Alternative Assessment for Latino Students
In this article, the authors discuss the fact that there must be a better way for assessing the knowledge of Latino students. This is largely due to the fact that a test given in English to these students does not accurately give an indication as to whether the student understands the content of the material. Instead, it more likely accurately gives it depiction of whether the student understands English. For many of the students English is a second language, and while they may know the content of the information that they are given, they may not be able to express it accurately in English. It is for this reason that the authors suggest that other measures should be taken to help Latino students excel and pass assessment tests correctly. In order to correct this problem the authors suggest using multiple measures instead of only a single measure to assess the knowledge of Latino students.
In addition to the idea that there should be more than one test of assessment for these Latino students, the authors also discuss the idea that it should be a whole-school effort and not a single test effort. In other words, even if Latino students are given a different type of test to take they will still not have learned everything that they need to if they go through their school days not being able to understand what is being taught to them. This is the reason behind the whole-school approach and the reason behind the need for more than one assessment test for students who have English as a second language.
It would seem that those that come to this country should learn to speak the language, but for some this is very difficult. Even those that apparently speak the language well often do not understand some of the expressions and terms that are uniquely American. This can make it hard for them to take tests so having a different test for those that speak English only as a second language makes sense.
