Accommodations and English Learners: Inconsistencies in Policies and Practice (original) (raw)

This article outlines the results of a survey of all the large-scale testing accommodations used with English learners across the United States, addressing the increasing challenge of integrating this population into a state's accountability system in a valid and reliable manner. This examination of accommodation policies used in standardized content area assessments reveals that there is little consistency across states with regard to testing accommodations for ELs in providing accommodations when ELs are tested in academic content areas. In today's educational environment in the United States, it is virtually impossible to find a district or school that is not held accountable by some sort of large scale or standardized assessment. In fact, as more and more federal funds are tied to the results of such assessment programs, we see this trend in accountability becoming more and more prevalent. The No Child Left Behind [NCLB] (2002) and the Common Core State Standards Initiat...