavefacedmanychallengesinhaving

authenticclassroomassessmentsthattrulycapturethestudentslearningandlanguage

proficiency.SomeclassroomassessmentsusedinmyschoolareDRAs,TeachersCollege

checklistsandrubrics,MathExemplarsRubrics,shortreadingresponses,constructedresponses

inmath,exitslips,andmanymore.

Fromexperience,theissuewithmostoftheseassessmentsforbilingualteachersisthat

mostassessmentsarenottranslatedintoSpanishfornewcomersorotherELLswhoarenotyet

proficient.Inmathematics,studentsaregiventheoptionoftestinginSpanishorinEnglishinthe

classroombecausethestandardizedassessmentalsoprovidesthatoption.Yet,Ihavehadto

translateanentiretestpreparationbookletintoSpanishformyclassbecausethecompanydid

notmaketheminanyotherlanguage.Furthermore,TeachersCollegewritingmaterialsareonly

inEnglish,sonewcomersandotherELLswhocontinuetowriteinSpanishareonlyprovided

withEnglishchecklistsandrubrics.WhileIdotranslatethosechecklistsandrubricsformy

students,otherbilingualteacherssimplyleaveitasissincesomuchworkispiledonthemasis.

Asaresult,itisverydifficultforeducatorstohavereadymadematerialsinEnglishandin

SpanishfornewcomersandnonproficientELLs.
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Besidesthetraditionalformsofclassroomassessments,ColornColoradosUsing

informalassessmentsforEnglishLanguageLearners,(2007)providesexamplesofspeaking

andreadingassessmentsthataneducatormaynotimmediatelythinkofusing,suchasrole

playing,debating,andplayinggames.AwaytoassessEnglishlanguageproficiencyinrole

playingwouldbetoanswertowhquestions.Inadditiontothat,portfoliosareaformof

assessmentthatseemstobethemostcomprehensivemethodtoattaincleardata,evidence,and

growth.Portfoliosshowastudentsgrowthovertimeusingvariousmeasuresofprogress,such

aswritingsamples,formaltests,studentprogressnotes,orevenrecordingsofthestudentgiving

apresentation.Thesemultipleformsofassessmentshowhowmuchlanguageproficiencygrowth

astudenthashad.Thatway,anyonecouldreceiveamoreaccuratepictureoftheELLstudent

versustheirperformanceonastandardizedtest.

ColornColoradosUsinginformalassessmentsforEnglishLanguageLearners,(2007)

mentionsthatwhenusingportfoliosasaformofauthenticassessment,teachersshouldkeepin

mindthattheyshouldmakestudentsapartoftheportfolioprocessbyallowingthemtoselect

samplesoftheirworkorcreaterubrics.Moreover,teachersshouldrememberthatwhenteaching

content,theyshouldscaffoldtheirassessmentsbyallowingstudentstousegraphicorganizers,

makedrawings,orcreateprojectstodemonstratetheirunderstanding.Additionally,when

scoringcontentassessments,teachersshouldfocusonscoringstudentsknowledgeofthe

contentandnottheirwriting.IfindthatIdothisaswellbecauseIamfocusedonmakingsure

thatstudentsunderstoodtheconceptandnotifeverythingisspelledorpunctuatedcorrectly.This

doesbringtomindthatallstudentsarenotexplicitlytaughtgrammar.Whileitispossibleto

implicitlyteachgrammar,Ihavefoundthatsometimesstudentsneedexplicitgrammarrules
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giventothem.GrammarisachallengeforeducatorsofELLstoobecausewefocussomuchon

theconceptofthecontentandtheoverallunderstandingofagenreofwritingthatstudentsgoon

inlifeneverknowingsubjectverbagreementorevenhowtomakeacompletesentence.I

believethatELLsdoneedsomekindofinstructiontocovertheseareas,butunfortunately,

schooldaysarenotstructuredtoaccommodatethatatall.So,howareourELLsexpectedto

writeinstandardEnglishwhenwedonotteachthatknowledgetothem?

Anotherthingthatteachersshouldbeawareofiswhotheirstudentsare.Teachersshould

bewellversedintheirstudentsbackgrounds,inordertofindthemostauthenticassessmentsto

meettheirneedsandabilities.AsexplainedbyLenski, Ehlers-Zavala, Daniel, & Sun-Irminger

(2006),awaytoreallygainasenseofthebackgroundsofstudentsistoouseapredictabilitylog.

In a predictability log, teachers should get answers to questions in six areas, which are language

use, knowledge, important events or experiences, narrative, relationship, and aesthetics and

ethics. In order to answer these questions, teachers could interview families and students, make a

home visit, and look through their cumulative record folders. That way, teachers can truly know

who they are teaching and how to design authentic assessments for them. Some students may

need to make a recording of them telling a story or make a drawing to tell their story, instead of

writing one. Whatever the case may be, teachers need to find assessments that can capture the

amount of English the student has actually acquired in the form that best fits their needs.

