Relationships between a Statewide Language Proficiency Test and Academic Achievement Assessments. LEP Projects Report 4

Minnesota is one of many states that began development of an English proficiency test before federal requirements were in place to do so. It had decided to put into place a test that would provide the state with a better and more uniform gauge of how its population of English language learners (ELLs) was doing in their acquisition of academic English language skills. Minnesota chose to adapt its test, the Test of Emerging Academic English (TEAE), from the Illinois Measure of Academic Growth in English (IMAGE). The TEAE is designed to gauge the growth of emerging academic English language skills across all grades, including three forms spanning grades 3-4, 5-6, and 7-8. The 7-8 form is also designed for use with students above grades 7-8. This report focused on state ELL performance on the TEAE, in comparison to ELL and fluent English student performance on Minnesota's Comprehensive Assessment (MCA) in reading in 3rd and 5th grade, and Minnesota's Basic Skills Test (BST) in reading in 8th grade. The TEAE is designed to measure the basic English proficiency required for pursuing higher-level academic achievement, while the MCA is designed to measure academic achievement toward the state standards. The Basic Skills Test in reading measures the basic skills needed to be able to graduate. Across these comparisons, the guiding research questions were to find out what levels of the TEAE best predicts success on the MCA and BST, and whether the state decision to count as proficient those ELLs who achieve at level 4 on the TEAE has a sound base of support from an assessment perspective. Study 1 addresses the questions related to the TEAE and the MCAs. Study 2 addresses the same questions for the TEAE and the BST. Among the key findings, in Study 1 (TEAE and the MCA), ELLs in TEAE level 4 are likely to do as well as native English speakers on the MCA, recognizing that there is a range of performance among native speakers. Although the specific predictive relationship (i.e., what TEAE score corresponds to what MCA score) can differ, the positive relationship between students' performance on the two tests is stable across years and grades. For students with TEAE scores below about 110, there is less ability to predict MCA scores. Most students in TEAE level 3 fall into MCA levels 2A, 2B, or 3 and therefore although it is likely that many within this group score as proficient (i.e., 2B or 3) others may not (2A). In Study 2 (TEAE and the BST), it was found that TEAE scale scores had moderate predictive power for BST performance. However, the predictability is not as good as for the MCA. To predict that a student would be likely to pass the BST, he or she must score at least 260 (i.e., achieve level 3) on the TEAE. In conclusion, there might be stronger relationships between the MCA and 3rd and 5th grade reading skills on the TEAE because the academic language skills measured on the TEAE fit those elementary grades better. Other factors besides potential discrepancies between secondary grade level skills and basic academic language skills may also account for differences in performance between the tests. (Contains 15 figures and 12 tables.)