Always at the Bottom: Ideologies in Assessment of Emergent Bilinguals

Abstract

Recent scholarship has identified how the reading assessment process can be improved by adapting to and accounting for emergent bilinguals’ multilingual resources. While this work provides guidance about how teachers can take this approach within their assessment practices, this article strengthens and builds on this scholarship by combining translanguaging and raciolinguistic lenses to examine the ideologies that circulate through assessment. By comparing interview data from English as a new language and dual-language bilingual teachers, we found that while reading assessments fail to capture the complexity of all emergent bilinguals’ reading abilities, they particularly marginalize emergent bilinguals of color. Thus, we expose the myths of neutrality and validity around reading assessment and demonstrate how they are linked to ideologies about race and language. We offer a critical translingual approach to professional learning that encourages teachers to grapple with these ideologies and shift toward a more critical implementation of reading assessments.

DisCrit Literacies: Early Childhood Teachers Critically Reading School as Text and Imagining an Otherwise

“…Maggie asked, “[as] you think about this definition, what are some implications in terms of your lives or your practice?” Nadia responded, “It made me automatically think of [report cards]…grading someone on speaking and listening is just literally putting a value on their bodies, and mind, and what we expect of them.” Here, Nadia applied Lewis’ (2020) definition of ableism to taken‐for‐granted literacy and language practices, pinpointing textual junctures. She identified how report cards systematically place value on children’s communicative abilities, assessing and ranking them in relation to societally‐constructed schooled expectations for early literacy, which are fundamentally rooted in white, English‐dominant practices (Ascenzi‐Moreno and Seltzer, 2021).…”

Social Positioning and Learning Opportunities in One Student’s Textual Transition to College Writing

“…The opportunity for Jain to build from his funds of knowledge and invest himself discursively in his FYW task also serves as an example of why courses with small class sizes like FYW have been identified as potential sites of validation for Latinx/a/o and other minoritized students (Baca et al, 2019;Hungerford-Kresser and Vetter, 2012). Beyond FYW, attention to teacher assessment epistemologies across institutional and disciplinary contexts must continue to be examined with a focus on the relationships of literacies, identities, and power in teaching and learning (Ascenzi-Moreno & Seltzer, 2021;Newell et al, 2014).…”

Addressing health inequities for children in immigrant families: Psychologists as leaders and links across systems.

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“…A third of these students are in Grades 6–12, struggling with academic instruction that is not adapted to their unique circumstances (Ascenzi-Moreno & Seltzer, 2021). Studies suggest that bilingual professionals are needed for measurement design and reading assessment refinement to better capture emergent bilingual students’ reading abilities (Ascenzi-Moreno & Seltzer, 2021). Bilingual psychologists have had a positive impact on performing assessments among ELLs students (O’Bryon & Rogers, 2010).…”