Lang Policy
DOI 10.1007/s10993-008-9100-0
ORIGINAL PAPER
A bilingual education for a monolingual test?
The pressure to prepare for TAKS and its influence
on choices for language of instruction in Texas
elementary bilingual classrooms
Deborah Palmer Æ Anissa Wicktor Lynch
Received: 1 September 2007 / Accepted: 9 June 2008
Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008
Abstract A tension exists for teachers in Texas bilingual third and fifth grade
classrooms between state and local bilingual education policy, which encourages
them to transition students gradually from Spanish into English instruction while
providing bilingual support; and state and federal accountability policy, which
requires them to choose a single language for each child’s high-stakes test. Interview data from teachers in six Texas elementary schools suggest that the high-stakes
Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS), a test offered in both English
and Spanish in 3rd–6th grades and used for school and district rankings at both state
and federal levels, drives teachers’ decisions with regards to language of instruction
for their students. We argue that children who test in Spanish will be taught in
Spanish, with little attention to the transition process until the testing pressures are
lifted; children who test in English will be taught in English, with little attention to
the support in their primary language that may determine their ability to succeed on
a test in their second language.
Keywords Bilingual education High-stakes testing No child left behind Teacher sense-making Transition Testing accommodations English language
learners
Introduction
There is a growing body of knowledge exploring the ways in which schools and
communities negotiate externally imposed policy (Darling-Hammond and Millman
D. Palmer (&) A. W. Lynch
University of Texas at Austin, 1 University Station, Mailcode: D5700, Austin, TX 78712, USA
e-mail: [email protected]
A. W. Lynch
e-mail: [email protected]
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D. Palmer, A. W. Lynch
1990; Tyack and Cuban 1995; Clotfelter and Ladd 1996; Spillane 2004).
Scholarship increasingly demonstrates that schools, far from transparently conveying reforms, serve as ‘‘buffered institutions’’ interpreting and remaking reforms
within their particular contexts. Further, professionals within the institution, both
teachers and principals, play an important role in resisting, adapting or appropriating
elements of reform (Alamillo and Viramontes 2000; Coburn 2001; Stritikus and
Garcia 2000). Particularly the work of teachers, which entails the actual delivery of
instruction to children, is what Cochran-Smith termed ‘‘unforgivably complex’’
(Cochran-Smith 2003). As a result, attempts to change educational practice that do
not directly address teachers’ work, do not always have the intended outcomes.
Attempts to understand the impact of certain reforms are only as valuable as the
conceptions of teaching and learning upon which they are based.
Given the increasing recognition of the importance and the complexity of the role
of teachers in enacting education reform initiatives, it is not surprising to note that
there has also been significant work to understand the decision-making process of
teachers. One school of thought known as sense-making theory, which emerges out of
the field of organizational science, takes a close look at individuals’ processes as they
go about making sense of implausible occurrences in their institutional/political
contexts (Weick 1995; Westrum 1982; Porac et al. 1989). In their struggle to resolve
contradictions in the environment around them, individuals will manipulate messages
and pressures, sometimes combining divergent aspects, sometimes adapting them
to suit their needs, sometimes ignoring them altogether. Individuals will go to
extraordinary lengths to resolve contradiction, particularly when they face contradiction in places such as a workplace where they have relatively little power. Studies
of teachers’ sense-making of externally imposed school reform have focused both on
individual sense-making as described above (Jennings 1996; Spillane and Jennings
1997) and a more collaborative process of group sense-making (Spillane 1999;
Coburn 2001).
This article documents the results of our attempt to further explore the role of
teachers, particularly elementary school teachers, in enacting policy reforms in a
specific and highly contradictory context, serving bilingual children in a large urban
school district in central Texas. Similar to school districts throughout the US, this
district of approximately 82,000 students struggles to serve a large and growing
population of English language learners (ELLs); approximately 20,000, or 25%, of
the district’s students are ELLs, of which 93% speak Spanish as their first language.
State and district policy call for Transitional Bilingual Education to serve
Spanish-speaking ELLs in the elementary grades, in which children are taught basic
subjects in their primary language during their first few years of schooling as they
learn English, and are gradually transitioned into all-English instruction. Transitional bilingual programs are characterized by the use of both students’ primary
language and English to varying degrees for instruction. It is common in such
programs for students to be instructed in early literacy in their primary language.
The goals of transitional bilingual programs are for ELLs to acquire English without
falling behind academically, to become proficient in both their native language and
English, and to exit into English mainstream instruction as soon as they are
proficient enough in English (Crawford 2004).
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Bilingual education for a monolingual test
While enforcement statewide is lax, support is relatively broad for bilingual
programs; in the district under study, schools vary in their implementation of
bilingual education, but all schools with significant populations of ELLs have at
least cursory programs. Teachers are encouraged by district personnel to use
primary language instruction with young children and to gradually transition
children to English instruction by the upper elementary grades. In most district
schools, third grade is considered the ‘‘transition year,’’ in which successful learners
make the move from Spanish into English instruction. This is complicated by the
fact that some immigrant children enter US schools in later grades, but the district
does not offer primary language support after fifth grade; thus, fifth grade is viewed
as the final cut-off in terms of transition.
