Study: state does poor job measuring progress of bilingual students

BOSTON—The state has undercut its high bilingual education standards by doing a poor job collecting test data, making it impossible to interpret results or know if students took the required tests, according to a new report.

The study called the Department of Education’s reporting of MCAS results “seriously flawed,” noting it didn’t even identify the language in which some students were tested.

It also said students in half the districts surveyed either didn’t take the math and science tests in 1999, or their scores weren’t recorded because tests were improperly marked.

The study by the Washington, D.C.-based Institute for Research in English Acquisition and Development, which advocates for nationwide improvements in bilingual education, was released this week.

Study author Rosalie Porter acknowledged that there are suspicions that districts are improperly exempting bilingual students from the MCAS – or misreporting results – so the traditionally low-scoring group wouldn’t be counted.

But she attributed the problems to an unwieldy bureaucracy and confusion about the tests.

“There’s a lot of contention around it and suspicion of politics. I’m going to be an optimist and say I don’t see it,” Porter said.

Laura Barrett, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Teachers Association, said the state is too strict about how the MCAS is given for teachers to somehow steer bilingual kids away from it.

“I honestly have not heard of any intentional or unintentional exclusions,” she said

Alan Safran, deputy commissioner of the Department of Education, said improvements in data collection will enable the state to discover if bilingual student test results are being improperly reported.

“Does it happen? Possibly,” Safran said. “We will get down to those details.”

Massachusetts requires its bilingual students to take the MCAS, or Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System, in English after three years in U.S. schools, without exception.

About 4.6 percent, or 45,000, of the state’s 970,000 students are bilingual students. The state generally has high standards for what the students should learn, Porter said.

The study’s authors set out to measure the participation and performance of bilingual students on the MCAS.

But a lack of data restricted the study’s focus to fourth-graders who took the MCAS in 1999, though eight- and 10th-graders also take the test. Students will be required to pass the MCAS in order to graduate, starting with the class of 2003.

Assessment of teaching methods in bilingual classes was also impossible, Porter said. For instance, 86 percent of bilingual students who took the test in Brookline passed the English portion of the MCAS in 1999, but only 40 percent were tested, so it’s hard to know if instruction was superior, or if only the best students took the test.

In addition, though Spanish-speaking students who’ve been in the country less than three years are allowed to take the test in Spanish, the department failed to identify who took the test in Spanish.

Safran said that problem’s been corrected, and said he accepted the criticism of data-collection methods.

“It’s a big job,” he said. “It wasn’t a question of bureaucracy. It’s a question of making refinements and improvements as people bring things to our attention.”

Among the coming changes: identification numbers that allow the state to track students through state schools and intensive district visits to assess progress and problems, Safran said.

Institute executive director Jorge Amselle said though reporting on the MCAS is flawed, standardized tests are a leap forward for bilingual students because it forces schools to take responsibility for them.

But progress must be measurable, Amselle added.

“Having a law and writing a policy isn’t necessarily enough,” he said.

On The Net:

The READ Institute Web site athttp://www.read-institute.org/



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