Incorporating English Learner Progress into State Accountability Systems

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) proposes changes in how states include the nation’s growing population of English Learners (ELs) into the accountability system. The purpose of this paper is to identify key issues and questions that might be considered and explored by state decision makers in this area. Our primary audience is anyone in a state agency engaged in making decisions about the state’s accountability system and how ELs are included in that system. We provide background information on policy history, basic information on types of accountability models, and several demonstrations of how some options play out on real system data. Throughout this paper we present empirical results from two states: for state 1 we utilize a random sample of the state’s students; for state 2 we utilize data from a single district (states 1 and 2 use different ELP assessments.) We encourage state leaders to engage in thoughtful deliberation around how these issues apply to their own state context by simulating similar scenarios using their existing data and applying their analysis to the construction of the state plan.


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