Questions about Anthropological Ethics in English Language Proficiency testing

These are examples (modified to preserve anonymity) of some parents’ discomfort and confusion when they learn that their student — in both cases, advanced speakers of English doing well without support from a language specialist — is required by the Department of Education (DOE) to take an assessment of their English language proficiency. In South Dakota, the specific test used is called the ACCESS 2.0, developed by a consortium of researchers called “World-class Instructional Design and Assessment” (WIDA). This testing is done annually to meet requirements established by the US Supreme Court in 1981 in the case Castaneda v. Pickard. In <a href="https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ocr/ell/edlite-glossary.html" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">simple terms</a>, this case requires school districts to track the language growth of English Learner students to evaluate the effectiveness of their language development programing. While the impulse to require schools to provide high-quality education to language minority students across the US was an important step forward, some activists consider the decision to have been <a href="https://www.colorincolorado.org/article/landmark-court-rulings-regarding-english-language-learners#:~:text=Casta%C3%B1eda%20v.%20Pickard,identified%20and%20rectified." rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">too lax</a> in its requirements. <a href="https://medium.com/the-paha-sapa-outrider/questions-about-anthropological-ethics-in-english-language-proficiency-testing-55a151d07416">Read More</a>