Assessing Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Students (2005) By R. Rhodes, S.H. Ochoa, & S. Ortiz

Special Education placement for ethnic and second language learners in the United States has issues to consider to make sure that students who are limited English proficient are not diagnosed as needing special services because of bias and language issues referred to as disproportionality. There has been a study of the past 20 years or so of placement in special education dealing with minority students in various states and the findings suggest that there are more variable to investigate such as instructional factors that affect the quality of the school and teacher experience, referral procedures which are biased toward minorities and lack of prereferral intervention, assessment practices which points out that many school psychologists are not trained to test culturally and linguistically different student populations, and noncompliance with state and/or federal guidelines which assesses linguistically diverse students to be tested in their first language.
With school accountability such a high factor for success of schools, minority students have a greater "one size fits all" approach and therefore being labeled special ed and therefore exempt from the high stakes tests. This also affects promotion and graduation for the minority students, hense the high drop out rate.
Some solutions from the National Research Council (NRC) recommends a "universal screening program" (p.38) which is administered when students show signs of having difficulty in reading. Some factors that would address if bias is a factor is a longitudinal data consisting of how long a family has lived in the US, level of acculturation, birth place of the students, parents, grandparents and their language proficiency. Provide access to bilingual education, bilingual psychologists, and the language of the tests being in the minority student's Native Language.
Funding would also be provided to evaluate assessment methods used for culturally and linguistically diverse students and testing to see if bias is the main reason students are placed in special education.
I am pleased to read that the NRC is taking steps to help students with cultural and linguistic differences be included in the regular classroom and also have access to the gifted end of the special services spectrum.

Dynamic Assessment in the Language Classroom (2005) by Poehner & Lantolf

Dynamic Asssessment (DA) applies Vygotsky's zone of proximal development (ZPD) to help second language learners achieve instruction from assessment assistance and teaching forward to eventually develop background knowledge for students to work on tasks independently. This ZPD approach helps educators to use the student's maturity level to teach skills ahead of time therefore assisting students to learn "when they are ready", in the famous words of Walkie Charles.
DA pedagogical approach is different from formative assessment where scaffolding is used as a possible teaching strategy to help with assessment feedback.
One key term that I read about was Vygotsky's approach to DA, interactionist which is focused on learning over measurement approach. The other approach which is not the focus of the paper is interventionist focusing on a "different score." The interactionist approach has its roots on what the student's potential can be with interaction and focus on student performance.
Basically what I got out of the article was that teaching a student or group of students based on their understanding of the test while they are testing or afterwards, and helping the students self correct is the goal of moving forward. Teachers can focus their feedback for students to develop their understanding of the assessment and thereby giving the student lessons that they are ready for to apply later and to eventually work independently on later based on their ZPD.
My comment on the article is that if we use DA in the classroom to make assessments developmentally appropriate, where does that fit in the limited English Proficient guideline on how to assist language learners with the high stakes test? And if not, how can it not be a factor to discuss and bring up to the state accomodations board?

LING 612 Ch 3 Portfolio Assessment by O'Malley & Pierce (1996)

Chapter three of the O'Malley & Pierce text almost had me thinking that I was going to finally learn how to create and gather information for my assessment portfolio. At this point in the class, I am sold on the type of portfolio I want to create with my students and share the process with the elementary team. Since we already have a portfolio going in writing using the six traits rubric, I thought this would be a great addition using reading to start. I agree with the concept of the student being in charge of their self-assessment and goal setting. I was trying to to figure out how to incorporate the essential elements of the portfolio including samples of student work, student self-assessment and clear stated criteria. In the samples of student work, I want to include how students learn to read and the concepts of print they are applying. I also want to show students their growth over time with their writing. And how they are learning their numbers to apply to addition and subtraction. Maybe this is a huge task, but I remember the whole language approach that we had our content curriculum in the early 1990's. I was told to use portfolios but I never got the training that I needed to get started, so all the work I included in the portfolio folder was work that I thought were showing growth over time in writing and math. I still do not think that is the process to learn how to create and develop authentic assessment and portfolios can be done by given samples and ideas, rather it should be a staff development idea that we need to be trained on and see the process from start to finish, perferably an end product that we can show our students and jump right into teaching and developing the process for incorporating porfolios as a part of the classroom routine.
At this point I am processing how students select their work. There are three kinds of self-assessment which include documentation which contains their best work, comparision which they look at their work and compare it with work done in the past, and integration which showcases their growth in oral and written language.
In the section where the student and teacher works on clearly stated criteria, I am not able to see how my Kindergarten students can come up with goals to set for themselves and how it would be incorporated in my classroom (pg. 36). I have learned the hard way not to jump into new material without getting training on how to use an assessment tool in my classroom. I am not hestitant to learn new things, but I am hestitant to waste my time and confuse my students while I am trying to figure out how to use resources that are manditory or required but forgetting to give me mini lessons on how to develop a resource.
I am having high hopes that I will learn how to create an authentic assessment that includes assessment porfolios and I can use the resource and help the rest of the teachers in my site use this assessment tool. I am especially interested in creating authentic assessment in oral and written language and find ways to include it without spending endless hours trying to figure out the process on my own, without knowing what I am trying to gain in the process.

