How Standardized Testing is Killing American Education: Reason #7

Fourth in a series.

7) English Learners unfairly penalized: One would expect someone who is learning English to score lower on a test of English proficiency than a native English speaker. Test scores bear that out, and it's not surprising or unexpected.
There is no reason to assume, however, that someone who is learning English will necessarily be less proficient in math, or science, or general social studies (apart from US History) than native English speakers. Indeed, a student who received more education in their home country before coming to the US than a native speaker would be expected to be more proficient. At the very least, we should assume that the scores in these non-English subjects should be roughly equivalent. A more realistic assumption based on international research would be that foreign-educated students might actually score better than native English speakers educated in the American public-education system.
So why do English learners consistently score lower in math than native speakers? A cursory glance at the test will reveal this immediately: the format of the questions require a level of English proficiency just to understand what the question is; a level of English proficiency that many English learners have yet to attain.
Math questions are almost all contextualized word problems. A problem given as "4+7=___" could be accessed by anyone, regardless of English proficiency. When it is given instead as "Farmer Brown has 4 chickens and 7 ducks. How many birds does he have?" we run into problems. First, vocabulary: Farmer, chicken, duck, bird... if a student doesn't know these words, the question becomes more difficult, and not because of any deficiency in mathematical skills. Add to that the problem that comes with not realizing that "chickens" and "ducks" are both subsets of the larger category "birds" (if a student has heard of chickens but not ducks, they might legitimately answer "4"), and the various conjugations of the irregular verb "to have" (you know that "has" and "have" mean the same thing in this sentence... does an English learner know that?) and a student might get the answer wrong for several reasons that have nothing to do with their level of math proficiency, and math proficiency is what this test is supposed to be assessing.
So what do we do about it? More accurate results could come by letting students use a translating dictionary for the non-English portions of the test. This would of course have to be tied to an increase in the time allowed, since looking up 3 or 4 words per questions will most likely more than double the time necessary to finish the test. Even without the dictionary, English learners need more time to read and comprehend English texts, so the time extension or even giving unlimited time would go a long way toward redressing this inequity. Unfortunately, both of these suggestions make-up the "axis of evil" for standardized test makers: the argument is that the point of the test being "standardized" is that scores can be compared fairly because every student takes the exact same test under the exact same conditions. Any variation in conditions destroys standardization by this view. I would argue that for all subjects other than English, the opposite is true, and a fair and equitable measuring stick for students proficiency in subjects other than English cannot be attained until we sacrifice these sacred cows on the altar of equal opportunity.

(Resources: 1 2)

-"Medium-Head Boy!.... You see, he doesn't know!"