I am cross-posting my reply to Dorothy as it stems from an original posting of mine to the Adult English Language Learners, Assessment , and Learning Disabilities Discussion Lists

 

Hi Dorothy,

 

Thank you kindly for your reply and yes, it really is different to experience the world without internet access.  To think it was only 15 years ago that Netscape brought the WWW to the public!

 

I have received very little feedback (thank you for being a respondent!) to my search for an assessment tool or tools to replace the AMES I am currently using.  Years ago the CBO I was working at used CTB McGraw-Hill’s CTBS and then its successor, the TerraNova CTBS original edition for its incoming Pre-GED and GED students – mostly youth, but also a few adults.  The current version is the 3rd edition (http://www.ctb.com/products/product_summary.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=1408474395292939 <http://www.ctb.com/products/product_summary.jsp?FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=1408474395292939&bmUID=1242319838825> &bmUID=1242319838825). 

 

I’ve decided to experiment with the CTBS for my adult ESL students with academic goals or who need a GED (for example to meet the minimum qualifications of career areas such as hairdressing or cosmetology). The lowest level of the test is level 11 designed for 1st graders.  I will then correlate their scores with the ones they obtain on other tests I already have or hope to get samples of for professional evaluation purposes.

 

What I like about the CTBS in principle is that it (theoretically, at least) taps into students’ background knowledge in reading, language, math, science, and social studies, precisely the subject areas of the GED test.  I believe the (formal) educational backgrounds (“common underlying proficiency” levels) of my students to be of considerable value in informing and predicting their success in the course of their continued studies, including ESL.  Although the test is designed for K-12, I hope to get a sense of its appropriateness for use with an adult population.  

 

I will share whatever I may learn with several of the NIFL discussion lists. 

 

Thanks again, Dorothy, for being so accommodating!

 

Michael

 

  

 

From: dtaylor at buffalo.edu [mailto:dtaylor at buffalo.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 13, 2009 4:05 AM
To: Michael A. Gyori
Subject: RE: [EnglishLanguage 4199] Re: Question about assessment

 

Michael,

My apologies that I've taken so long to respond to your question. I was out of town and away from internet access (quite nice, actually!). We're a small program. We generally have a little over 100 students in an academic year. Our program accepts immigrants and refugees. Our state funding mandates that students be citizens, have permanent resident or refugee status (no one with temporary or student visas); be educationally disadvantaged (L2 fits that mandate); and be financially disadvantaged (no more than 200% over poverty level). L1 and country of origin change from year to year. We get several students from Puerto Rico, a large number of refugees (native country changes depending on political situation), and a scattering of other students. I don't have specific information, but I would estimate that about half of our students have not finished high school, and their goal is to get their GED. Their formal schooling ranges from none at all to just a few months shy of obtaining their high school diplomas. Those students with little formal education who want to get their GED were more likely to object to the TABE and seemed to appreciate the listening and expository writing components of the TABE CLAS-E. We use the NRS level of 5 to exit students from ESL into our Academic Review program where they student with native-English speakers. (It's too early, but a result of limited resources!) Students who move out of ESL, many of whom want to get their GED, will have to take the TABE 9 & 10 when they exit our ESL program. 

Let me know if you have any more questions.

Dorothy



On Wed 05/06/09 1:54 PM , "Michael A. Gyori" mgyori at mauilanguage.com sent:

Thanks for clarifying, Dorothy!

 

I have one more question: can you give me a general idea of your students’ demographics (SES, L1, formal educational background levels)?

 

Michael

 

From: dtaylor at buffalo.edu [mailto:dtaylor at buffalo.edu] 
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 7:06 AM
To: Michael A. Gyori
Subject: RE: [EnglishLanguage 4199] Re: Question about assessment

 

 

Michael,

I was responding to your questions about whether I believe “the student complaints derived from inherent issues with the TABE 7 & 8, or because of required testing intervals and targeted gains. . .” My point was that the only thing we changed was the test (from TABE to TABE CLAS-E). We didn’t change the testing intervals or anything else, but the students stopped complaining about the test when we made the switch. I haven’t done any research on why that is. As I mentioned before, the students complaints about the TABE 7 & 8 or 9 & 10 included comments that the questions were culturally biased, or were not connected to what they needed or had studied and that it showed little or no gains when they felt they had. These were complaints from some students, not all students, but enough to cause us to look for another test. The students seem to like that the TABE CLAS-E includes a listening and expository component. Also, the reading test is shorter, 25 questions as opposed to 50, since we used the complete battery for the TABE. The TABE 9 & 10 may very well work fine for some ESL populations, but our population is happier with the TABE CLAS-E, and since we feel we’re getting adequate reporting and decision-making information from it, we’d rather use the standardized test that makes our students content. 

