Dear educator,

As a leader in a Dual Language Bilingual Education (DLBE) district, we are writing to offer you the opportunity to support your program(s) by expanding the use of performance assessment, providing more accurate, equitable, and actionable measures of student learning. 

As you know, your DLBE program works to develop bilingualism and biliteracy through content and language instruction in and through two languages (a partner language and English) simultaneously, meeting the same state standards as general education programs. Because these goals of bilingualism and biliteracy diverge from the goals of typical EL programs, English-medium assessments alone are not valid for the population of students in DLBE programs (which can include both EL and non-EL students). Looking at students’ academic proficiency using both languages of instruction provides a more accurate picture of their knowledge in the content areas as well as their language proficiency across both languages. When we can assess in both languages and analyze the results holistically rather than as two separate data sets, we get a clearer picture of students’ complete range of both conceptual and language knowledge. 

Finding valid, reliable, and comparable standardized assessments in languages other than English is quite challenging for DLBE programs. Performance assessments are uniquely well-suited to DLBE programs because they solve this problem. 

Why Performance Assessments 

• Equitable: English-only assessments do not fully reflect DLBE students’ knowledge or skills. Performance assessments can be designed in students’ home languages and/or bilingually, differentiating between language proficiency and conceptual understanding, so all students can demonstrate what they know and can do. 

• Comprehensive: Performance assessments capture both content mastery and language use, providing a fuller picture of students’ knowledge, skills, and thinking. 

• Reliable: Standardized tests in multiple languages can be difficult to find. Performance assessment uses rubrics that can be applied consistently across languages, providing reliable evidence without requiring tests in multiple languages.

• Culturally-relevant: Performance assessments can be designed to be culturally relevant, allowing DLBE students to leverage their sociocultural knowledge and skills, while supporting identity development. 

• Actionable: Performance assessment generates detailed evidence of students’ knowledge, skills, and thinking processes, which can be used to inform instruction and support program continuation or expansion. 

Importantly, evidence from a recent two-year pilot showed smaller performance gaps between English Learners and their English-speaking peers, compared to those observed with MCAS scores. These results suggest that performance assessments show greater accuracy and equity in measuring student learning.

MCIEA Partnership Opportunity

The Massachusetts Consortium for Innovative Education Assessment (MCIEA) supports educators statewide in developing and implementing performance assessment systems. Key resources include: 

• Professional development in task design, implementation, and scoring.
  
• A growing, open-access Task Bank with 150+ performance tasks across grades and disciplines.
  
• A network of districts and schools that have embraced teacher-designed, curriculum-embedded performance assessments, grounded in both state academic standards and essential skills, to share effective performance assessment practices.
  

MCIEA Director of Performance Assessment, Nikki Holland, who we have copied here, will be following up this email to offer support and partnership in implementing performance assessment systems in DLBE programs. We encourage you to take advantage of the consortium’s resources and tools to enhance assessment practices in your respective DLBE programs. Nikki can be reached at snholland@umass.edu.

Sincerely,

Phyllis Hardy, MABE Executive Director

Meg Burns, MABE Director of Professional Learning

Susan McGilvray-Rivet, MABE Associate