Assignment 7 Standards Based Assessment

Summary

STANDARDS BASED ASSESSMENT

In the previous chapter, you saw that a standardized test is an assessment instrument for which there are uniform procedures for administration, design, scoring, and reporting. It is also a procedure that, through repeated administration and ongoing research demonstrates criterion and construct validity. But a third, and perhaps the most important, element of standardized testing is the presupposition of an accepted set of standards on which to base the procedure. This feature of an educational and business world caught up in a frenzy of standardized measurement is perhaps the most complex.

A history of standardized testing in the United States reveals that during most of the decades in the middle of the twentieth century, standardized tests enjoyed a popularity and growth that was almost unchallenged. Standardized instruments brought with them convenience, efficiency, and an air of empirical science. In schools, for example, millions of children could be led into a room, seated, armed with a lead pencil and a score sheet, and almost instantly assessed on their achievement in subject-matter areas in their curricula. For example most departments of education at the state level in the United States have now specified (or are in the process of specifying) the appropriate standards (that is, criteria or objectives) for each grade level (kindergarten to grade 12) and each content area (math, language, sciences, arts).

The construction of such standards makes possible a concordance between standardized test specifications and the goals and objectives of educational programs. And so, in the broad domain of language arts, teachers and educational administrators began the painstaking process of carefully examining existing curricular goals, conducting needs assessments among students, and designing appropriate assessments of those standards. A subfield of language arts that is of increasing importance in the United States, with its millions of non-native users of English, is English as a Second Language (ESL), also known as English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL), English language Learners (ELLs), and English Language Development (ELD).

1. ELD STANDARDS

The process of designing and conducting appropriate periodic reviews of ELD standards involves dozens of curriculum and assessment specialists, teachers, and researchers (Fields, 2000; Kuhlman, 2001). In creating such "benchmarks for accountability" (O'Malley & Valdez Pierce, 1996), there is a tremendous responsibility to carry out a comprehensive study of a number of domains:
• literally thousands of categories of language ranging from phonology at one end of a continuum to discourse, pragmatics, functional, and sociolinguistic elements at the other end;
• specification of what ELD students needs are, at thirteen different grade levels, for succeeding in their academic and social development;
• a consideration of what is a realistic number and scope of standards to be included within a given curriculum;
• a separate set of standards (qualifications, expertise, training) for teachers to teach ELD students successfully in their classrooms; and
• a thorough analysis of the means available to assess student attainment of those standards.

Standards-setting is a global challenge. In many non-English-speaking countries, English is now a required subject starting as early as the first grade in some countries and by the seventh grade in virtually every country worldwide. California, with one of the largest populations of second language learners in the United States, was one of the fast states to generate standards. Other states follow similar sets of standards.

The Listening and Speaking standards for English-language learners (ELLs) identify a student's competency to understand the English language and to produce the language orally. Students must be prepared to use English effectively in social and academic settings. Listening and speaking skills provide one of the most important building blocks for the foundation of second language acquisition. These skills are essential for developing reading and writing skills in English however, to ensure that ELLs acquire proficiency in English listening, speaking, reading, and writing, it is important that students receive reading and writing instruction in English while they are developing fluency in oral English.


2. ELD ASSESSMENT

The development of standards obviously implies the responsibility for correctly assessing their attainment. As standards based education became more accepted in the 1990s, many school systems across the United States found that the standardized tests of past decades were not in line with newly developed standards. Thus began the interactive process not only of developing standards but also of creating standards-based assessments. The comprehensive process of developing such assessment in California still continues as curriculum and assessment specialists design, revise, and validate numerous tests (Morgan & Kuhlman, 2001; Stack et al., 2002)

The process of administering a comprehensive, valid, and fair assessment of ELD students continues to be perfected. Stringent budgets within departments of education worldwide predispose many in decision-making positions to rely on traditional standardized tests for ELD assessment. Stack, Stack, and Fern (2002), for example, reported on a portfolio assessment system in the San Francisco Unified School District called the Language and Literacy Assessment Rubric (LALAR), in which multiple forms of evidence of students' work are collected. Teachers observe students year-round and record their observations on scannable forms.The use of the LALAR system provides useful data on students' performance at all grade levels for oral production, and for reading and writing performance in elementary and middle school grades (1-8).

3. CASAS AND SCANS

At the higher levels of education (colleges, community colleges, adult schools, language schools, and workplace settings), standards-based assessment systems have also had an enormous impact. The Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System (CASAS), for example, is a program designed to provide broadly based assessments of ESL curricula across the United States. The system includes more than 80 standardized assessment instruments used to place learners in programs, diagnose learners' needs, monitor progress, and certify mastery of functional basic skills. CASAS assessment instruments are used to measure functional reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, and higher-order thinking skills.

