Performance-Based Measures of Student Performance

ESOL Department

The ESOL department uses LAS (Language Assessment Scales) in elementary and ELLPA (English Language & Literacy Placement Assessment - from Australia) in secondary as well as alternative assessments.

One of the problems we have found with most commercial tests, including LLAS and ELLPA, is that they only assess students' basic interpersonal skills (BICS), but not cognitive academic language proficiency skills (CALP), which is what our students need to have before they can exit ESOL. In addition, most tests don't measure the students' ability to deal with school life both in the classroom and outside of the classroom. We feel that this ability is the greatest predictor of whether a student is ready to be mainstreamed or not.

In order to evaluate student progress we have decided to use some of the following alternative forms of assessment in addition to commercial tests:

Alternative Assessment

1. Portfolios with examples of student's writing, reading responses, tape or video - recordings of conversations and oral presentations, as well as classroom tests. The portfolio may also include work students have done in the regular classroom.
2. Self-evaluations
3. Teacher evaluations (checklists of behaviors students exhibit in the ESOL classroom and in the regular classroom)

Performance Assessment

1. Role playing (which may be recorded) of students completing authentic tasks that we believe are necessary to show their ability to communicate with their teachers and peers as they work in groups (Objective: Students will show their ability to express their thoughts & ideas, negotiate, use information shared by others, and summarize or explain the decisions that were made by the group)
2. Student constructed responses that show their knowledge of a skill or concept (Objective: Students will show their ability to use language orally and in writing to compare/contrast, describe a sequence of steps in a procedure, explain cause/effect, describe a problem and evaluate a solution using information covered in the content areas. Middle school students will be expected to show their ability to judge or evaluate techniques used by authors)
3. Writing Assignments that demonstrate the ability to write organized paragraphs and essays and the ability to paraphrase and summarize information in the content areas.

Naturalistic Assessment

Observations of students in the regular classrooms by core teachers and ESOL teachers.

Tests

1. Language competence tests (From textbooks used to teach grammar, vocabulary, and writing)
2. Language proficiency tests (Tests made by ESOL teachers to measure predetermined standards on the curriculum - we are continuing to work on developing these tests.

We feel that the variety of assessment used will give us a better idea of what our students are able to do as English speakers to help us decide if students are ready to exit the ESOL program. We want a picture of the whole child, not a score on a single test.