Assessment Trends in Reading Development Between English Language Learner (ELL) and Non-ELL Students

• In Event: Poster Session 1
  In Poster Session: Issues in Assessment Development and Practice in Public School Classrooms

Abstract

Providing equal educational opportunities for all students is a necessity to ensure academic success for individual students. English Language Learners (ELLs) represent one of the fastest-growing groups among public schools in this nation. This study examines student growth patterns and rate of change throughout one academic school year in reading achievement between ELLs and non-ELLs in four skills – reading comprehension, word recognition, vocabulary knowledge, and syntactic knowledge – using a computer adaptive assessment at three grade levels (third, fourth, fifth). Multilevel Linear Modeling estimates indicated that the gap in performance between ELLs and non-ELLs was smallest on the reading comprehension task across all three grades suggesting that both ELLs and non-ELLs demonstrate similar rates of growth on this complex skill.

Authors

• Raffaela Wolf, Lexia Learning Systems

• Alison Mitchell