A similar set of standards compiled by the U. S. Department of Labor, now known as the Secretary's Commission in Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), outlines competencies necessary for language in the workplace. The competencies cover language functions in terms of
• Resources (allocating time, materials, staff, etc)
• Interpersonal skills, teamwork, costumer service, etc
• Information processing, evaluating data, organizing files, etc
• Systems (e.g., understanding social and organizational systems), and
• Technology use and application.

These five competencies are acquired and maintained through training in the basic skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking) thinking skills such as reasoning and creative problem solving and personal qualities, such as self-esteem and Sociability

4. TEACHER STANDARDS

In addition to the movement to create standards for learning, an equally strong movement has emerged to design standards for teaching. Cloud (2001,p. 3) noted that a student's “penormance [on an assessment] depends on the quality of the instructional program provided, which depends on the quality of professional development." Kuhlman (2001) emphasized the importance of teacher standards in three domains:
• linguistics and language development
• culture and the interrelationship between language and culture
• planning and managing instruction
Professional teaching standards have also been the focus of several committees in the international association of Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL).

5. THE CONSEQUENCES OF STANDARDS-BASED AND STANDARIZED TESTING

The task of each test-taking "spy" was not to pass the TOEFL, but to memorize a subset of items, including the stimulus and all of the multiple-choice options, and immediately upon leaving the exam to telephone those items to the central organizers. As the memorized subsections were called in, a complete form of the TOEFL was quickly reconstructed. The organizers had employed expert consultants to generate the correct response for each item, thereby re-creating the test items and their correct answers!

For an outrageous price of many thousands of dollars, prearranged buyers of the results were given copies of the test items and correct responses with a few hours to spare before entering a test administration in theWestern Hemisphere. The widespread global acceptance of standardized tests as valid procedures for assessing individuals in many walks of life brings with it a set of consequences that fall under the category of consequential validity.

Standarized tests offer high levels of practicality and reliability are often supported by impressive construct validation studies. They are therefore capable of accurately placing tens and hundreds of thousands of test-takers onto a norm-referenced scale with high reliability ratios (most ranging between 80 and 90 percent). For decades, university admissions offices around the world have relied on the results of tests such as the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT@), the Graduate Record Exam (GRE®), and the TOEFL to screen applicants. The respectably moderate correlations between these tests and academic are used to justify determining the future of students' lives on the basis of one relatively inexpensive sit-down multiple-choice test. Thus has emerged the term. high-stakes testing, based on the gate-keeping furiction that standardized tests perform.

a. Test Bias

That bias comes in many forms: language, culture, race, gender, and learning styles (Medina & Neill, 1990). Lectures used for listening stimuli can easily promote a biased sociopolitical view.

b. Test-Driven Learning and Teaching

Yet another consequence of standardized testing is the danger of test-driven learning and teaching. When students and other test-takers know that one single measure of performance will determine their lives, they are less likely to take a positive attitude toward learning. The motives in such a context are almost exclusively extrinsic, with little likelihood of stirring intrinsic interests. The effect of this policy was undue pressure on teachers to make sure their students excelled in the exam, possibly at the risk of ignoring other objectives in their curricula. But a further, ultimately more serious effect was to punish schools in lower-socioeconomic neighborhoods.

6. ETHICAL ISSUES : CRITICAL LANGUAGE TESTING

Proponents of a critical approach to language testing claim that large-scale standardized testing is not an unbiased process, but rather is the “agent ofcultural, social, political, educational, and ideological agendas that shape the lives of individual participants, teachers, and learners” (Shohamy, 1997, p. 3).The issues of critical language testing are numerous:
• Psychometric traditions are challenged by interpretive, individualized procedures for predicting success and evaluating ability.
• Test designers have a responsibility to offer mUltiple modes of performance to account for varying styles and abilities among test-takers.
• Tests are deeply embedded in culture and ideology.
• Test-takers are political subjects in a political context.

One of the problems highlighted by the push for critical language testing is the widespread conviction, already alluded to above, that carefully constructed standardized tests designed by reputable test manufacturers are infallible in their predictive validity. One standardized test is deemed to be sufficient follow-up measures are considered to be too costly. Language tests, some may argue, are less susceptible than general-knowledge tests to such sociopolitical overtones.

The research process that undergirds the TOEFL goes to great lengths to screen out Western cultural bias, monocu1tural belief systems, and .other..potential agendas. Nevertheless, even the process of the selection of content alone for the TOEFL involves certain standards that may not be universal, and the very fact that the TOEFL is used as an absolute standard of English proficiency by most universities does not exonerate this particular standardized test.

References :
Brown, H. Douglas. Language Assessment: Principles and Classroom Practices. Longman.