LING 612 Making Assessment Practices Valid for Indigenous American Students S. Nelson-Barber & E. Trumbull (2007)

When I read this article I was pleasantly surprised to see the similarity between the article's concept and our place-based education philosophy we have right here in Russian Mission, Alaska!! I think like the ultimate purpose of the standardized test goals of the US educational system is to create test questions that typical next door neighbor people can answer. Everyone down states knows that candy don't come to the village from the "post office." Kids here are so cute, when I ask them where did they get their new clothes or their snow racers, they respond, "My dad and my mom got it from the post office." I asked, "oh, does the post office have a store there?" They respond, "no, it come with Jim's truck." Can you imagine the reaction that someone from the test administrator's office would have with that response? I just smile because I know that they they all know that we get most of our stuff from...Walmart. Ha ha.
Having the place-based education here in Russian Mission started when we decided as a whole community with all the entities involved to fix our low level of literacy in our community. We decided as a whole group to get students reading by investing in culturally relevant books and having students learn about their culture in the classroom and making that the focus of the curriculum in the school. With lots of sweat and dedication by the whole group, we are able to raise our reading and writing scores to 60% based on the AYP percentage of how our school is doing. With that score, we have not AYP this year, but I think it is still pretty good, because that is way higher than 20% from the past assessments in reading and writing. By the way, our math score is in that same percentage as well.
I think it is about time that the country is realizing that no matter what the curriculum focuses on and how much time is needed to get students proficient in the basics, we can still get there and have our students proud of who they are and that they know their hertiage and be proud of themselves, instead of having a label that is stamped on their school record that says, "Limited English Proficient." Instead have a stamp that states, "Proud."

LING 612 Who Is Given Tests in What Language by Whom, When, and Where? (2008) G. Solano-Flores

Testing English Language Learners (ELL) is a complex process for validity and reliability purposes. There are factors such as the diverse ELL population that deals with various levels of bilingual definitions and the dialect that the community uses are a couple of factors that makes learning English a HUGE process to overcome, much less pass a standardized test that the USA expects for funding and having its doors open to communities.
There is a one size fits all ELL test that is administered to all students that are learning English with accommodations that are given from supposedly speakers of the school's dialect, but may or may not understand the question accurately to do justice to the interpretation that the student needs in order to be comfortable with the questions asked. Also the procedures used to create a valid test for ELL students is time consuming and the actual measure to test the questions is vast and gives too many variables to focus on questions to help students to understand the test questions enough to pass the English test. Again the linguistic barrier that is present for second language learners is something that needs to be studied and possibly adapted for ELL students to understand the questions without having to figure out the language context as well.
I read about the G Theory created by Cronbach, Gleser, Nanda, & Rajaratnam (1972) and would really like to understand how it factors into pinpointing how academic achievement can be achieved?

Chapter 5, Validity: testing the test. McNamara (2000)

Data is used as evidence of learning. It is all a matter of judgment and how the test is used and if used for the test's purpose. Test validation is when investigation undergoes to see if the procedures were achieved by the judgment concluded, so much like a trial and presenting information to a jury in court. The book gave an example of OJ Simpson's trial. I think the format that you use to see if a test's criteria is met is as important as putting or keeping an individual from jail time.
The validity of assessment procedures and what the test measures should be revisited and revised to meet the needs of your students in any testing situation, whether it be in your classroom or a high stakes test like the SBA or the HSGQE test that the State of Alaska uses to judge schools to see if they are making adequately yearly progress.
The test developer has a huge role in determining the passing and qualifying of the test before giving it to others to use to measure achievement or ability levels.
Test validation should go through an analysis to see if the data it judges is valid and is used for the purposes of the test. Of course, the level that the test is validated will all be based on funding and whether there is money for the test developer to revise the test to make it as valid as possible. This of course takes time and lots of data gathering and willingness to follow through on testing materials.
I see the point of making sure that students are taking valid tests in language. It makes me think of the purposes that tests are used for and how some might be misused to "validate" data.

Ch 2 Designing Authentic Assessment & The Language Assessment Process: A Multiplism Perspective

When designing the authentic assessment for your classroom you have to have collaboration between you, your colleagues, students and parents, and your district. I personally do not think that I am in a position to create authentic assessment that tests for the grade level expectations that we are following in our district and the State of Alaska. Assessment tools need to address the purpose of the assessment, stating the language knowledge being tested, choosing the testing procedures, determining the quality of the of the procedures, interpreting and reporting the results, all the while making sure that your authentic assessment is reliable and valid.
I realize that I have no formal training for creating a test that will show communicative competence and having a constructivist approach which do not test for competition for good grades. The researcher, Kohn (1994) noted that people who are promised extrinsic rewards for an activity "tend to lose interest in whatever they had to do to obtain the reward." This quote has red flags for me for the SBA/HSGQE/IPT testing protocal that the NCLB Act (2001) has as a assessment tool.
I also have problems with the idea of the rubric to grade state tests like writing. It makes me wonder how much formal training the test graders had to become non-biased testers and are completely fair on each and every test that goes to them from the statewide SBA/HSGQE tests that are graded in the state level to make or break AYP.
For me, authentic assessment is a long and careful process that a teacher cannot jump into and decide that they want to create tools that show student growth without including the school, district and parents and students. I am having a hard time believing that I can create authentic assessment that will be included in my assessment portfolio that will be valid and reliable to me and my work setting and district.