A history of standardized testing in the United States reveals that during most
of the decades in the middle of the twentieth century, standardized tests enjoyed a
popularity and growth that was almost unchallengtest. Standardized instruments
brought with them convenience, efqsien YLMld an air of empirical science. In
schools, for example, millions of children could be led into a room, seated, armed
with a lead pencil and a score sheet, and almost instantly assessed on their achieve-
ment in subject-matter areas in their curricula. Standardized test advocates utopian
dream of quickly and cheaply assessing students across the country soon became a
political issue, and would-be office holders to this· day promise to "reform" education
with tests, tests, and more tests.
For the most part, they were not. As educators became aware of this weakness,
we saw the advent of a movement to establish standards on which students of all
ages and subject-matter areas olight be assessed. Appropriately, the last 20 years
have seen a mushrooming of efforts on the pa~ of educational leaders to base the
plethora of school-administered standardized tests on clearly specified criteria.
The construction of such standards makes possible a concordance between
standardized test specifications and the goals and objectives of educational pro-
grams. And so, in the broad domain of language arts, teachers and educational
administrators began the painstaking process of carefully examining existing cur-
ricular goals, conducting needs assessments among students, and designing appro-
priate assessments of those standards. A subfield of language arts that is of
increasing importance in the United States, with its millions of non-native users of
English, is English as a Second Language (ESL), also known as English for Speakers
Of Other Languages (ESOL), English language Learners (ELLs),and English Language
devlopment : The once-popular term limited English Proficient [LEP]
·has now-been discarded because of the negative connotation of the word limited.)
II. EID STANDARDS
The process of designing and conducting appropriate periodiC reviews of ELD stan-
dards involves dozens of curriculum and assessment speCialists, teachers, and
researchers (Fields, 2000; Kuhlman, 2001). In creating such "benchmarks for
accountability" (O'Malley & Valdez Pierce, 1996), there is a tremendous responsi-
bility to carry out a comprehensive study of a number of domains:
• literally thousands of categories oflanguage ranging from phonology at one
end of a continuum to discourse, pragmatics, functional, and sociolinguistic
elements at the other end;
• specification of what ELD students~ needs are, at thirteen different grade
levels, for succeeding in their academic and social development;
• a consideration of what is a realistic number and scope ofstandards to be
included within a given curriculum;
• a separate set ofstandards (qualifications, expertise, training)jor teachers to
teach ELD students successfully in their classrooms; and
• a thorough analysis of the means available to assess student attainment of
those standards .
III. ELD ASSESSMENT
The development of standards obviously implies the responsibility for correctly
assessing their attainment. As standarcfs..based education became more accepted in the
1990s, many school systems across the United States found that the standardized tests
of past decades were not in line with newly developed standards.Thus began the inter-
active process not only of developing standards but also of creating standards-based
assessments. The comprehensive process of developing such assessment in California
still continues as curriculum and assessment specialists design, revise, and validate
numerous tests (Morgan & Kuhlman, 2001; Stack et al., 2002; see also Ll-te website
http://www.cde.ca.gov/ statetests/celdtlceldt.html). Between 1999 and 2002, the California English Language Development Test (CELD1) was developed. The
CELDT is a battery of instruments designed to assess the attainment of ELD stan-
dards across grade levels. (For reasons of test security, specifications for this test are
not available to the public.)
The process of administering a comprehensive, valid, and fair assessment of
ELD students continues to be perfected. Stringent budgets within departments of
education worldwide predispose many in decision-making positions to rely on tra-
ditional st~dardized tests for ELD assessment, but rays of hope lie in the exploration
of more student-centered approaches to learner assessment. Stack, Stack, and Fern
(2002), for example, reported on a portfolio assessment system in the San Francisco
Unified School District called the Language and Literacy Assessment Rubric
(LALAR), in which multiple forms of evidence of students' work are collected.
Teachers observe students year-round and record their observations on scannable
forms.The use of the lALAR system provides useful data on students' performance
at· all grade levels for oral prodUction, and for reading and writing performance in
elementary and middle school grades (1-8). Further research is ongoing for high
school levels (grades 9-12).
