This paper will deal, firstly, with the South African context, that cries out for attention to responsible language assessment. The renewed interest in language testing in South Africa is well illustrated in assessments of language ability for educational purposes generally, and more specifically in the assessment of academic literacy. Secondly,…

Many seem to believe that researcher-made tests are unnecessary, if not inappropriate, for evaluating reading comprehension interventions. We suggest that this view reflects a zeitgeist in which researcher-made (proximal) tests that align with the researchers' interventions are closely scrutinized and often devalued, whereas commercially developed…

In the US K-12 public school settings, each state's annual English language proficiency (ELP) assessment, as part of an educational accountability system, has tremendous impact on English learner (EL) students' academic paths and success. It is thus critical to establish a robust validation framework and empirical evidence to ensure that states'…

The Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-Fifth Edition (WISC-V; Wechsler 2014a) "Technical and Interpretation Manual" (Wechsler 2014b) dedicated only a single page to discussing the 10-subtest WISC-V primary battery across the entire 6 to 16 age range. Users are left to extrapolate the structure of the 10-subtest battery from the…

Designing an effective K-12 alternate English language proficiency assessment (ELP) for English learners with significant cognitive disabilities (ELSCDs) is a substantial undertaking, particularly given the absence of design models for such an assessment and limited empirical research to guide test design teams. These challenges emphasized the…

To ensure quality of education, a language framework should be the foundation on which second language curricula are developed. In 2010, the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada (CMEC), as suggested by Vandergrift (2006a, 2006b), recommended the use of the Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) in the K-12 Canadian school context and…

This paper argues that educational policies and changes in Wales over the last thirty years have somewhat neglected issues concerned with management and leadership, in comparison with other countries and within the UK. More recently, however, leadership development has been provided and the Welsh National Academy for Educational Leadership has…

A new educational paradigm, 'resilience education,' has emerged as an effort by states and local communities to provide their constituencies with skills to cope with natural and man-made disasters. While the topic of resilience has seen an explosion in academic and policy interest, little scholarly attention has been paid to exploring the social…

This article presents a critical review of the Texas English Language Proficiency Assessment System (TELPAS), a large scale standardized English language proficiency (ELP) assessment developed by the Texas Education Agency (TEA) and administered since 2004. TELPAS is used as an annual summative assessment for all English Learners (ELs) in grades…

International large-scale assessments (ILSAs) have become an important part of the Swedish evaluation system. It is therefore of crucial importance to validate national measures of Swedish students' achievement with their ILSA test scores. Here, we offer results from such a validation study based on Swedish students' test scores in IEA's Trends in…

The edTPA, a nationally available performance assessment for teacher candidates, has recently been developed and implemented in teacher education programs across the United States. Advocates make arguments for the need for such an assessment while critics of standardized performance assessments point out the dangers of standardization. This…

In 2018, 26 states administered a college admissions test to all public school juniors. Nearly half of those states proposed to use those scores as their academic achievement indicators for federal accountability under the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA); many others are planning to use those scores for other accountability purposes.…

This Brief contains a scan of the interim assessment landscape, and is focused on the availability of documentation supporting the appropriateness of these assessments for students with disabilities. The purpose of this Brief is to advise the development of guidance that facilitates improved practices related to the use of interim assessments for…

Over the past 40 years, Jim Cummins has proposed a number of highly influential theoretical concepts, including the threshold and interdependence hypotheses and the distinction between conversational fluency and academic language proficiency. In this book, he provides a personal account of how these ideas developed and he examines the credibility…

The Comprehensive English Regents Exam, also referred to as the English Language Arts (ELA) Examination, is a widely used measure of student achievement in the K-12 system in New York, yet it is not without criticism. One concern is that the ELA Regents Exam may be contributing to the widening of the gap in graduation rates between English…