by Sarah Ottow

How do we measure growth in English for our English Learners (ELs)?  English Language Development (ELD) is so nuanced and changes from context to context.  Plus, so many of the ways that ELs are assessed in terms of “big data” and even the traditional progress reports or report cards may not measure students in a valid way.  Plus, how do we get students in involved in their own language development process by setting their own goals?

In discussing this topic with educators in Texas, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Illinois and California, I’d like to share with you that districts and schools are attending more to balanced assessment systems that measure growth, individual educators and teams are taking more ownership of the issue in their own classrooms.  Specifically, EL specialists seem to be leading the charge of attending to students’ language development and sharing these practices with their colleagues, with families, and most importantly, with their students.

In San Antonio, Texas, Damaris Gutierrez, a Newcomer EL Teacher, works with her team to boost English Language Development (ELD) data literacy through the use of an “Academic Language Progress Report”.  This tool highlights academic content skills while also reporting on key language skills in the domains of listening, speaking, reading and writing.  She explains, “We have used it during parent conferences when an interpreter is present as well as during our student-led conferences.”  In addition, Damaris has taken it upon herself to ensure that her students can self-assess their own content and language development through a “Glow and Grow” protocol she has developed.  See her comprehensive “how to” on her method for student self-assessment here.  Currently, her students select a piece of work to analyze by first noticing their own progress in English (where they “glow”) and then by determining next steps for goals (where they can “grow”).  By pairing a progress report with student-centered conferencing and goal-setting, she sees her students take charge of their learning and celebrate the process of learning a new language.

Emily Francis, an ESL Teacher in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, also works with Newcomer ELs.  Emily encourages her students to understand their own language development and celebrate their continuous progress.  By helping all stakeholders understand the levels of language development across the domains (reading, writing, listening and speaking), Emily communicates students’ progress using these levels.  She uses tools from her district and school as a starting point for advocating for students as she works alongside colleagues and families, stressing teacher efficacy to make classroom-based decisions and their own tools for their students.  “I like to personalize goals to create a strong connection with parents and I also have them translated for families. I think that teachers need to take tools available to them and make them our own.”  Read her guest blog on her “can do” approach here.

The shift of creating formative and interim measures to help teachers and teams make decisions about students and with students is a practice to consider at all grade levels.  At Salem High School in Massachusetts, Secondary EL Coach, Ashlen Fidalgo, uses Confianza’s Language Snapshot as a springboard for EL team to build in formative and interim measures, especially to help the issue of when to transition students into different programs across the high school.  Ashlen reflects that  “This protocol has been a tool that drives teachers’ assessment of student progress and allow them to set individual student goals.  In addition, content and ELD teachers are evaluating students’ skills and making recommendations” while also including portfolios that show growth over time.  Ashlen’s team has taken the concept behind the protocol to design their own balanced assessment system.  

Another EL coach has found the power of classroom-based measures to help teachers and students promote language development.  Laurie Murdock, from the San Francisco Unified School District in California, capitalizes on the overlap between English Language Development and English Language Arts.  Although she has worked with educators to utilize the district’s report card, she also has brought in the “Conversation Analysis Tool” from Jeff Zwiers to support teachers’ in boosting oral language in the classroom.  Having used this tool previously as a teacher, she now shows teachers how to “be clear in assessing the content and language expectations,” Laurie explains further, “Students need to be able to refer to text and articulate evidence using clear academic language.”  Going forward as a new principal, Laurie is excited to be sure her teachers can unpack language demands and help students drive their own learning.

School EL leaders like Caitlin McHugh are also helping students, their families and the school community in general be more conscious of language development so they can focus on growth and areas of improvement.  At Boston Collegiate Charter School in Massachusetts, Caitlin sends home to families a report that is compiled through the collaboration of the EL teacher and the content teachers showing observations and recommendations in reading, writing, listening and speaking.  “When possible, we add work samples that show the specific skills they have been successful in.  We have felt that using the [WIDA] Can Do Descriptors on a more regular basis helps the students to conceptualize what we are working towards and set achievable goals.  When they are more aware of the specific skills and can see them highlighted on their progress report, they learn what has been working and where they need to focus more of their attention in the coming weeks.”  

The critical aspect of looking at and reporting interim data is something that Bilingual Education Program Director in Framingham Public Schools in Massachusetts, Genoveffa Grieci has been working on since 2014.  Framingham’s ELD Progress Report relies on the WIDA Standards and Can Do Descriptors.  Genoveffa’s team is designing a common interim assessment so that “ELL teachers and content teachers can collaborate and share responsibility.”  Students in Framingham keep a writing portfolio that helps measure growth over the school year and can be a data point for school-based language assessments and placement meetings.  

Consultant Maggie Essig, an Education Specialist at the Illinois Resource Center, sees the trend of districts seeking more periodic measures of English development in her work.  Although the state of Illinois requires schools to send progress reports to parents or guardians that indicate the student’s progress in English development, many schools have grappled with valid tools to do so.  Maggie has seen the shift to more home-grown tools.  “Recently, I’ve seen districts making the move to devote resources to developing their own common assessments or using student work samples to demonstrate growth in English that reflects the curriculum being used in the district,” she states, emphasizing that the requirement of ELD progress reports builds a shared responsibility for EL students.  Now, she says, there is a “sense of legitimacy in some districts where English learners’ English develop services were seen as either supplemental to or less important than the general education curriculum. Bilingual and EL teachers have reported that, once all stakeholders understood that ELs’ growth in English was being measured and reported, there was less of a tendency for these programs to be an afterthought to teachers, administrators, and district leaders.”