IV. CASAS AND SCANS
At the higher levels of education (colleges, community colleges, adult schools,
language schools, and workplace settings), standards-based assessment systems
have also had an enormous impact.The Comprehensive Adult StudentASsessment
System (CASAS), for example, is a program designed to provide broadly based
assessments of ESL curricula across the United States. The system includes more
than 80 standardized assessment instruments used to place learners in programs,
diagnose learners' needs, monitor progress, and certify mastery of functional
. basic skills. CASAS -assessment instruments- are used to measure functionaL._
reading, writing, listening, and speaking skills, and higher-order thinking skills.
A similar set of standards compiled by the U. S. Department of Labor, now
known as the Secretary's Commission in Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS), out-
lines competencies necessary for language in the workplace. The competencies
cover language functions in terms of:
• resources (allocating time, materials, staff, etc.),
• interpersonal skills, teamwork, customer service, etc.,
• information processing, evaluating data, organizing fues, etc.,
• systems (e.g., understanding social and organizational systems), and technology use and application.
These five competencies are acquired and maintained through training in the basic
skills (reading, writing, listening, speaking); thinking skills such as reasoning and cre-
ative problem solving; and personal qualities, such as self-eapplicatio sociability. For
more information on scans.
V. TEACHER STANDARDS
which depends on the quality of professional development."
Kuhlman (2001) emphasized the importance of teacher standards in three domains:
1. linguistics and language devel()pment
2. culture and the interrelationship between language and culture
3. planning and managing instruction
Professional teaching standards have also been the focus of several committees in the international association of teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages. How to assess whether teachers have met standards remains a complex issue.
TESOL's standards committee advocats penormance-based assessment of teachers for the following reasons:
• Teachers can demonstrate the standards in their teaching.
• Teaching can be assessed through what teachers do with their learners in
their classrooms or virtual classrooms (their performance) .
• " This performance can be detailed in what are called "indicators": examples of
evidence that the teacher can meet a part of a standard.
• The processes used to assess teachers need to draw on complex evidence
of penormance. In other words, indicators are more tha~simple "how to"
statements.
Performance-based assessment of the standards is an in"tegrated system. It ia statement neither a checklist nor a series of discrete assessments.
• Each assessment within the system has performance criteria against which
the performance can be measured.
• Performance criteria identify to what extent the teacher meets the standard.
• Student learning is at the heart of the teacher'S performance. THE CONSEQUENCES OF STANDARDS-BASED
VI. AND STANDARDIZED TESTING
A couple of decades ago I had the pleasure and challenge of serving on theTOEFL®
Research Committee. Among other things, it was a good opportunity to hear some
of the "inside" stories about the TOEFL. One of those stories, as told by Russell
Webster (personal communication), illustrates the high-stakes nature of this globally
marketed standardized test.
A ring of enterprising "business" persons organized a group of pretend test-
takers to take theTOEFL in an early time zone on a given day. (In those days . .the tests
were administered everywhere on the same day across a riuhjber of time zones. So
TOEFL administrations ended in some East Asian countries as much as 8 to 14 hours
before they began in the United States.)
The task of each test-taking "spy" was not to pass the TOEFL, but to memorize a
subset of items, including the stimulus and all of the multiple-choice options, and
immediately upon leaving the exam to telephone those items to the central orga-
nizers.As the memorized subsections were called in, a complete form of the TOEFL
was quickly reconstructed. The organizers had employed expert consultants to gen-
erate the correct response for each item, thereby re-creating the test items and their
correct answers! For an outrageous price of many thousands of dollars, prearranged
buyers of the results were given copies ~of the test items and correct responses with
a few hours to spare before entering a test administration in theWestern Hemisphere.
The story of how this underhanded group of entrepreneurs were caught and
brought to justice is a long tale of blockbuster spy-novel proportions involving the FBI
and, eventually, international investigators. But the story shows the huge gate-keeping
role of tests like the TOEFL and the high price that sonle were willing to pay to gain
access to a university in the United States and the visa that accompanied it.
But several nagging, persistent issues emerge from the arguments about the con-
sequences of standardized testing. Consider the following interrelated questions:
1. Should the educational and business world be satisfied with high but· not per-
fect probabilities of accurately assessing test-takers on standardized instru-
ments? In other words, what about the small minority who are not fairly
assessed?
2. Regardless of construct validation studies and correlation statistics, should fur-
ther types of performance be elicited in order to get a more comprehensive
picture of the test-taker?
