CAPSS Position on Testing Bilingual and ESL Students

Background: Current federal law requires that bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) students be tested on state assessments after 10 months in a bilingual or other language acquisition program.   According to the law, students should be assessed for their mastery of content measured as by the state tests.  Testing to determine a student's level of English proficiency does not fulfill this requirement.  In Connecticut, these students in ESL and bilingual will be tested on the Connecticut Mastery Test (CMT) and Connecticut Advanced Performance Test (CAPT) to meet this requirement.

Recommendation: CAPSS proposes that the state develop alternative forms of the CMT and CAPT in one or more of the dominant languages of Connecticut's students, or that alternative language tests with comparable content to the CMT and CAPT be given to all limited English speaking students.

Rational: The expectation that a limited English speaking youngster could become sufficiently proficient in English to comprehend content material after ten months of bilingual or ESL instruction in contrary to current literature on language acquisition.   When students take a test which they cannot comprehend, the results merely reflect their level of language development, rather than their mastery of content.  Under these circumstances, the usefulness of the test as a diagnostic, instructional tool is limited at best.  The practice of testing limited English proficient students with CMT or CAPT, has the effect, therefore, of placing them in a failure situation with no justifiable educational benefit.