News Brief
States May Move Closer to Uniform Way of Identifying ELLs
Education Week (09/05/13) Maxwell, Lesli A.States that have adopted the Common Core State Standards (CCSS) and are planning to roll out shared content assessments are turning their attention to establishing uniform standards for identifying English-language learners and determining when they no longer need language instruction. Using new recommendations from the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), these states hope to create a more consistent playing field within four to five years. The 33 states that belong to the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Consortium (WIDA) and share common English-language-proficiency standards and annual assessments, along with the Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium and the Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers, have agreed to collaborate on more-uniform definitions of ELLs as a condition of their federal grants for designing shared assessments for the CCSS. Scott Norton, director of standards, assessment, and accountability for the CCSSO, says representatives from several states, the assessment groups, federal civil rights officials, and ELL advocates will meet in Washington in September to begin the decision-making process. The CCSSO policy recommendations - written by WestEd senior research associate Robert Linquanti and University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Center for Education Research associate research scientist H. Gary Cook - call on states to address four areas: identifying potential ELLs, confirming whether students actually are ELLs, defining English-language proficiency, and reclassifying students as fluent and ready to exit ELL services. States and districts should develop criteria that focus on students' linguistic abilities rather than require a minimum level of performance on an academic-content test, according to the recommendations.
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