English learners and their performance on standardized tests were the focus of the school funding trial on Thursday afternoon and Friday as Republican legislative leaders called Christine Rossell, a professor emerita of political science at Boston University, as an expert witness.
Petitioners in the case have argued that in low-wealth school districts, the educational needs of Pennsylvania’s English learner students are not being met due to inadequate funding.
In Pennsylvania, English learners in all grades are expected to take an annual test known as the ACCESS for ELLs assessment to measure their English language proficiency. In certain grades, and after their first year in the U.S., they also take state standardized tests such as the PSSA and the Keystone exams. Rossell discussed these tests in her testimony.
Rossell is a critic of using standardized tests to measure educational quality. Using standardized tests to evaluate the quality of education of English learners is even more problematic, she said, because “if the score of an English language learner goes up to a certain point, they leave that group, so the group always consists of low scorers.”
On cross-examination, Rossell was asked to review who actually is and is not excluded from the category of English learners when performance data are reported.
Federal guidelines, used in Pennsylvania, exclude from school performance reports the test scores of English learners who have been in the United States for 12 months or less. Rossell acknowledged that these first-year English learners are excluded.
She also acknowledged under cross-examination that students who are on the verge of exiting EL status are still included in the EL group for determining performance on standardized tests, and that the US Department of Education permits states to include in the English learner group the scores of students who have exited the English learner designation within the past two years.
Not only does the English learner classification include students who have multiple years of exposure to English in the classroom; it also provides for testing accommodations, she agreed.
Accommodations available to English learners when they take standardized tests, Rossell acknowledged, can include word-to-word translation dictionaries and interpreters or translators, and paper versions of the tests in Spanish are available for Spanish speakers.
While she declined to acknowledge any significance to reports of low scores by Pennsylvania’s English learners on standardized tests, even when compared to national averages for English learners across the United States, she said on cross examination, “I’m not opposed to standardized tests. They’re very useful tools.”
The trial continues next week, with six witnesses on the schedule, including several leaders of charter and cyber charter schools.