In research published in the December edition of the journal TESOL Quarterly, MSU’s Paula Winke said teachers and test administrators should assist in the reform of the English Language Proficiency Assessment. Otherwise, the test could negatively impact the academic success of the country’s more than 5 million English Language Learners (defined as those who speak another language).

“The test is supposed to measure how well a school teaches English, but the students feel it measures their own abilities and whether they’re a good person,” said Winke, an assistant professor of second languages who teaches in the College of Education. “So students often don’t understand why the test is so difficult. They think, ‘Why am I such a failure?’”

Read the full MSU news release.

The report was released this week by the Rennie Center for Education Research and Policy and Policy Analysis for California Education (PACE) at University of California, Berkeley. The researchers note technology must play a much greater role in state assessments. They also say states need to pay special attention to measuring students for whom English is a second language.

Reckase, a faculty member in the Measurement and Quantitative Methods program at MSU, provides an overview of computer adaptive assessment in one of the report’s three papers.

Read more in Education Week and Washington Times.