Simultaneously, Texas third and fifth grade teachers must contend with another
major policy imposition: the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS),
which is administered annually to students in third through eighth grades. In the
elementary grades 3–5, students all take the TAKS reading and math tests. In fourth
grade they also take the writing test, and in fifth grade they take the science test.
TAKS tests carry high stakes at the federal, state, and local levels. They are used to
rank and assign ratings to schools statewide, a system that carries consequences for
poor performance including eventual state takeover. Further, these tests are used to
determine schools’ Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP)1 for federal No Child Left
Behind (NCLB) mandates (No Child Left Behind 2000), which also include
consequences for failure to perform and improve. In third and fifth grades, certain
TAKS tests (e.g. reading in third grade, reading and math in fifth) are also used to
determine whether children will be permitted to advance to the next grade, with
grade retention looming as a threat over children who fail to achieve passing scores.
While all TAKS tests are available in Spanish for grades three through six, teachers
must decide well in advance in which language students will test, with all of the
consequences this entails. Because of the well-documented negative consequences
of grade retention, including dramatically increased high school drop-out rates and
reduced educational attainment (Roderick 1994; Rumberger 1995), the outcomes
resulting from teachers’ decisions, both for instruction and for testing, are vitally
important to the life-chances of ELLs.
A clear tension, if not outright contradiction, emerges for teachers, particularly in
third and fifth grades, when making decisions for their students about language for
instruction and for testing. While bilingual programs encourage children to
transition gradually into English during these grades, testing mandates require
children to test entirely in one language only—and many pressures exist to make
that language English. We were interested in what factors teachers considered when
they made and carried out these difficult language decisions for their students:
which aspects of the various policy impositions did they pay closest attention to, and
1
Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) is an individual state’s measure of progress toward the goal of 100%
of students achieving to state academic standards in at least reading/language arts and math. It sets the
minimum level of proficiency that the state, its school districts, and schools must achieve each year on
annual tests and related academic indicators. Parents whose children are attending Title I (low-income)
schools that do not make AYP over a period of years are given options to transfer their child to another
school or obtain free tutoring (supplemental educational services).
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which did they adapt, combine, manipulate or ignore? Our main research question,
and the one that will be addressed in this article, is: how did teachers decide in
which language to instruct their students?
Since all of the schools in this study served mainly low socioeconomic
communities (see school profiles below for more details), it is important to note that
there is some evidence that the overall socioeconomic level of a school impacts the
level of opportunity and freedom of the teachers to make appropriate pedagogical
choices for their students. In other words, in schools with wealthier student bodies,
teachers are given more freedom to do what they believe is right for children, while
teachers of poor children must follow institutional mandates more strictly
(Goldstein 2007; Orfield and Lee 2005). In any case, teaching at the elementary
level is always a complex endeavor: ‘‘Contradiction, tension, inconsistency, and
uncertainty, while difficult to manage, are a non-negotiable part of teaching young
children’’ (Goldstein 2007, p. 52).
Literature review
English language learners, like all students throughout the United States, are
expected to excel on single-measure high-stakes tests such as the TAKS.
Intensifying pressure is placed on schools and students to show ‘‘Adequate Yearly
Progress’’ in order to comply with federal mandates (No Child Left Behind 2000) or
face serious monetary and educational consequences. In many cases, school
curricula and teachers’ choices of pedagogy have been altered in an attempt to
prepare students for the tests (Au 2007). ‘‘Fairness aside, high-stakes testing has
radically altered the kind of instruction that is offered to the point that teaching to
the test has become a prominent part of the nation’s educational landscape’’ (Kohn
2000, p. 20).
ELLs face a particular challenge: to perform in a language that they by definition
do not master. Students who are limited in English are unlikely to be able to
demonstrate their content knowledge on a test written in English; both linguistic
structures and vocabulary are often laborious (Abedi 2004). In fact, ELLs in general
score lower than non-ELL students on tests, but the so-called ‘‘achievement gap’’ is
widest in content areas with high language demands, such as reading (Abedi 2002).
In essence, it is clear that tests administered to ELLs in English lack validity and
reliability because they inadvertently test ELLs’ English language knowledge. No
Child Left Behind (2000) requires that states assess ELLs in a ‘‘valid and reliable
manner’’ and specifies that ELLs be provided ‘‘reasonable accommodations’’ in
order to effectively demonstrate their knowledge. The purpose of all accommodations is to improve the performance of ELLs by helping them overcome any
language barriers that might exist, either by modifying materials so that the student
has a better understanding of them, or by altering the administration of the test to
give the student more time or access to tools that might help bridge language gaps.
Yet some research is demonstrating that conflicting state and federal policies in
essence nullify many if not all of the testing accommodations designed to help ELLs
perform on tests (Wright 2005).
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The federal government mandates that states must provide accommodations to
ELLs in the form of ‘‘testing students in their native language’’ to the ‘‘extent
practicable,’’ yet no method for enforcement of this measure was included to ensure
that ELLs receive any testing accommodations (No Child Left Behind 2000).
Accommodations designed to aid ELLs have been shown to give a more accurate
measure of the type of content knowledge ELLs possess (Linn and Gronlund 2000;
Rivera and Stansfield 1998). ELLs benefit from versions of tests that have been
modified to reduce their linguistic complexity, and are able to score slightly higher
than on an unmodified version of the test (Abedi and Lord 2001; Cummins et al.
