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##  Test Accommodations for LEP Students. ERIC Digest.                           

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 RATES IN                STATE ASSESSMENTSThe 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                   ASSESSMENTSAppropriate 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). 
Some                   accommodations address environmental conditions that help students              feel more comfortable, such as allowing the student to take the test            in a familiar setting with a familiar teacher with other students               receiving similar accommodations, or permitting a flexible schedule             that includes shorter test sessions or more breaks. Administrative              accommodations can include allowing the teacher to read directions              aloud, repeating directions, and simplifying or clarifying                      directions (Rivera & Stansfield, 1998). 
Several professional                  groups within the education and measurement communities have issued             recent calls for research to identify appropriate, valid, and                   reliable accommodations for ELLs, including the American Educational            Research Association, American Psychological Association, and                   National Council on Measurement in Education (1999), the American               Educational Research Association (2000), Teachers of English to                 Speakers of Other Languages (2000), and the U.S. Department of                  Education's Office for Civil Rights (2000). Although research on                accommodations for ELLs has begun to be reported on at conferences              and to appear in the literature, studies involving accommodations               seldom involve an experimental research design, making it difficult             to determine the effects of accommodations on reliability, validity,            and score comparability. MEASURING THE EFFECTS OF LINGUISTIC                  SIMPLIFICATIONWhen evaluating the efficiency of an                          accommodation, there are two issues to be determined. First, among              those for whom it is not considered necessary, there is a need to               understand whether the accommodation provides an unfair advantage to            an examinee who receives it over one who does not. For example,                 would an English-speaking student who took a test in which the                  language had been simplified to aid comprehension get an improved               score? Second, if among the first group, there is no advantage for              those who receive it, then there is a need to uderstand whether the             accommodation actually improves the performance of those who have               special needs, for example, the English language learner. Would an              LEP student demonstrate improved performance on a  test that had                been linguistically simplified over a test with standard                        wording? 
One way to determine if an accommodation offers an unfair            advantage, or whether it meaningfully assists students with special             needs, is through an experimental design whereby students with and              without the necessary condition are randomly assigned to treatments,            with some students receiving the treatment and others not getting               it. Two recent experimental studies that have explored the effects              of linguistic simplification as an accommodation illustrate the                 complexity of the issue. One study (Abedi, Lord, & Hofstetter, 1998)            involved mathematics items used in the National Assessment of                   Educational Progress (NAEP). In the study, test booklets containing             either a Spanish version, a simplified English version, or original             NAEP math items (in un-simplified English) were randomly                        administered to 1,400 LEP and non-LEP eighth-graders in southern                California middle schools. Only Hispanic students received the                  Spanish version. The simplified items were rewritten by content                 experts in linguistics and mathematics at the National Center for               Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing. The analyses            indicated that both LEP and non-LEP students (that is, fully English            proficient students) performed best on the simplified version, and              worst on the Spanish version. While LEP and non-LEP students                    performed significantly better on the simplified items, significant             differences in item difficulty were obtained on only 34 percent of              the simplified items, leading the researcher to suggest that                    linguistic clarification of math items might be beneficial to all               students. He also noted that other factors, such as length of time              in the United States, English proficiency, reading competency, and              prior math instruction had significant effects on scores. 
Rivera              and Stansfield (2001) examined the effects of linguistic                        simplification on fourth- and sixth-grade science test items used in            the Delaware Student Testing Program. At each grade level, four                 parallel 10-item testlets were included on an operational statewide             assessment. Items differed only in that on one testlet, they were               linguistically simplified by experts at The George Washington                   University Center for Equity and Excellence in Education, while on              the other, the standard wording was used. A total of 11,306 non-LEP             students and 109 LEP students took one of the eight forms of the                test.  Because the number of LEP students was split among the eight             forms, the number of LEP students taking each test form was small,              ranging from 6 to 23 students. While the researchers caution that               due to the limited sample size, nothing can be generalized about                linguistic simplification as an aid to LEP students, the findings               for the large non-LEP sample are quite clear. The linguistic                    simplification was not helpful to non-LEP students who received it.             This provides evidence that linguistic simplification is not a                  threat to score comparability. 
