Presented by: Oganes

Equitable assessment of English learners is critical to student success. Multilingual students may not score well on standardized tests when assessment and interpretation is not reliable, valid, and fair for all. Monolingual and bilingual practitioners must engage in high quality assessment practices focused on enhancing academic outcomes for English learners yet working with this population is challenging. Learning problems may be due to language and cultural factors and/or lack of exposure to appropriately matched quality, research-based instructional practices that enhance language and literacy.The evaluation of exclusionary factors requires knowledge of background history, as well as the understanding of how the bilingual brain acquires language while developing literacy in the second language. Fair and equitable interpretation of assessment data requires knowing what instructional practices were implemented to develop language and literacy. This workshop will examine the bilingual brain and the close relationship between classroom performance and the assessment of English learners. Practitioners will be more confident in test selection and other assessment practices and will be able to design interventions for multilingual student success.