1998; De Corte et al. 1985; Hudson 1983; Riley et al. 1983). Allowing more time
for tests is another promising accommodation since research has shown that ELLs
read more slowly (Mestre 1998). Spanish language versions of many achievement
tests are available to measure the content areas for ELLs who are Spanish speakers.
Perhaps because they are more expensive and labor-intensive to carry out, languagebased accommodations such as translation of a test into a students’ native language,
a bilingual version of the test, or a modified English version are less commonly used
accommodations (Abedi et al. 2004).
As noted above, Texas provides translated Spanish language versions of the
TAKS as an accommodation for ELLs in grades three through six (Rivera and
Collum 2006). Translated tests are not without controversy since it is difficult to
translate a test into a version that takes into account the multiple dialects spoken by
students, thus limiting the appropriateness of the translated test (Olsen and
Goldstein 1997). Test translation is time consuming, technically difficult and
expensive. In addition, there is always a risk that the content and construct of the
two tests will differ (Kopriva 2000). In fact, a review prepared by the National
Assessment Governing Board addressing the accommodations available to ELL
students in the Voluntary National Test, identified validity problems with nativelanguage testing as a result of the issues involved with the translation of construct
equivalence (American Institutes for Research 1999).
Schools have the possibility of avoiding the issues of translated tests by
developing Spanish-language achievement tests that are not translations of Englishlanguage tests. Spanish-language versions offer norm-referenced and criterionreferenced score reports that test various subjects such as reading/language arts,
mathematics, listening and English in most cases (Linn and Gronlund 2000).
Accommodations on tests have only proven to be effective if they match the
types of accommodations regularly used by classroom teachers during instruction,
some research suggests (Rivera and Stansfield 1998). Native language accommodations are useful when students have received native-language instruction in the
content areas being tested. Likewise ELLs who have learned subject-area-specific
academic vocabulary in English because they received instruction in English should
be tested in English even when a test in their native language exists (Abedi et al.
2004).
A noteworthy consequence of high-stakes testing for ELLs is that teachers tend to
‘‘teach to the test,’’ or be pressured to alter their instruction to improve test scores in
lieu of providing instruction designed to meet the linguistic and cultural demands of
their student population (Alamillo et al. 2005; Wright 2002). The result is a
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D. Palmer, A. W. Lynch
narrowing of the curriculum in which non-tested subjects are eliminated or
deemphasized (Wright and Choi 2005). States and districts even go so far as to
mandate changes to the curriculum intended to improve student performance on
tests by adopting new materials and producing comprehensive pacing guides. These
guides ensure that teachers stay on track and expose students to the materials that
will be on the test before it is administered. Some of these pacing guides squeeze in
such an enormous amount of information that teachers teach more material in less
time than ever before, essentially eliminating the possibility of modifying
instruction to meet students’ needs.
Wright and Choi’s (2005) survey of experienced third-grade ELL teachers in
Arizona found that the majority of teachers did not feel that high-stakes testing had
improved the quality of teaching and learning in their classroom, nor did these
teachers feel that the tests had helped them to become more effective teachers of
ELLs. Rather, teachers felt that the testing pressures had resulted in a reduction in
the use of effective instructional practices for ELLs and an increase in less effective
practices. Teachers felt extremely pressured to prepare ELL students for high-stakes
tests in English in spite of their lack of faith in the appropriateness and validity of
the tests. Au’s (2007) qualitative metasynthesis of studies on the impact of highstakes testing on curriculum found that while testing very much drives curricular
choices, it appears that the structure of the tests themselves has a great deal to do
with the ways in which tests will impact curriculum. A multiple-choice test such as
the TAKS, which tests a specific body of knowledge, appears to narrow the
curriculum and fragment the presentation of subject area knowledge, leading
teachers to increase the use of teacher centered pedagogies. All of these changes
will negatively impact ELLs, who thrive on student-centered, thematic/holistic rich
curriculum (Echevarria et al. 2006). Thus, the impact of high-stakes tests on
curriculum could have life-long consequences for ELLs in Texas, resulting from a
less rich curriculum and a decrease in the English language skills necessary for
academic achievement.
Curriculum, pedagogic, or programmatic changes as schools confront the reality
of student performance on a standardized test is of extreme importance. The impact
of tests on teaching and learning, known as ‘‘washback’’ (Cheng et al. 2004; Wall
1997), could theoretically be positive; assessment can and should drive instruction
in schooling. However, in this case, we have cause for concern. Perhaps the most
worrisome aspect of this rapid change in curricula for ELLs is the dismantling of
bilingual programs. While several recent comprehensive studies pointed to the
efficacy of primary language instruction for ELLs (Rolstad et al. 2005; Genesee
et al. 2006; Francis et al. 2006; Slavin and Cheung 2005), findings in California, a
state that mandates English-only high-stakes testing beginning in second grade,
indicated that schools largely modified their bilingual programs to cut down on the
amount of time spent in a language other than English, or simply did away with their
bilingual programs altogether (Alamillo et al. 2005) under the weight of high-stakes
testing pressures.
Research does not support the practice of swapping out programs with native
language components to programs in which English is the language of instruction.
