Hello all,

My name is Figen Tabakci and I work for Bergen County Community Action Partnership in Hackensack, NJ. 

We are a member of the Bergen Consortium in ABE/ESL Title II Grant Program, by DOLWD, along with Bergen County Technical Schools and Bergen Community College.

We used CASAS (Comprehensive Adult Student Assessment System) for our ESL programs until this year (2008-2009 grant year). 

And now, we are mandated to use BEST Plus. So, we are familiar with BEST Plus this year. 

You have to go through an all day training and get 'certified' to be able to administer BEST Plus. Almost all of our teachers have been trained. 

Although BEST Plus maybe a great tool for some programs, we are having a lot of difficulty with it.

It's a one-on-one test so it is very time consuming. It may take between 5 minutes and 25 minutes per person, depending on the student's English proficiency level and responses. The software generates the questions according to the scoring you do when you test the students. 

Also, it only tests students' oral proficiency, not reading or writing. So, we find that placement in the appropriate level is a bit challenging with BEST Plus. 

Posttesting is challenging as well. The teachers have to arrange for an activity for the rest of the class while they are posttesting. Or there have to be two teachers; one to teach the class and one to posttest.  
 
Again, it might be a great tool for some programs, but not for programs with high number of students. We serve over fifteen hundred students a year (our consortium combined). 

At one of the trainings last year, we had heard that there would be an ESL component of the TABE in the upcoming months. I'm not sure if it is available now.
CASAS was a good assessment tool. Although there is not one 'great' assessment tool, schools/agencies have to make decisions as to what would work best for their particular ABE or ESL programs, I guess.

Regards,

Figen Tabakci
Education & Training Center
Bergen County CAP
Phone: 201 968 0200 ext. 7035
Fax: 201 968 0243
tabakci.figen at bergencap.org



----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Mona Curtis 
  To: Adult English Language Learners List ; Assessment Discussion List ; The Learning Disabilities Discussion List 
  Cc: brownj at hawaii.edu ; kathi.bailey at miis.edu ; lfb at humnet.ucla.edu 
  Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 1:14 PM
  Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4196] Re: Question about assessment


  Do you know anything about BEST-plus? 

   

  From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Michael A. Gyori
  Sent: Saturday, May 02, 2009 6:49 PM
  To: Adult English Language Learners List; Assessment Discussion List; The Learning Disabilities Discussion List
  Cc: brownj at hawaii.edu; kathi.bailey at miis.edu; lfb at humnet.ucla.edu
  Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4194] Question about assessment

   

  Greetings to all,

   

  I am cross-posting a question related to assessment and hope to benefit from your expertise!

   

  For the past 10 or so years, I have mainly been using the Adult Measure of Essential Skills (AMES - published by Steck Vaughn) as a standardized norm-referenced test for both L1 (mainly Hawaii Creole English) & L2 speakers of English.  This test is no longer being published or supported; further, the NRS (National Reporting Service) recently dropped this as one of the tests it accepts for reporting purposes.  I intend to stop using AMES, the immediate (but by no means primary) reason being to maintain the appearance of currency vis-à-vis third party student sponsors. 

   

  At this time, the vast majority of my students are NNES adults with academic English learning goals (either GED or college preparation).  My students commonly have 6 to 9 years of formal education. The AMES is not a test designed for NNES learners, but it provides a snapshot of English language reading comprehension, communication, computation, and applied problem solving skills (along with an array of sub-skills). The raw scores can be converted to scaled scores, percentiles, stanines, and GLEs (however measured against a norming population from ca. 12 years ago). 

   

  I have encountered numerous instances in which the scores are clearly biased towards L1 English speakers, not to mention a rather low correlation across the five levels of the AMES.  The starkest example of the latter is a student of mine who scored at 4.7 GLE in reading upon intake, and at 5.9+ GLE two months later as measured by Level B Form 1 and then alternate Form 2; when I administered the more difficult Level C after yet another two months, she scored at 1.2 GLE in reading.   (I knew it wasn't her "true" score, re-administered the test two days later, at which time she scored at 3.1 GLE.  After doing an item response activity together with her, she scored at 6.5 GLE when I added her self-corrected responses to her raw score.)

   

  This leads to my question:  given that I provide content-based instruction (integrating language with academic subject development), which norm- or criterion-referenced tests or combination of tests would you recommend I explore to replace AMES that may be more suited for L2 English learners?  To inform instruction, I need to continue to measure the four aforementioned skills areas. I am considering TABE Online or TABE-PC 9&10.  I have in the past also used TABE 8, the TerraNova CTBS Basic Battery (neither any longer published) and CASAS, which I am certified to administer.  Although both CASAS and TABE have ESL measures, when you purchase them together with ABE/ASE measures, they are very costly. 

   

  Finally, now that I am self-employed, I am free to choose any assessment tool - I simply want as much demonstrated test validity and reliability as only possible.

   

  Thank you very kindly for any advice or recommendations you are willing to share with me!

   

   

  Michael

   

   



   

  Michael A. Gyori, M.A. TESOL

  Owner-Teacher

  Maui International Language School

  Phone 808.205.2101 (U.S.A.)

  Fax 808.891.2237 (U.S.A.)

  E-mail mgyori at mauilanguage.com

  Website www.mauilanguage.com

   



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