Accreditation and accountability recently have been prominent in national conversations about the preparation of teachers. Members of our profession have developed standards to which we will hold ourselves as we prepare foreign language and world language (F/WL) teachers for the 21st century. As a participating Specialized Professional Association…

Addresses the challenges faced in developing a task-based language assessment instrument for adult immigrants in Canada that is accountable to the needs of diverse groups of stakeholders, including learners, teachers, and administrators. The test, the Canadian Language Benchmarks Assessment (CLBA), is designed to place adult newcomers in language…

The purpose of this study was to compare how learning outcomes are influenced by a number of key student composition (language background, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and gender) and school context variables on a direct writing performance assessment. The sample was randomly selected from a population of 13,604 third graders in 175 public…

International High School, New York (New York) is a secondary school for students who have been in the United States less than 4 years and who score below the 20th percentile on an English language proficiency test. The 310 students of 1988 came from 37 nations, and spoke 32 languages. An evaluation conducted in the 1991-92 school year indicates…