Greene (1997) determined that the use of at least some native language instruction
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was more likely to help the average ELL student on standardized tests in English
than the use of only English for instruction. Rolstad et al. (2005) found the practice
of banning or discouraging the use of native language instruction was not justified,
and that the rapid transition to English that federal policies tend to favor is ill
advised. According to a well-established research base, programs that provide
English-only instruction do not accelerate the learning of English and may in fact
place students in such programs at risk of falling further behind their English
speaking peers (Krashen and McField 2005; Ramirez 1992).
In the high-stakes environment in Texas, where transitional bilingual education is
currently mandated, a translated test in Spanish is the primary accommodation made
for ELLs. One might at first assume that, while curriculum may narrow and teachers
may ‘‘teach to the test,’’ at least the bilingual programs are safe from erosion. Yet,
evidence from this study suggests that even with efforts to accommodate testing
with primary language supports, the tendency of high stakes to distort teachers’
instructional choices and impact their professional judgment nonetheless erodes
bilingual programs. This corroborates Menken’s (2008) findings in New York that
in spite of test translations, the pressure to succeed in high-stakes testing imposes
monolingual policy in bilingual classrooms.
Methods: data collection
This study aimed to explore teachers’ sense-making in response to a series of imposed
alterations of their practices and programs. We conducted ethnographic interviews
with the third and fifth grade bilingual teachers at six schools. Ethnographic interviews
were open-ended, allowing us to understand the ways that teachers of second language
learners constructed their understandings of bilingual education, literacy, and the
various policies that district, state, and national entities had imposed to direct their
interpretations of these constructs. The goal of open-ended interviews is to understand
participants’ framing of the events and realities under study, and for this reason to the
extent possible we allowed participants to direct the interview topics (Mischler 1991;
Rubin and Rubin 1995). However, certain guiding questions helped shape our
interviews and start participants off (see Appendix I).
Originally, the interview questions were designed to explore areas of congruence
and tension between local policy initiatives and state and national initiatives, and
how these various mandates came together in the classroom to influence teachers’
decision making. Local initiatives included a new policy of early-exit transitional
bilingual education for English learners in the elementary grades that the school
district was calling ‘‘RISE,’’ or Rigorous Instruction in Spanish and English, and a
district-wide push for the use of what the University of Pittsburgh’s ‘‘Principles of
Learning’’ called ‘‘Accountable Talk’’ (Michaels et al. 2002). Testing and
accountability measures, in particular the reading TAKS, were the main focus at
the state and national level. Between study design and the time the interviews were
conducted, district leadership experienced a shift and the ‘‘RISE’’ program was
under scrutiny. Rumor had it throughout the district that the program would be
disappearing as quickly as it had arrived, and thus our participants spoke more about
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what they actually did in the classroom and how they conceived of their bilingual
education model than they did about the impact ‘‘RISE’’ was having on their
decisions. This turned out to be a valuable turn of events, as it was more revealing in
terms of teacher sense-making.
Six schools were selected (a purposive sample) based on the level of support and
understanding the principal provided for bilingual education. In other words, two of
the schools had principals who were highly knowledgeable and supportive of
bilingual education. Two of the schools had principals who were relatively neutral
or noncommittal in the area of bilingual education, and two had principals who were
unsupportive of bilingual education and/or lacked knowledge of how best to serve
bilingual students. School administrators influence the school climate as well as
teacher morale and professionalism. Interviews with the principals provided insight
on the ways school leaders’ personal philosophies affected how teachers were able
to use information to make decisions. Schools were selected with the assistance of
the district’s director of bilingual education, and a well-respected bilingual principal
in the district, who were both also interviewed as part of the project. Because all
principals were consulted—and interviewed—before their teachers were contacted,
our method of selection is a variation on the ‘‘snowball’’ method, in which each
participant is asked to recommend others to participate (Denzin and Lincoln 1998).
See Table 1 (below) for demographic details on selected schools.
For our teacher interviews, we chose to focus on grades three and five because of
the confluence in these grades, explained above, of mandates emerging both from
bilingual education policy and assessment/accountability demands. We hypothesized that teachers in these grades would have strong views and much to contribute
to a conversation about local, state, and national policies and the ways these have
impacted their teaching.
Thus, during the spring of 2006, interviews were conducted one-on-one with the
district director of bilingual education, with the six principals, and with a total of 16
teachers. Of the 16 teachers interviewed for this study, nine were third grade
teachers, one was a forth grade teacher, and six were fifth grade teachers. There was
never more than one-fifth grade teacher at any single school. Average length of
interviews was approximately 45 min. Interviews were digitally audio-recorded and
transcribed.
Table 1 Participating schools
123
%
LEP
Economically
disadvantaged
# Tchr
interviews
School 1
58.3
92.2
4
School 2
35.7
93.5
1
School 3
42.3
90
3
School 4
49.8
94.4
3
School 5
54.0
94.4
3
School 6
44.3
91.5
2
District
23.6
60.3
16
State
15.8
55.6
Bilingual education for a monolingual test
Methods: data analysis
Data analysis followed the methods of traditional ethnographic research (Bogdan
and Biklen 1998; Lincoln and Guba 1981). After all interviews were transcribed, we
conducted a thorough (hand) coding of the data. Interestingly, there was little
difference in tone or topic between educators in schools where leaders were highly
supportive and informed about bilingual education, and educators in schools without
such strong supporters of bilingual programs. However, one immediate finding was
that principals’ and teachers’ interviews were dramatically different, regardless of
the school in which they worked. Although the themes to emerge from principals’
interviews were similar to those emerging in teacher interviews, principals were of
course more focused on school-wide issues and issues of district support than on
issues of classroom practice and teacher decision-making. Furthermore, principals
tended to offer an ideal perspective rather than a realistic, ‘‘messy’’ (Goldstein
2007) perspective on classroom practice—they described what they believed should
be happening in the classrooms rather than what was actually happening. Principals
echoed teachers’ concerns with the difficulty of choosing a language for instruction
during the complex transition process; they also echoed what we discovered to be a
major commonality among teachers, i.e. the powerful influence of the TAKS test in
the decision-making process. Even a very strong school-based language policy
seemed to provide insufficient protection against the power of tests in shaping
language policy. Overall, the principal interviews did not offer considerable insight
into teachers’ decision-making process, which was the research question driving this
analysis. For this reason, we decided to focus on teacher interviews for this article.