NYSESLAT Skills

On the Engage NY website under NewYorkStateEnglishasaSecondLanguage

AchievementTest(NYSESLAT)resources,(2016), it states that the NYSESLAT is an exam

that annually assesses the English language proficiency of ELLs in grades K through 12. This

assessment serves as a basis for program placement in various classroom settings, such as
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monolingual, bilingual, ESL, and others. In order for students to be successful on the

NYSESLAT, they need to have a strong command of the English modalities of speaking,

listening, reading, and writing. The students performance on those modalities determines their

English language proficiency level. There are five levels of English language proficiency, which

are entering, emerging, transitioning, expanding, and commanding. The entering level is

considered to be where a beginner would be, while the commanding level is where a proficient

student would be.

Since the NYSESLAT is an annual and progressive exam, students must continue to take

it until they pass with a commanding level in the English language. Therefore, student success

can be viewed in one of two ways, they have passed and tested out of the entire exam by scoring

commanding level, or they progressively score higher and higher levels as they take the exam

each year. As a bilingual teacher. I measure their progress from the latter, instead of the former,

which is how most teachers measure progress in my school. The reason being that it is easier to

help students become more proficient in English if you are focusing on how to help them

progress versus how to help them pass and test out.

From experience, in order to best help ELL students who take the NYSESLAT, teachers

can use the results of the NYSESLAT to know their students English proficiency levels, but to

also focus on their performance in each modality. By focusing on each modality, teachers can

differentiate their lessons depending on the needs of their students, such as listening to

audiobooks for a student who scored low in the listening modality. Another idea would be to

have more moments for conversation and discussion for a student who did not perform as well in

the speaking modality. By working on each modality during daily lessons, students can progress

on the NYSESLAT without a direct focus on test prep.

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Overall, the NYSESLAT appears to be an accurate assessment of English language

proficiency, but not necessarily academic success. Since the exam does not assess students

knowledge of content in any area, it should not be viewed as academic assessment. Although the

NYSESLAT is now thematic in correlation with grade level topics, the exam does not determine

if the student has learned any of the grade level material taught to them, such as place value or

the scientific method. Therefore, the NYSESLAT, at most, focuses on the language standards in

all modalities, but not necessarily the content-based standards. As a result, the NYSESLAT can

only determine how much English the child has acquired in each of the modalities, in order to

give them an overall level of proficiency.

Comparison of NYS ELA and NYSESLAT

In contrast to the NYSESLAT, the New York State English Language Arts exam does

assess students academic knowledge of content because the exam addresses the English

Language Arts Common Core Standards. This means that students should know literary

elements, literary devices, and genres of writing in order to be successful on the exam. For

example, the Released201638ELAandmathematicsstatetestquestions,(2016),shows

short answer questions from the Grade 7 NYS ELA Exam. One item, number 48, asks students to

analyze the theme of the accompanying story, and supporting their response with two details

from the story. The following question, 49, then asks students to explain how certain lines in the

story are important to the plot, and once again support with two details from the story. These

types of questions are directly linked to the ELA Common Core Standards for grade 7.

Therefore, they focused solely on the students academic knowledge of the material learned

throughout the year.

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Meanwhile, the NewYorkStateEnglishasaSecondLanguageAchievementTest

(NYSESLAT)resources,(2016), shows a short-constructed response from a writing section of

the grade 7 NYSESLAT Exam, students are allowed to use information from the passage and

their own ideas to answer a more common knowledge topic, such as how people use electricity.

That way, students are allowed to use their background knowledge and experience with

electricity, in order to answer the question. Furthermore, they are even given a checklist to follow

while answering the question to ensure that it is complete. While it is slightly possible that some

immigrant students may not have used electricity in some rural areas, chances are most of them

have.

Not only do the questions vary greatly, but so do the passages. In the ELA Grade 7 Exam,

the story that accompanies questions 48 and 49 mentions a studio apartment, Picasso, Klee,

Monet, acrylic paint, an internship, and consumers. Most immigrant seventh graders will

probably have zero idea as to who the artists are, let alone types of paint, art internships, and

consumers. Since students, like those in my classroom, are forced to take the NYS ELA Exam

after only being in the United States for one year, it is very unfair to expect them to even come

close to approaching the standards with these types of passages. The exam does not lend itself to

allowing students to use their background knowledge on most, if not all of the exam, because the

topics, passages, and questions are very elaborate, only academic, and highly inferential. In

contrast, the passages in the NYSELAT are more relatable, since they cover topics that the

students may have heard of or experienced. In addition, some students may not even need to read

the passage in some instances because they can rely on their own knowledge and experience,

such as the question on electricity. However, on the NYS ELA Exam, students are required to

provide two details from the passage to support their answers, otherwise they lose points.
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Both exams do require knowledge on the concept of reading a passage and writing a

response to a question. Also, both exams score mechanics. The major difference being that the

