Urgent! Students Needed to Participate in ELPA Study!

12/12/2012 8:56:00 AM

As you know, ODE is endeavoring to evaluate alternative English language proficiency assessments that may be used for students to demonstrate sufficient English language skills, as part of the eligibility criteria which then allows students to meet the Essential Skills graduation requirements in their home language. This provision is allowed under OAR 581-22-0617 (Essential Skills Assessments for English Language Learners).

In order to accomplish this work, we need to collect a data set that will allow us to compare student performance on two different assessments. As such, we’ve been recruiting school districts to participate in a concurrent validity study in which students would take the ELPA and one of two other English language proficiency tests that are used commonly across the state (Woodcock-Munoz and IPT). We need 500 student responses for each “pair” of assessments, meaning 500 students to take the ELPA and Woodcock-Munoz, and another 500 to take the ELPA and IPT. The test administration window for this project will run concurrent with the ELPA testing window, which is January 9, 2013 through April 30, 2013.

Our recruitment effort has been going on for the last two weeks, and at this point we have a total of six districts participating and an estimated 100 students (25 for Woodcock-Munoz and 75 for IPT). These numbers are well below the sample size we need to conduct the study. We are now urging districts to review and consider participation in this study -- put simply, we won't be able to move the project forward without a sufficient sample size for each comparison.

If high schools in your district are willing to participate in this effort, please e-mail the following information to Carla Martinez (carla.martinez@state.or.us eMail

) by Friday, December 21, 2012. (If districts are interested but need more time to make decisions, we understand but would still like them to respond so that we can be aware of their intent.)

District and DTC name
High School(s) willing to participate
Which assessment instrument (Woodcock-Munoz or IPT) you will use
Estimated number of high school students per school to participate

Once ODE receives your information, a confirmation response will be sent followed by detailed information regarding data collection and submission. ODE will prepare spreadsheet templates with all the required data fields necessary for the alignment study, which districts will need to complete and send back securely once they have completed testing. Data fields will include, for example, first and last name, date of birth, SSID, testing event dates, and so on.

If you have any questions, please contact Derek Brown (derek.brown@state.or.us eMail

) at 503-947-5841.

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