Q&A

The Role of Language: A Conversation With Evaluation Expert Gary Hargett

Gary Hargett is an independent educational consultant who specializes in English language learner issues. Hargett works with districts, state departments of education, research firms, and other organizations in the areas of ELL program planning and evaluation. He spoke with Northwest Education from his office in Portland, Oregon.

Q: A lot of schools seem to be missing AYP because their ELL subgroups aren’t hitting the mark. What would you say to them?

I would say that you have to look at the reasons students are not progressing academically and address those reasons, just like you do with any other group. English learners bring with them many of the same challenges facing other groups that have trouble meeting AYP. A lot of the issues are certainly not unique to them. And as the standards continue to rise—that is, the targets for AYP—I think we’re going to see more subgroups that are not making it. And so, we’re going to have to do some examination of why.

There can be extensions on a student-by-student basis, right?

Sure. But the fact is that most states are not providing instruction in those languages, so you’re not necessarily going to have better results testing in a student’s native language if they haven’t been taught in that language. You’re going to remove some of the language barrier, but there’s still going to be a mismatch between the language of the assessment and the language of instruction.

How do you feel about other kinds of accommodations? For instance, tests that use modified English?

You do language modifications in order to remove extraneous variables that may be hiding what a student can do. For example, in the obvious case of math, if what you really want to find out is if a student knows how to do their computations, then you don’t want to have a test that is so laden with language that a student doesn’t even understand what they’re being asked to do. The student may actually know how to do the math, but they’re getting held up on the instructions.

I don’t know to what extent that is the case, but that’s the logical reason behind it. And it makes sense, and you could also make the same argument for students who are not ELL students. You can reasonably say, “Well, we want to remove that extraneous variable of reading from math, so let’s do a simplified version of the reading on our math test for everybody.” And in fact, if what you want to get at is the pure mathematics of it, then that makes sense. Of course, you can argue that part of mathematics is being able to communicate about mathematics. And so, you just have to figure out exactly what you’re assessing for and make sure that there is nothing in the assessment that gets in the way of making that determination.

Has the focus on ELL students made teachers more aware of language throughout the curriculum?

I think that began even before we had these accountability questions. When I first started working in Oregon almost 20 years ago, I would talk to classroom teachers and administrators who would say: “The fact is that many—maybe most—of our students are LEP (Limited English Proficient), even if their first language is English.” I do think the focus on ELL students has made more people aware of the impact of language throughout the curriculum, but I think that awareness has been there on the part of many people for a long time. That’s not to say that we’ve figured out what to do about it.

So, do you think we’re doing a good job of spreading language across the curriculum, or is there still a lot of work to do in that regard?

A tremendous amount of work to do! I personally don’t think that our English language learners are making the progress in English that they could. And I think there are several reasons for that. I always want to be clear: I am not one to cast blame on others. I think that most educators are doing the best they know how, they just don’t know how. And I don’t think that our professional development has risen to the task.

For a long time, I think that teachers were being told don’t try to teach the language, just provide students with a rich language environment and they will naturally acquire it. The fact is they didn’t. And part of the reason is that we still haven’t shown teachers what a rich language environment looks like.

The question is: What does teaching English look like, in an appropriate way, for students at different ages and different levels of academic preparation? I think we need more explicit attention to the role of language and what English as a language looks like and what it is about the language that is problematic and should be addressed directly.

When you talk about creating a rich learning environment, are you referring to a whole language-type approach?

As soon as you say “whole language” it raises the specter of that controversial approach to reading, and then dialogue shuts down. I would say, instead, that it’s about paying conscious attention to the role of language throughout instruction, and the extent to which a lack of knowledge of a language is affecting a student’s abilities to learn or to perform well on tests.

For example, I think it’s reasonable to think that the reason fewer students meet benchmark as you go up the grade levels is because of the language load in the tests. It’s not the reading skill, but simple lack of knowledge of the vocabulary in those reading passages, and some of the more sophisticated syntactic forms that you encounter in more difficult reading passages. You have to be aware of when a student simply doesn’t understand the actual language.

It seems like there’s a disconnect between the letter of the law, which says that students must take tests in English after three years, and the research, which suggests that language learners can take anywhere from five to 10 years to master academic English.

Well, the fact is, most students who are in the seven- to 10-year range probably never do learn it. To say that they’re going to acquire it after 10 years assumes that they’re making steady progress in closing the gap between what they know about English and what they need to know to be able to succeed on these tests, and that’s such a tremendous challenge. Particularly if we’re not drawing explicit attention to the role of language, then we’re not helping students to do that quickly.

What is your impression of the development of states’ LEP assessments? Has it gone smoothly or has it been rough sailing for most states?

Test development is always rough sailing, and they’re trying to do it under an impossible timeline. You know, NCLB came upon us with all these mandates, but without provisions for the adequate time it takes to gear up for it. It is a really, really unreasonable timeline. It takes a long time to develop a good test. You have to figure out: What does English proficiency even mean? People like me who have been working with this for a long time may have a good understanding of it, but not everybody in the field does.

One thing that has complicated matters is the wording of the federal law, which says that we have to assess in the four domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. And the law says that all students must be assessed, including K–1. So, you have to ask: What does English reading and writing look like for the K–1 ELL student? Well, we’re not even sure what it looks like for the native English speaker at that age, especially in writing.

The other complication is to require that the assessment be done in the skill areas. Everyone is interested in whether the students can communicate well in English, but it still comes back to: If they can’t, why not? And it also comes back to: Do they really know what the language is? And that’s why you need a test that really gets at the extent to which they have a command of English, and which things the native speaker knows and the second language learner doesn’t.

People who are specialists in the field understand that when you’re talking about language you’re talking about such things as vocabulary and syntax and morphology. But then we’re told we have to assess the skill areas. I would have been much happier if they had left it to our discretion as to how to assess proficiency, rather than requiring that it be in those skill domains. Because now we’re in the situation of having to construct items in skill domains, when what we really want to find out is: What do we know about the student’s command of the language? So I wish that they had not written those restrictions into the law. And I wish they hadn’t told us we have to assess kindergarten and first-grade students in writing.

Is that because even native English speakers at that age aren’t really writing at a level that’s easy to evaluate?

What does it really mean, you know? They’re doing a lot of prewriting, but what do you reasonably expect of a really young child, anyway? And then, add on top of that, the English language learner. We know that it’s going to look different for them.

By including K–1, I think it raises all kinds of theoretical questions that they didn’t mean to raise, and those are interesting questions, but the mandate is not for research—the mandate is to develop tests that can used for accountability. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to use these tests for the kind of in-depth research potential that we believe they could offer us.

So, do you see any positive aspects to these new LEP tests?

The positive aspect is that it has opened up the opportunity for us to do work that has needed to be done for a long time, which is to really look at what English proficiency means. How do you define it? What are good ways to assess it? I’m very excited about the potential; it’s just these restrictions I’ve talked about that were placed on us—and the timelines—that I find frustrating.

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