The following analysis is based upon our coding of teacher interviews. Using
Microsoft Word, we sorted and categorized teacher comments from each interview
into files according to emerging themes; in the process, as always occurs, the themes
altered and expanded to fit the full data set.
The following themes emerged as salient, leading to our findings reported below.
The TAKS impacted teacher instruction in terms of both curriculum and pedagogy.
The TAKS drove the language of instruction and further complicated teachers’ highly
complex and multi-dimensional processes of helping children transition from Spanish
to English instruction. And, teachers’ views of the higher status of English and the
lower status of Spanish (and their view that the Spanish test was more difficult due to
translation issues) led them to move children into English testing as soon as they
could. These three dynamics worked together in such a way that the TAKS test,
despite its translation into Spanish, appeared to undermine bilingual programs and
thereby short-circuit the education of ELLs in Texas elementary classrooms.
Limitations
In order to triangulate our findings, we had intended to include classroom
observations in the study, thus offering evidence of what teachers were doing, not
just what they said they were doing. We had planned to spend time in the
classrooms of six of our teacher participants; however, due in large part to testing
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pressures, the interview process took longer than expected, and access to classrooms
for observation was limited. For instance, one principal who we contacted in early
January was willing to allow her teachers to be interviewed, but not until after they
had completed the first round of TAKS testing in late February. Principals were
unwilling to allow us access to observe in classrooms at all during the months of
March and April, and a few teachers explicitly told us that during those months we
would not see ‘‘normal’’ classroom operations anyway, due to the impact of testing.
Our efforts to track down teachers and observe the following Fall were thwarted due
to a number of staffing changes, and having by that point done our preliminary
coding we realized that the teachers would by then have different students and have
made different decisions than those they described anyway.
Without the perspective that the observations would have helped us to garner,
our findings in this study can only have a limited impact. We can, at this point,
only discuss the participants’ impressions and assertions; we cannot talk about
their actual classroom practices. Further, while an effort was made to seek out as
wide a range of perspectives as possible with a limited sample size, this study is
limited by the small number of participants (Principals: 6; Teachers: 16) as well
as by the fact that each was only interviewed on one occasion. Nonetheless, we
hope that the questions we raise and the issues we address will help to guide
further research in this area. We are confident that what we have identified is
worthy of further study, and we would be remiss to hold off on sharing our
findings despite their limitations. Furthermore, the fact that this study echoes
findings elsewhere in the United States (Menken 2008) implies that there is
reason to believe that we have unearthed a powerful and possibly dangerous
impact of high-stakes testing.
Findings
Three interrelated themes emerged from the research, relating to the narrowing of
curriculum and pedagogy, to choices about language of instruction and the process
of transition, and to the impact of the higher status of English. In all three, teachers
as responsible and caring professionals appear to go through a complex process of
sense-making in their efforts to resolve often contradictory demands. Teaching is
indeed an endeavor of ‘‘unforgivable complexity’’ (Cochran-Smith 2003), and highstakes testing appears to have only added to the complexity for teachers’ processes
of decision-making.
First, as has been demonstrated in other research (Au 2007; Wright and Choi
2005), almost all the teachers in this study identified various ways in which the TAKS
has directly and indirectly influenced their curricular and instructional choices. While
many of the teachers expressed an understanding of the need for accountability in
schools, they were critical of the pressure they felt to modify their teaching in ways
that resulted in instruction narrowly focused on preparing students to pass the TAKS.
As one teacher stated, ‘‘That TAKS test has entirely changed the way I teach. I teach
with the goal of getting the kids to pass the test rather than to get them to be successful
in reading, writing and math in general.’’ Another teacher told us, ‘‘I think [the TAKS]
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has definitely changed the way I teach. That’s our focus, that’s our job for the year.’’
In fact, all but one of the sixteen teachers we interviewed stated that the TAKS has
changed the way that they teach; and we discovered when we attempted to follow up
in the Fall that that one, a fifth grade teacher, was not asked to return to his school the
following year because, according to his principal, he was not adequately preparing
children for the TAKS. The high-stakes nature of the TAKS has left bilingual teachers
with few choices other than to narrow the curriculum and teach to the test. The vast
majority of teachers felt that the changes in their teaching caused by the TAKS have
been negative or not beneficial to their students.