 

Dorothy 

 

 

On Wed 05/06/09 12:19 PM , "Michael A. Gyori" mgyori at mauilanguage.com sent:

I don’t your reason for saying that there are issues with TABE, Dorothy, i.e., since neither the required testing intervals nor targeted gains changed.

 

When you have a moment, would you kindly clarify the connection?

 

Thanks,

Michael

 

From: dtaylor at buffalo.edu [mailto:dtaylor at buffalo.edu] 
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 1:37 PM
To: Michael A. Gyori
Subject: RE: [EnglishLanguage 4199] Re: Question about assessment

 

The former (issues with the TABE) since neither the required testing intervals nor targeted gains changed.

Dorothy Taylor

Associate Professor

Educational Opportunity Center

SUNY/University at Buffalo 





On Tue 05/05/09 3:07 PM , "Michael A. Gyori" mgyori at mauilanguage.com sent:

Dear Dorothy,

 

Thank you for your very useful and pertinent response!  It does beg another question:  do you believe the student complaints derived from inherent issues with the TABE 7 & 8, or because of required testing intervals and targeted gains due to requirements being placed on you and the students?

 

I have no constraints in terms of when I test or the number of instructional hours that separate test administrations.  The amount of demonstrated gains (or regression,  which can and does occur) is not something I need to be preoccupied with for reporting requirements. 

 

I’d appreciate your renewed reply.

 

Thanks again,

 

Michael

 

 

 

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of dtaylor at buffalo.edu
Sent: Tuesday, May 05, 2009 8:44 AM
To: The Adult English Language Learners Discussion List
Subject: [EnglishLanguage 4199] Re: Question about assessment

 

Dear Michael and others,

Many of our refugee and immigrant students also have academic goals, such as GED or college. We’re a two-level ESL program, and we used to use the TABE 7 & 8 reading and math sections for all our ESL students. A couple of years ago we switched to the BEST Literacy for initial placement and post-testing for our first level (high beginners) and continued to use the TABE for the second level (intermediate – high intermediate). We’ve had a lot of complaints from our students about the TABE. We post-test after 7 weeks (about 140 hours @ 20 hours each week), and students often showed little progress. In addition, they felt the test was culturally biased. This year, we switched to the TABE CLAS-E. It has correlation tables for the TABE 9 and includes expository writing and listening sections, which the TABE does not have.   Now that we’re using the BEST Literacy and TABE CLAS-E, we’ve gone from lots of complaints from our students about our standardized post-testing to virtually no complaints. Neither the BEST Literacy nor the TABE CLAS-E measures math ability, so we’ve continued to use the computational and applied math sections of the TABE. I don’t believe that any one standardized test or other measurement does it all, but we’ve been pretty happy with the BEST Literacy as a measure of functional English literacy skills and the TABE CLAS-E to measure readiness for academic classes.

 

Dorothy Taylor

Associate Professor

Educational Opportunity Center

SUNY/University at Buffalo 





On Tue 05/05/09 1:53 PM , "Michael A. Gyori" mgyori at mauilanguage.com sent:

Note: I am cross-posting my reply to Mona Curtis regarding my search for new assessment tools for my NNES learners with academic English goals.

 

Hi Mona,

 

Thanks for responding!

 

Yes, I know a little about the BEST Plus.  The issue I have with it is that it taps into English listening and speaking skills, so that it provides but a part of the proficiencies I need to tap into for CBI.  I am looking for current norm- or criterion-referenced assessment tools that provide meaningful information about my ESL students’ reading comprehension/reading vocabulary, grammar (cover term for “all else”), computation, and applied problem solving (mathematical word problems) skills.   This information helps me inform where to start with those students who have academic goals (typically either GED or college preparation programs).

 

I’d love to hear from teachers who may have used the TABE 9 with ESL students as an initial assessment, and how the obtained scores in their experience correlate with ESL measures such as TABE CLAS-E, BEST Plus, LAS, Michigan Test of English Language Proficiency, etc.  I’m drawn to TABE 9, and am curious whether practicing teachers who have used it consider it a useful (and relatively unbiased) measure for ESL learners.

 

I’m also interested in studies/research that has examined the appropriateness for ESL of  assessment tools such as TABE 9 (intended for ABE/ASE).

 

Finally, I’m also considering replacing norm- with criterion-referenced tests, because language and academic criteria reveal more (to me at least) than a large norming population that is referenced in coming up with a score (such as GLEs). 

 

Thanks again, 

 

Michael

 

From: englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov [mailto:englishlanguage-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of Mona Curtis
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 7:15 AM
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 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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