In response to requirements in both Title I and Title III of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) the English Language Development Assessment (ELDA) was developed by a consortium of fifteen states who were then members of the Limited English Proficiency (LEP) State Consortium for Assessment and Student Standards (SCASS). This work was done in collaboration with the Council of Chief State School Officers (CCSSO), the American Institutes for Research (AIR), the Center for the Study of Assessment Validity and Evaluation (CSAVE) at the University of Maryland, and Measurement Incorporated (MI). The project was supported by a Title VI Enhanced Assessment Grant (EAG) (2003-2006) from the U. S. Department of Education with additional support provided by member states.

The ELDA is a custom comprehensive assessment designed to measure four domains of English language development: reading, listening, writing, and speaking. The intended purpose of the ELDA is to measure the annual progress of English Language Learners (ELL) in grades K-12 toward full English Language Proficiency (ELP) as articulated in the ELDA English Language Proficiency Standards. There currently are three parallel forms of the ELDA, with each form composed of four levels: inventories (grades K-2) and separate tests (grades 3-5, 6-8, and 9-12). Individual students are classified into one of five proficiency levels ranging from pre-functional to fully English proficient, in listening, speaking, reading, writing, comprehension (derived from reading and listening), and a composite score.

In the fall of 2006 CCSSO formed a new SCASS composed of a subset of states from the LEP (now English Language Learners, ELL) SCASS. These states were those that had formally adopted the ELDA as their ELP assessment. The purpose of this SCASS, English Language Development Assessment (ELDA), is to ensure ELL students from the member states, and potentially students from other states, continue to have access to ELP assessments of the highest technical quality, to help document that technical quality, to support the development of items for refreshing the item pool, and to support the development of other related materials and tools. So we have a SCASS named ELDA, that supports an assessment also named ELDA, and this can create a bit of confusion.

During 2007-2008 the ELDA SCASS was composed of seven member states (Arkansas, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia) each of which administered the ELDA as their ELP progress measure. A yearly ELDA membership fee ($16,000 for 2008-09) provides support for two representatives (one from assessment and one from the ESL/bilingual) from each state to attend three two-day meetings per year, participate in regular conference/WebEx calls, and support ongoing development and technical projects supporting the ELDA.

Each member state is responsible for the annual operational activities related to the administration, scoring, and reporting of the ELDA and accomplishes this through the services of a separate contractor or office within the state agency. The ELDA collaborative provides support for members to work on common issues of implementation, documentation of the technical quality of the ELDA, and development of new supplemental components such as a screener/placement assessments linked to the ELDA ELP Standards, enhancement of the ELDA item pool, conduct an alignment study of the ELDA to the ELDA Standards, and investigate the relationship (link) between students’ ELP progress as measured by the ELDA and their related progress on the academic content standards as measured by the state’s NCLB assessment of those content standards.

The original members of the consortium of states who fully participated in the development of the ELDA under funding from the Enhanced Assessment Grant and additional state funds have perpetual rights to the ELDA in its current format of three forms within four grade spans. Two additional states (Arkansas and Tennessee) are currently using the ELDA under a Licensing Agreement with the Council that will give them the same full rights upon full payment of the licensing fee specified in their agreements.

The Council offers two options to non-member states for use of the ELDA. These options cover the license to use the ELDA and a master set of tests and ancillary materials. Neither option includes the costs of printing, distribution, administration, scoring, or reporting.

In the first option a non-member state may negotiate a licensing agreement with the Council in the amount of $150,000. Such an agreement gives the state the same “perpetual, royalty-free” authority to use and distribute the ELDA within that state as do current member states. The second option is an agreement that provides access to the ELDA on a yearly basis structured as per student royalty fees for each student assessed with the ELDA. In most cases, the first option provides the most cost effective approach when the assessment is intended to be given over a period of three or more years.

There are several ways the Council can make the ELDA available to States. The first is by directly entering into one of the two kinds Licensing Agreements described above. The state would then be responsible for the operational implementation of the assessment or contracting with a third party for those services. The ELDA is also available to third party contractors to be included in their response to a state Request for Proposals (RFP) for an ELP state assessment. In this approach the contractor would be expected to clearly specify in their proposal the licensing agreement options described above. The Council would expect that if the state selected the contractor proposing use of the ELDA that state would enter into a licensing agreement as a part of the final contract negotiations. The actual payment of the licensing fee could be by the state or by the contractor on behalf of the state as negotiated.

States or assessment contractors interested in more information or clarifications about access to the ELDA should contact the ELDA SCASS Coordinator, Duncan MacQuarrie at 360.753.0739 or email duncanm[at]consultant.ccsso.org.

• ELDA Meetings