3. Does the proliferation of standardized tests throughout a young person's life
4. the standardized test industry in effect promoting a cultural, social, and
political agenda that maintains existing power structures by assuring opportu-
nity to an elite (wealthy) class of people?
VII. Test Bias
In an era when we seek to recognize the multiple intelligences present within
every student (Gardner, 1983, 1999), is it not likely that standardized tests promote
logical-mathematical and verbal-linguistic intelligences to the virtual exclusion of the
other contextualized, integrative intelligences? Only very recently have traditionally
receptive tests begun to include writtng, listening, speaking, reading andpositive sign. But is it enough? It is also: clear that many otherwise "smart" people do not perform well on standardized tests. They may excel in cognitive styles that are not amenable to a standardized format. Perhaps they need to be assessed by such
performance-based evaluation as interviews, portfolios, samples of work, demonstra-tions,and observation reports? Perhaps, as Weir (2001,p. 122) suggested, learners and teachers need to be given the freedom to choose more formative assessment rather than the sununative assessment inherent in standardized tests.
VIII. Test-Driven Learning and Teaching
learning and teaching. When students and other test-takers know that one smg1e
measUre-oiperior will determine their lives, they are less likely to take a pos-
itive attitude toward learning. The motives in such a context are almost exclusfvery
extrinsic, with little likelihood of stirring intrinsic interests. Test-driven learning is a
worldwide issue. In Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, to name just a few countries, students
approaching their last year of secondary school focus obsessively on passing the
year-end college entrance examination, a major section of which is English (Kuba,
2002). Little attention is given to any topic or task that does not directly contribute
to passing that one exam. In the United States, high school seniors are forced to give
almost as much attention to SAT scores.
ETHICAL ISSUES: CRITICAL lANGUAGE TESTING
The issues of critical language testing are numerous:
• Psychometric traditions are challenged by interpretive, individualized proce-
dures for predicting success and evaluating ability.
• Test designers have a responsibility to offer mUltiple modes of performance
to account for varying styles and abilities among test-takers.
• Tests are deeply embedded in culture and ideology.
• Test-takers are political subjects in a political context.
i. EXERCISES
[Note: (I) Individual work; (G) Group or pair work; (C) Whole-class discussion.]
1. (C) Evaluate the standards-based assessment movement. What are its advantages
and disadvantages? How might one compensate for potential disadvantages?
2. (I) Consult the California English Language Development Test websites listed.
From what you can glean from that information, how would you evaluate the
CELDT in terms of content validity, face validity, and authenticity?
3. (I) Consult the TESOL website on teacher standards (page 109).What would
you say are a few minlmal standards that language teachers should measure
up to? In your own institutional context, or one that you are familiar with,
how would you assess a teacher's attainment ofthose standards?
4. (G/C) Look at the four questions posed on page 111 regarding the conse-
quences of standardized testing. In groups, one question for each group, or as
a whole class, respond to those questions.
5. (I) Log on to the website for the National Center for Fair and OpenTesting
(see page 111). Report back to the class on the topics and issues sponsored
by that o~anization.
6. (C) Explain the claim that "test-takers are political subjects in a political con·,
text" (page 113) and Shohamy's assertion that large-scale standardized testing
is the "agent of cultural, social, political, educational, and ideological agendas."
Draw up a list of DOS and DON'TS through which teachers might overcome the
potential political agendas in the use of standardized tests.
ii. FOR YOUR FURTHER READING
KoM,Alfie. 2000. The case against standardized testing. Westport, Cf: Heinemann.
Kohn makes a strong case for the unfairness of the widespread exclusive
use of standardized testing in elementary and secondary schools in the
United States. His arguments may be appropriate for any other test-driven
educational institution in any country.
Hamp-Lyons, liz. (2001). Ethics, fairness(es), and developments in.Janguage testing.
In Catherine Elder (Ed.), Experimenting with uncertainty: Essays in honour of
Alan Davies (pp. 222-227). (Studies in Language Testilig #11). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
The political and ethical issues in testing are capsulized in this brief article.
The author addresses the question of what "fairness" is and how one might
discern when a test is unfair.
Reference:
Brown, H. Douglas. (2004). LANGUAGE ASSESSMENT: principlesand classroom Practices. Pearson Education: NewYork.