Second, teachers’ choices about language of instruction for their transitional
bilingual classrooms were impacted by the TAKS test. Teachers described the
difficult decision-making process they go through in their classrooms subject-bysubject and child-by-child, regarding the language in which to teach. During the
transition years, state and district policies encourage teachers to move children
gradually into English instruction. Yet accountability policy requires teachers to
choose a single language for each child’s high-stakes test. Perhaps not
surprisingly, it appears that the language of instruction teachers choose for each
child is largely determined by the language in which the child will test during that
school year.
Meanwhile, in order to best prepare children, choice of a language for testing
occurs early in the school year in most schools, balancing many factors, and is
described by many of our participants as agonizing. Teachers describe getting input
from parents, children’s former teachers, and children themselves, looking to
various assessments, observations, work samples, and classroom performance to
help determine in what language they will test. Teachers express a profound sense
of responsibility in making this decision for their students. A third grade teacher
said, ‘‘For my kids who take the reading test in English, I mean that’s what
determines the course of their year.’’
Once this decision is made, it influences every other decision teachers make
about instruction for that child. It is not uncommon for teachers to have students in
the same classroom who will be testing in different languages. To meet this
challenge, teachers routinely group students by language for instruction in the
classroom, teaching English speakers in small group lessons in English, and Spanish
speakers in small group lessons in Spanish. When teachers have to teach the whole
group at the same time, they must determine a way to incorporate both languages.
They will often use concurrent translation, i.e. they will repeat all instructions in
both languages, although this has been shown to be a less effective means of
teaching language (Legarreta 1979). Teachers will justify this by pointing out that
their priority is for students to understand math and reading instruction in their
dominant language; second language instruction will come later (after the test).
Another third grade teacher described her approach to teaching math: ‘‘Math, we do
a lot of oral English but you know most of their books and stuff is in Spanish, and
because of the test. Because if they test in Spanish, they have to know the word in
Spanish, so...’’ Although wanting to move the children gradually to English
instruction in mathematics, this teacher maintains Spanish texts in order to continue
to prepare them to test in Spanish only; she is elegantly addressing a complicated
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balance of contradictory pressures. In an example of the kind of complexity we
often heard voiced, a teacher explained the roles of English and Spanish in her
classroom in the following way:
Math, I throw in [Spanish], it depends on if I’ve already introduced it. Then
I’ll bring it in English, otherwise it goes in Spanish. I have to tell you those
three subjects [math, science, social studies] I hit English pretty strong, in
reading I don’t, and you know why that is... Because of the TAKS.
Thus, the teacher instructs children in their native language when she fears they will
not understand her instruction in English, but otherwise ‘‘hits English pretty strong’’
to give the children practice for future years and move them into English. But for
reading instruction, in which her group will be tested in Spanish, she does not even
make an effort to encourage English. She is quite candid that her choice is driven by
the test, rather than by her professional judgment about what would be best to help
her students learn content and language.
In describing the ways they determine language of instruction for students,
most participants described a larger frame: their overall goal to guide their
students in the transition process from Spanish to English instruction. Still, this
process was impacted by the need to prepare children for the tests; some teachers
described the challenge they face reconciling what they know to be poor practice
in terms of transitioning bilingual students—such as overnight switches from
all-Spanish to all-English instruction, or simultaneous translation throughout their
instruction—with what they see as a necessity in order to prepare children to
test monolingually and to receive instruction in future grades without primary
language supports.
In third grade, the process was highly complex. Each of our third grade informants
described a unique and, to a certain extent, individualized approach to developing the
ideal program for each bilingual child in his/her classroom. There does not appear to
be any single process that teachers follow, and teachers do not appear to display any
sense of rigidity in terms of the language needs of children. They offer children
‘‘Spanish support’’ where they see it is needed, and they encourage children to ‘‘try in
English’’ when they feel they are ready. A third grade teacher in a classroom with
children of varying levels of English at various points in their transition process
described how he decides which language to use for instruction:
I have whole group and small group. Whole group is always going to be done
in English, small group in Spanish. But at the same time, they also, whenever
there is a new [word], they have the vocabulary in English and Spanish in front
of them [because I provide the texts or worksheets in both languages].
At times, factors from outside the classroom influence the language in which a
specific subject is taught. In the words of one teacher:
Here my Newcomer [support] teacher helps me. What he does is more science
and social studies because it’s only two hours he can come in... I do all my
instruction in English and then they go with [the Newcomer teacher] for
science and social studies. They get the concepts in Spanish. What I do is I
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pull small groups after the whole group lesson. I’ll reiterate the content in
Spanish just in case they didn’t get it.
Teachers are constantly making multifaceted decisions regarding language of
instruction, balancing the need to address the TAKS with the language and
curricular needs of children.
Without denying the complexity of teachers’ decision-making with regards to
transition in third grade, we found that many decisions are largely determined by the
TAKS testing schedule. In Texas, the TAKS is administered for the first time in
February. Students who do not meet the minimum score for promotion in third and
fifth grade take the TAKS for a second time in April. If a third test is necessary, it is
administered during the summer after intense summer school test preparation
instruction, often referred to by teachers and students as ‘TAKS camp’. Other
indicators of individual student readiness to transition to English can be forced out
of the decision-making process by the TAKS’ fixed schedule. A third grade teacher
commented on how and when she decided to transition her students to English
instruction:
Like I said after the TAKS test, that’s when I started introducing more of the
English. But after the reading TAKS test is the math TAKS test, which is also
in Spanish. You know that’s why it’s kind of hard...doing the transition
because I know that they’re going to be taking the TAKS test in Spanish. I
want to make sure they have the concept in Spanish, and not confuse them
with English.