NYS ELA scores short responses based on the topic sentence and the two details that address the

questions and comprehension of the passage, while the NYSESLAT looks for varied sentences,

wide-ranging vocabulary, organization, transitions, and details. Therefore, the NYSESLAT

scores the craft of writing and answering a response, rather than effective use of evidence from

the passage and how well students understood the passage. Moreover, when students receive a

language proficiency level from the NYSESLAT, they do not feel as unsuccessful as they do

when they receive a numerical score, like a 1, from the NYS ELA Exam. Clearly, the

NYSESLAT is for the betterment of the immigrant student, while the NYS ELA Exam feels like

their downfall.

Adequacy of NYSESLAT

The NYSESLAT is an exam that definitely demonstrates the English language

proficiency progress of a student. It places them in different levels of proficiency based on that

progress. While the NYSESLAT is less pressure-filled and allows students to use their own

knowledge to answer questions, it does not serve as a good basis to know how students will

perform in mainstream content classes. These days, content classes are aligned to common core

standards, assessment-heavy, and full of high-level reading.

As a result, the NYSESLATs lax attitude of students using background knowledge to

answer questions does not directly connect to the realities of the classroom. I have students who

scored on a commanding level on the NYSESLAT, but yet write on a level 2. Most of it being

due to them being below grade level in reading. That being said, I have no idea how they score a
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commanding level on the reading portion of the NYSESLAT, if they are below grade level in

reading based on the DRA and informal conferences.

Furthermore, the NYSESLAT allows for scorers to give students a 1 even if their

responses are completely irrelevant, which makes no sense. In the classroom, students are given

scores of 0 when their writing is completely irrelevant. These types of inconsistencies leave

major gaps between their language proficiency and their academic classroom performance. In

my years of teaching, I have never encountered a student who had a lower language proficiency

level, like transitioning or entering, and 3s and 4s in their academic work in ELA. In that

respect, the NYSESLAT appears highly accurate. Yet, when a student is scored on commanding

or expanding level on the NYSESLAT, but receiving 1s and 2s in their writing and are two or

more years behind in reading in the classroom, the NYSESLAT appears completely inaccurate. If

students score a commanding level on the NYSESLAT, the expectation is that when they are

placed in a mainstream classroom, they will be performing at least on grade level, which is

hardly ever the case. Additionally, students could still take the NYSESLAT during their first

year in the United States, but should be given two or three years of instruction in English before

even taking the ELA exam, that way, they will not be boxed into a level 1 from the beginning.

Hence, in order to best address the needs of our students and to make them feel successful both

on the NYSESLAT and ELA, we need to meet in the middle. The difficulty of the ELA needs to

be reduced and taken after a few years of English instruction, while the difficulty of the

NYSESLAT needs to be increased overall to match grade-level expectations. Thus, by being

accurately aligned, students who score commanding on the NYSELAT can actually continue to

ride that success in their mainstream classroom and academic assessments.

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References

Laing,S.P.,&Kamhi,A.(2003).Alternativeassessmentoflanguageandliteracyinculturally

andlinguisticallydiversepopulations.Language,Speech,andHearingservicesin

schools,34(1),4455.

Lenski, S. D., Ehlers-Zavala, F., Daniel, M.C., & Sun-Irminger, X. (2006). Assessing English-

language learners in mainstream classrooms. The Reading Teacher, 60(1), 24-34.

Menken,K.(2000).WhatarethecriticalissuesinwidescaleassessmentofEnglishlanguage

learners?NationalClearinghouseforBilingualEducation,(6),17.

NewYorkStateEnglishasaSecondLanguageAchievementTest(NYSESLAT)resources.

(2016).Retrievedfromhttps://www.engageny.org/resource/newyorkstateenglisha

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OMalley,J.M.,&Pierce,L.V.(1996).AuthenticassessmentforEnglishlanguagelearners:

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Parentsguidetostandardizedtesting.(n.d.).Retrievedfrom

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https://www.engageny.org/resource/released201638elaandmathematicsstatetest

questions

SolanoFlores,G.,&Trumbull,E.(2003).Examininglanguageincontext:Theneedfornew

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Researcher,32(2),313.

UsinginformalassessmentsforEnglishlanguagelearners.(2007).Retrievedfrom
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http://www.colorincolorado.org/educators/assessment/informal/