Test Accommodations for LEP Students

It is widely believed that school achievement will improve if education systems identify what is to be learned, then assess student mastery of that material to determine the effectiveness of instruction). In recent years, there has been much discussion about how best to assess the school achievement of students with limited English proficiency (LEP), also known as English language learners (ELLs). Those charged with setting inclusion and accommodation policies for state assessment programs face two problems: the lack of research on the effects of accommodations generally, and the lack of research on how specific accommodations address the linguistic needs of ELLs.

This Digest presents an overview of LEP student accommodation and inclusion practices on statewide assessments, with special emphasis on the accommodation known as linguistic simplification.

LEP Participation in State Assessments

The inclusion of LEP students in statewide testing programs over the last decade has been uneven. In the mid-90s, 44 of the 48 states with state assessment programs in place permitted ELLs to be excused from one or more state assessments. In 27 of the 44 states, ELLs as a group were routinely exempted from participation in the state assessment program (Rivera and Vincent, 1997).

When the federal Elementary Secondary Education Act was re-authorized in 1994 as the Improving America's School Act (IASA), it mandated the annual testing of LEP students in Title I programs and required that states create final assessment systems that are inclusive of all students by the 2001-02 school year. A study of state inclusion and accommodation policies for ELLs in the 1998-99 school year showed states were generally trying out various accommodations for ELLs. However, most states appeared to be using accommodations designed for students with disabilities rather than accommodations designed with the linguistic needs of ELLs in mind (Rivera, Stansfield, Scialdone, and Sharkey, 2000).

Appropriate Accommodations for LEP Students On State Assessments

Appropriate test accommodations level the playing field and help ensure the validity of the test for all students by eliminating irrelevant obstacles that affect test performance and test scores. Yet accommodations should not give a demonstrable advantage to students who receive them over students who do not. Some accommodations for LEP students are:

1. Offering extra time,

2. Providing bilingual dictionaries and glossaries, and

3. Allowing the teacher to clarify the meaning of words on the test (when they do not relate to the content being tested).

Some accommodations can be problematic. A glossary plus extra time was found to raise performance for both LEP and non-LEP students, which raises concerns about validity (Abedi, Lord, Hofstetter, & Baker, 2000). Access to English dictionaries or native language dictionaries can unfairly advantage LEP students by giving them access to content-related terms. A customized dictionary that does not contain words that assist students with test content appears to be a promising accommodation (Abedi, 2001).