Here is another example of a third grade teacher bending her students’ transition
schedule to the TAKS:
I haven’t done a lot of direct teaching in English as far as direct decoding in
English to those who are working in Spanish yet, because I was waiting until
after the TAKS test, because I wanted to focus on the Spanish.
Expressing the fear shared by many of our participants regarding the pressure to
choose a successful language for testing each child, another third grader teacher
asserted, ‘‘If the student is reading fourth grade in Spanish, and third or second in
English, I’m not going to chance it, we’re going with the fourth grade Spanish [and
the child will test in Spanish].’’ Clearly, teachers struggle to reconcile the absolute
nature of the administration schedule of the monolingual test, with the gradual
nature of third grade transition.
We found that in most of the fifth grade classrooms, the process for choosing a
language of instruction appeared less complex; it was almost entirely determined by
the TAKS testing schedule and the fact that sixth grade classrooms district-wide did
not offer primary language support to students. Teachers by and large chose to
transition students rapidly as soon as the TAKS calendar allowed rather than to base
their decision on any signs of student readiness. This resulted in teachers choosing
at times to delay a student’s transition until after success on the Spanish TAKS, and
at times to accelerate transition in preparation for the English TAKS. As one-fifth
grade teacher stated, ‘‘The borderline kids, that’s the tricky one, we tend to usually
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keep them in Spanish just to be on the safe side. After TAKS then we transition
them over on into English.’’ Another fifth grade teacher shared a summary of her
transition schedule for her students:
Now once my children who took TAKS in Spanish and passed the first
administration, then it’s intense English for them. Everything they do from
that point on is in English. Writing is in English. Books from the library get
chosen in English. Everything is done in English for them. I say, ‘Okay, once
you pass the TAKS Spanish, shoooot [sic], English only.’
Teachers were highly critical of these constraints; they seemed simultaneously
aware and unaware that the testing schedule and the middle schools’ lack of services
were leading them to undermine their bilingual programs. Yet, defiant in their
commitment to help their ELL students navigate an extremely challenging set of
obstacles, they stood by their practices.
As these data show, language of instruction is profoundly influenced by the
language teachers and schools choose for their children’s high-stakes testing. A
child testing in Spanish will receive the majority of instruction in Spanish until they
test successfully, allowing them little time and support for the challenging transition
into English instruction. Meanwhile, a child testing in English will receive that same
instruction in English with little of the primary language support they need to help
them succeed.
The district office’s bilingual education department commonly advises schools to
‘‘test students in the language they are taught in,’’ the teachers tend to frame this
process in the opposite direction: they assert that they teach children in the language
in which they will ultimately test. The difference here may be subtle, but we believe
it is very significant. Whereas the district’s message puts instruction primary and
assessment secondary and dependent upon instruction, the teachers translate this in
the opposite direction. Most teachers’ processes for determining language of
instruction, as they described it, began with a determination of the language in
which the student would take the TAKS.
A third theme that emerged in the data, one that is reinforced throughout the
Southwest United States and perhaps underlies the logic of a transitional bilingual
program, was participants’ prevalent view that English, with its higher status in
society, was to be preferred in the classroom. Children were labeled as ‘‘successful’’
and seen as smarter when they performed in English, while students who passed the
Spanish TAKS were merely labeled as ready for the ‘‘challenge’’ of English.
Students’ entire academic careers throughout the transition years of elementary
school were seen as a progression from leaning on the ‘‘crutch’’ of Spanish (in the
words of one fifth grade teacher) to demonstrating they could ‘‘make it’’ in English.
While this should not surprise anyone who has spent time working with teachers on
the topic of transition, it is extremely important to the dynamic of teacher sensemaking we are describing. Teachers who believe that success is determined only by
achievement in English will push children to test in English whether they are ready
or not. When keeping children in Spanish ‘‘to be safe,’’ they will inevitably convey
their impressions to children: that Spanish is only a temporary stepping stone to the
‘‘real’’ academic language of English, and that hard-working, fast-learning children
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will no longer ‘‘need’’ to lean on Spanish. This too has a profoundly negative impact
on the success of bilingual programs.
Discussion/Conclusion
Primary language instruction has been demonstrated to be the most efficient way to
help ELLs both learn English and succeed academically in US schools (Rolstad
et al. 2005; Genesee et al. 2006; Slavin and Cheung 2005; Francis et al. 2006).
However, no form of instruction appears immune to the distorting effects of highstakes accountability. These interviews conducted with elementary bilingual
teachers in Texas demonstrate that the TAKS profoundly impacts teachers’
decisions about curricular topics, instructional practices, and the process of
transition from Spanish into English. Even when Spanish is expected to be used as
the language of instruction for native Spanish speakers, and even when a Spanish
translation is offered for the high-stakes tests, the mere presence of a high-stakes
test appears to undermine the purposes of the bilingual program.
