Chapter 9 Assessing English-Language Learners ’ Achievement

Assessment of learners ’ academic achievement in a second language presents impor-tant challenges to the fields of educational research and educational practice. Although these challenges legitimately concern learners ’ familiarity with a second language, the challenges are more complex, particularly in the contexts of large-scale assessments that are intended to hold schools accountable for what students know and can do on the basis of their performance on assessments. This chapter presents a syn-opsis of major trends and issues in this regard involving large-scale assessment of Eng-lish-language learner students (ELLs) in the United States in core achievement areas. These students are students from non-English backgrounds who are evaluated by schools as not knowing sufficient English to benefit fully from instruction in this lan-guage and who are eligible for receipt of educational support to acquire greater English proficiency. Although the precise numbers of these students in the U.S. population cannot be determined for reasons discussed in this chapter, they have been estimated to number approximately 4.5 million and to constitute about 8 % of all students in the K–12 grade range; about 80 % of these students are from a Spanish-speaking back-ground (Zehler et al., 2003). After a discussion of research trends and issues in th