The result of the process of                   linguistic simplification must be to make the item accessible to                ELLs without altering the difficulty of the content. However, at                times, language and content interact, and in these cases, it is not             possible to linguistically simplify items without simplifying the               content. Further studies are necessary to address the usefulness of             linguistic simplification for LEP students taking formal and                    high-stakes assessments. If experimental studies involving large                samples of LEP students who are randomly assigned to treatments show            that those LEP students who receive simplified items perform                    statistically and meaningfully better than those who receive the                regular, un-simplified version of such items, then the utility of               linguistic simplification in meeting the needs of LEP test-takers               will be established.  At the moment, the research shows that when               properly carried out, linguistic simplification need not be                     considered a threat to score comparability. REFERENCESAbedi,              J. (2001). Validity of Accommodations for English Language Learners.            Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Educational               Research Association, Seattle, WA. 
Abedi, J., Lord, C., &                     Hofstetter, C. (1998). Impact of Selected Background Variables on               Students' NAEP Math Performance. Los Angeles:  UCLA Center for the              Study of Evaluation/National Center for Research on Evaluation,                 Standards and Student Testing. 
Abedi, J., Lord, C.,  Hofstetter,              C., & Baker, E. (2000). Impact of accommodation strategies on                   English language learners' test performance. Educational                        Measurement: Issues and Practice, 19 (3): 16-26. 
American                     Educational Research Association (2000). Position statement of the              American Educational Research Association concerning high-stakes                testing in pre-K-12 education. Educational Researcher, 29 (8),                  24-25. 
American Educational Research Association, American                    Psychological Association, and National Council on Measurement in               Education (1999). Standards for Educational and Psychological                   Testing. Washington, D.C.: American Educational Research                        Association. 
Rivera, C., & Stansfield, C.W. (2001). The Effects of            Linguistic Simplification of Science Test Items on Performance of               Limited English Proficient and Monolingual English-Speaking                     Students. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American                 Educational Research Association, Seattle, WA. 
Rivera, C., &                  Stansfield, C.W. (1998). Leveling the playing field for English                 language learners: Increasing participation in state and local                  assessments through accommodations. In R. Brandt, ed., Assessing                Student Learning: New Rules, New Realities (pp. 65-92). Arlington,              VA: Educational Research Service. [Available online at                          http://ceee.gwu.edu/standards_assessments/researchLEP_accommodintro.            htm] 
Rivera, C., Stansfield, C.W., Scialdone, L., & Sharkey,                  M. (2000). An Analysis of State Policies for the Inclusion and                  Accommodation of English Language Learners in State Assessment                  Programs During 1998-99. Arlington, VA: George Washington                       University, Center for Equity and Excellence in Education. 
Rivera,            C., & Vincent, C. (1997). High school graduation testing: Policies              and practices in the assessment of English language learners.                   Educational Assessment, 4 (4): 335-55. 
Teachers of English to                 Speakers of Other Languages, Elementary and Secondary Education Act             Reauthorization Task Force (2000). Board endorses position papers               for ESEA re-authorization effort. TESOL Matters, 11 (1): 1,                     4. 
U.S. Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (2000).              The Use of Tests As Part of High-Stakes Decision-Making for                     Students: A Resource Guide for Educators and Policy-Makers.                     Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Education. [Available online at            http://www.ed.gov/offices/OCR/testing/index.html]. 
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This               publication was prepared with funding from the Office of Educational            Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education, under                   contract ED99CO0032.  The opinions expressed in this report do not              necessarily reflect the positions of policies of OERI or the U.S.               Department of Education.  Permission is granted to copy and                     distribute this ERIC/AE Digest.                                              **Title:** Test Accommodations for LEP Students. ERIC Digest.                           **Document Type:** Information Analyses---ERIC Information Analysis Products (IAPs) (071); Information Analyses---ERIC Digests (Selected) in Full Text (073); **Available From:** ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation, 1129 Shriver                   Laboratory, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742. Tel:                800-464-3742 (Toll Free); Web site: http://ericae.net.                       **Descriptors:**  Academic Accommodations (Disabilities),  Educational Testing,                  Elementary Secondary Education,  Inclusive Schools,  Limited English            Speaking, Second Language Learning, State Programs,  Testing                    Problems, Testing Programs                                                   **Identifiers:** ERIC Digests                                                                 
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