Evaluating Supportive and Appropriate Testing Accommodations for English Learners

• In Event: A Continuum of Constructivism: From Childhood to Candidacy

Abstract

Purpose of Study
The purpose of the proposed study is to evaluate additional English language arts (ELA) assessment accommodations to see whether they benefit English learner (EL) students without giving them advantages over non-ELs. This quantitative study will determine whether accommodations such as translated passages and word-to-word translation of language arts vocabulary terms allow sixth and seventh-grade EL students in a rural middle school in north Georgia to perform better than with their existing accommodations without giving them an advantage over their non-EL peers.

Perspectives
As the diverse EL student population grows, issues arise concerning the best way to serve and assess these students. Educators at the classroom, district, state, and national levels recognize that EL students consistently perform lower on assessments than their non-EL peers (Mancilla-Martinez et al., 2021; McClain et al., 2021). Studies have shown that this deficit is not a result of a lack of content knowledge, but instead, it is a result of the students’ lower English language proficiency (Lopez, 2023; McClain et al., 2021).Therefore, EL students might have more knowledge on a subject than what they show on English assessments and additional research is needed to find accommodations that will impact EL students’ assessments without giving them an advantage over their non-EL peers.

Methodology
This study aims to evaluate possible assessment accommodations for an ELA reading comprehension assessment. Therefore, the following research questions will guide this quantitative research study; How do translated passages and word-to-word translation of language arts vocabulary terms affect EL students’ reading comprehension performance when compared to their non-EL peers? This research study will use a quasi-experimental design with controlled comparison groups. The independent variables will be the student’s EL status and accommodation status. The dependent variable will be the student’s assessment score. The accommodations given during this study will be passages translated into the student’s primary language and word-to-word translation of ELA vocabulary into the student’s primary language. a one-way ANCOVA is the most appropriate statistical test because the difference between two groups (EL/non-EL; IV) will be analyzed on one dependent variable (reading comprehension assessment performance; DV) while controlling for another related variable (accommodations; covariate).

Data Sources
The participants in this study will be sixth-grade students in a rural middle school. The students will be enrolled in the fall of 2023 school year. The study will include 20 general education students and 20 previously identified as EL students. The instruments used in this study will be two reading comprehension assessments and the accommodations provided to the students. All participants will take both assessments and will receive the previously explained accommodations on one assessment and no accommodations on the other assessment

Significance of the Work
The proposed study would provide information about additional accommodations that could benefit EL students without giving them an advantage over their non-EL peers. If successful, the accommodations could help EL students overcome the language barrier and show their true knowledge on assessments.

Author

• Stephanie Moore, University of North Georgia