Testing accommodations for ELL students on an achievement test battery

134 Pages·2016·1.28 MB·English

University of Iowa
Iowa Research Online
Theses and Dissertations
Spring 2013
Testing accommodations for ELL students on an
achievement test battery
Lori Lee Dockery
University of Iowa
Copyright 2013 Lori Dockery
This dissertation is available at Iowa Research Online: https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/2477
Recommended Citation
Dockery, Lori Lee. "Testing accommodations for ELL students on an achievement test battery." PhD (Doctor of Philosophy) thesis,
University of Iowa, 2013.
https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.q76xdumg.
Follow this and additional works at:https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd
Part of theEducational Psychology Commons
TESTING ACCOMMODATIONS FOR ELL STUDENTS
ON AN ACHIEVEMENT TEST BATTERY
by
Lori Lee Dockery
An Abstract
Of a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in Psychological and Quantitative Foundations
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
1

May 2013
Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Timothy Ansley
1

How well students perform on standardized tests can affect their educational paths
and the rest of their lives. In addition, students' performances on state assessments will
affect their schools due to the No Child Left Behind Act. For English language learners
(ELLs), the success on tests may be diminished due to their inability to completely
understand what they are reading on a test. Because ELLs are a growing proportion of
the population and have greater risk of not performing well in school, dropping out, and
not moving on to have a job, it is very important to address their educational
performance. To alleviate the difficulty of not being able to understand English
competently, various testing accommodations can be given. The purpose of this study
was to describe how different types of accommodations are being distributed, particularly
among ELL students, on an achievement test battery. Several variables were examined to
assess whether they related to which accommodation would be assigned to an individual
student.
This study used data from a recent 2010 national standardization of an
achievement test battery, which sampled 33,226 students from grades 3-8 across the U. S.
In addition to the tests, students completed a survey which asked for such information as
gender, home language, and ethnicity, and test administrators reported on that same
survey which testing accommodations students were given, whether students were
migrants, whether students participated in a free or reduced-price lunch program, and
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whether students were ELL students. These variables, along with students' Reading,
Math, and Science scores were used to describe the groups of students given each
accommodation.
Five testing accommodations were reported by the students – giving students
extended time to take the test, allowing students to use a word-to-word dictionary,
reading parts of the test aloud to the students, repeating instructions, and having the test
administered by an ELL teacher. Of all these, the group that was most similar to the
entire sample on the test results for the Reading, Math, and Science was the group given
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dictionaries, a group predominantly comprised of Asian students. The other testing
accommodation groups had much lower percentile ranks on average. ELL students were
largely Hispanic, spoke Spanish at home, and had lower percentile ranks on the Reading,
Math, and Science tests than non-ELL students. Although the majority of ELL students
in this sample was not free or reduced-price lunch eligible, there was a higher percentage
than was found in the sample as a whole.
It was found that several variables were potentially important in how testing
accommodations were distributed among students, including grade level, ethnicity, home
language, and socioeconomic status (SES). Variables which did not seem important were
gender and school. Home language and SES were also important in testing performance,
with low SES students performing much worse on average than the sample as a whole.
Students who had Spanish as their home language did not perform as well on the tests as
students whose home language was English or another language. Lastly, a gap analysis
using effect sizes showed some evidence for the gap between ELL and non-ELL students
being larger in higher grade levels.
Abstract Approved: ___________________________________________
Thesis Supervisor
___________________________________________
Title and Department
2

___________________________________________
Date
TESTING ACCOMMODATIONS FOR ELL STUDENTS
ON AN ACHIEVEMENT TEST BATTERY
by
Lori Lee Dockery
A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree in Psychological and Quantitative Foundations
in the Graduate College of
The University of Iowa
3
May 2013
Thesis Supervisor: Associate Professor Timothy Ansley
Copyright by
LORI LEE DOCKERY
2013
All Rights Reserved
4
Graduate College
The University of Iowa
Iowa City, Iowa
CERTIFICATE OF APPROVAL
_______________________
PH.D. THESIS
_______________
This is to certify that the Ph.D. thesis of
Lori Lee Dockery
has been approved by the Examining Committee for the thesis requirement for
the Doctor of Philosophy degree in Psychological and Quantitative
Foundations at the May 2013 graduation.
Thesis Committee: ___________________________________
Timothy Ansley, Thesis Supervisor
___________________________________
Stephen Dunbar
___________________________________
Lia Plakans
___________________________________
Walter Vispoel
___________________________________
Catherine Welch
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am very grateful to my advisor, Dr. Tim Ansley, for providing feedback on the
many versions of this paper. In addition, I want to thank the ITP staff who provided me
with support with my dataset, Tim Burden and Josh Tudor.
2

ii
ABSTRACT
How well students perform on standardized tests can affect their educational paths
and the rest of their lives. In addition, students' performances on state assessments will
affect their schools due to the No Child Left Behind Act. For English language learners
(ELLs), the success on tests may be diminished due to their inability to completely
understand what they are reading on a test. Because ELLs are a growing proportion of
the population and have greater risk of not performing well in school, dropping out, and
not moving on to have a job, it is very important to address their educational
performance. To alleviate the difficulty of not being able to understand English
competently, various testing accommodations can be given. The purpose of this study
was to describe how different types of accommodations are being distributed, particularly
among ELL students, on an achievement test battery. Several variables were examined to
assess whether they related to which accommodation would be assigned to an individual
student.
This study used data from a recent 2010 national standardization of an
achievement test battery, which sampled 33,226 students from grades 3-8 across the U. S.
In addition to the tests, students completed a survey which asked for such information as
gender, home language, and ethnicity, and test administrators reported on that same
survey which testing accommodations students were given, whether students were
3

migrants, whether students participated in a free or reduced-price lunch program, and
whether students were ELL students. These variables, along with students' Reading,
Math, and Science scores were used to describe the groups of students given each
accommodation.
Five testing accommodations were reported by the students – giving students
extended time to take the test, allowing students to use a word-to-word dictionary,
reading parts of the test aloud to the students, repeating instructions, and having the test
iii
administered by an ELL teacher. Of all these, the group that was most similar to the
entire sample on the test results for the Reading, Math, and Science was the group given
dictionaries, a group predominantly comprised of Asian students. The other testing
accommodation groups had much lower percentile ranks on average. ELL students were
largely Hispanic, spoke Spanish at home, and had lower percentile ranks on the Reading,
Math, and Science tests than non-ELL students. Although the majority of ELL students
in this sample was not free or reduced-price lunch eligible, there was a higher percentage
than was found in the sample as a whole.
It was found that several variables were potentially important in how testing
accommodations were distributed among students, including grade level, ethnicity, home
language, and socioeconomic status (SES). Variables which did not seem important were
gender and school. Home language and SES were also important in testing performance,
with low SES students performing much worse on average than the sample as a whole.
Students who had Spanish as their home language did not perform as well on the tests as
students whose home language was English or another language. Lastly, a gap analysis
using effect sizes showed some evidence for the gap between ELL and non-ELL students
being larger in higher grade levels.

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