It is clear that a primary language assessment is the most helpful form of test
accommodation for ELLs who have received primary language instruction (Rivera
and Collum 2006; Abedi et al. 2004). It has even been argued that this is the only
form of test accommodation that has the possibility of allowing us to accurately
assess ELLs’ content area knowledge (Wright 2005). This research is in no way
meant to imply that the presence of a Spanish language version of the TAKS is the
problem; on the contrary, without the Spanish TAKS, children would have even less
access to the supports they need to succeed. The problem lies rather in the highstakes, single-measure accountability system that pervades Texas elementary
classrooms. Single-measure high-stakes accountability has been shown to lead to a
range of perverse effects, no matter which language is used for testing.
No single assessment can effectively replace a teacher’s professional judgment
for instructional decisions about a bilingual child. Teachers are the professionals
who have the most direct contact with students and the most intimate knowledge of
their students’ abilities and needs. Teachers in this study attempted to resist policies
they felt were harmful to their students, but they had little actual power to do so.
Many felt they had no choice other than to narrow the curriculum in an effort to
boost test scores and to comply with the policy changes that have been made. Thus,
as in New York (Menken 2008), Texas’ elementary bilingual teachers have been
conscripted into the role of policy agents enacting a de facto language policy
created by the imposition of high-stakes standardized testing.
It is central to effective bilingual instruction that classroom teachers know how to
make decisions about the language(s) they should use when instructing children;
however, it is also crucial that teachers have the latitude to make these decisions in
the best interests of children. The ever-present power of the TAKS to impact
teachers’ decisions about language of instruction appears to have a degrading effect
on bilingual programs in Texas. This may have negative implications not only for
Texas’ bilingual learners, but also for ELLs subjected to high-stakes testing
throughout the US.
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We recommend opening up our definitions of accountability in K-12 education
to multiple and diverse measures of student achievement. Current accountability
systems too often look only at the single measure results of high-stakes
standardized tests such as the TAKS; we would like to see accountability that
takes into account the complexity of the teaching and learning process, and the
unending complexity of schools, drawing from a much wider array of measures
including (but not limited to) attendance; graduation rates; parent and student
surveys; classroom-based performance measures such as grades and other forms of
teacher assessment; and various measures of teacher professionalism, expertise,
and rates of certification. We would also like to see systems with the flexibility to
allow local district and school decision-making in terms of which measures will
be used. This will ensure that teachers have the assessment data they need in order
to best instruct ELLs, while preventing any single test from undermining their
choices.
Further, we call for the restoration of the goals of bilingualism and biliteracy as
major priorities of federal education policy in the United States. Because broader
language policy is often implicitly determined through the language policies in our
schools (Crawford 2004), restoring bilingualism and biliteracy as explicit goals of our
education systems could impact both education outcomes and language policy
nationwide. Not only will this allow ELLs in our K-12 system to succeed in greater
numbers, but in an increasingly interconnected world, we can help multilingual
children view all of their languages and cultures as resources that will enrich their lives
and our society.
Appendix I
Guiding interview questions for teachers
General:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
Do you believe that bilingual education is an effective way to teach English
Language Learners? Why/why not? (What do you see as its strengths/weaknesses?)
In what ways does your school support or not support bilingual education?
In which language do you instruct reading? Does it vary by student? How do
you decide which language to use?
Do you have any strategies that support reading instruction in both languages
(English and Spanish)?
Schedule: How do you fit primary and second language instruction throughout
the day? How is this determined?
Tell me specifically about the components of your reading instruction. Do you
do, for example, shared reading, read aloud, guided reading? What else? What
materials do you use most?
How do you teach students to read in English?
How do you decide when your second language learners are ready to transfer to
an all English classroom?
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Policy-specific:
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
Tell me about RISE. What is your understanding of what it is, what it’s for, how
it works/doesn’t work, who came up with it, etc.?
What has RISE meant for you and your students? E.g. has RISE changed the
way you teach? Has it had positive/negative effects on student learning?
Tell me about TAKS reading test. What is your understanding of what it is,
what it’s for, how it works/doesn’t work, who came up with it, etc.?
What has TAKS reading meant for you and your students? E.g. has TAKS
changed the way you teach? Has it had positive/negative effects on student
learning?
How do you determine what language your students take TAKS reading test in?
Tell me about Accountable Talk (AT). What is your understanding of what it
is, what it’s for, how it works/doesn’t work, who came up with it, etc.
What has Accountable Talk meant for you and your students? E.g. Has
Accountable Talk changed the way you teach? Has it had positive/negative
effects on student learning?
How do you use accountable talk within your reading block?
Do you use AT in English, Spanish, or both?
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Author Biographies
Deborah Palmer is an Assistant Professor in Bilingual/Bicultural Education in the Department of
Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin. She holds a B.A. in Anthropology from
Stanford University, and an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in Language,
Literacy and Culture in Education. She is a former bilingual elementary school teacher. She conducts
qualitative research using ethnography and discourse analysis in linguistically diverse settings. Her interests
include bilingual education policy and politics in the United States, two-way bilingual immersion education,
and the complexities of preparing teachers to manage race and class diverse bilingual classrooms.
Anissa Wicktor Lynch is a fourth year doctoral student at the University of Texas at Austin in bilingual/
bicultural education. She holds a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American Iberian Studies from the University
of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.A. in Elementary Education from the University of Alabama. She
completed her teaching certification coursework at Prescott College and worked for seven years as a
bilingual elementary school teacher and adult ESL teacher. Her current research focuses on caring in
bilingual classrooms. This is her first publication.
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