By Joohyun Kim ’15

According to an article in November 24 Washington Post, the Maryland’s exclusion rate of reading scores of some English Learners (ELs) and Special Need students inflates the state’s national rankings of NAEPA reading test conducted in selected fourth and eighth-grade students in U.S. public schools.  Maryland is one of the states with high reading scores among the nation so including scores of ELs and Special Need students will lower their national ranking. The Maryland State Department of Education (MSDE) claims the absence of read-aloud accommodation during the test as a reason for excluding the test scores of ELs and Special need students in the NAEPA reading test.

Read-aloud accommodation is part of the 20 allowable accommodations for ELs in COMAR regulation, according to MSDE. Since the accommodations have to be implemented regularly during instructions to be applicable, very few accommodations are used at high school level. Sherwood ESOL department is not able to offer the wholesale of read-aloud accommodation to every ESOL level students. Only students whose reading score on the Access test is lower than a “3” on the scale of 1 to 6 can use read-aloud accommodation.

There are two kinds of “read alouds” called entire test reading and selected section reading. Entire test reading covers the whole test, questions and everything as read aloud.  In selected section, students can ask a test examiner to read aloud a question, the multiple choices, a paragraph or small passage, but not the entire test from beginning to end.

“It is most useful for lower level students whose aural comprehension is better than their reading comprehension. ESOL students sometimes get a clearer idea if they can hear as well as see,” explained Laura Bernard Sanchez, the head of ESOL department.

Although ESOL students in Sherwood cannot use read-aloud accommodations during tests like HSAs and county exams, read aloud in general is applicable to the tests that examine content knowledge like biology. “I don’t think reading aloud is invalidating the test. It was giving you some assistance as you got more comfortable with your second language to be able to access the material,” said Bernard Sanchez.

Students are eligible to receive accommodations for two years after they exit from the ESOL program. During the pre-service week before school, all teachers are reminded about giving accommodations. Usually, about a month into the school year, ESOL teachers give each teacher a list of who their ESOL students are, including the former ESOL students, and a reminder as to what accommodations the teachers should give to students. This information is also available in the myMCPS data base which most teachers use to track student data.

“Sometimes a student will come to me and say a teacher isn’t giving an accommodation when he or she should and I’ll speak to that particular teacher, but most teachers recognize that it is to the student’s benefit to use them.” said Bernard Sanchez.

Kim is currently a Journalism student.