professional learning opportunities related to working with ELL students. Not only
do teacher candidates—and, indeed, in-service teachers as well—require knowl-
edge of language per se, they also have to develop the skills to teach language and
content simultaneously if their ELL students are going to meet the expectations of
the new standards. To address this challenge, teacher education programs will need
to make some significant changes—and soon—in their course offerings. And, since
most in-service teachers have not received adequate preparation, in-service pro-
grams must provide in-depth opportunities for acquiring the necessary knowledge
and skills.
Neglect of language learned in tandem with content knowledge in the prepa-
ration of teachers could prove particularly damaging for the content instruction of
ELL students, and consequently warrants closer scrutiny in this context. The
opportunity for ELL students to learn content area material and to be exposed to the
cognitively demanding language of academic contexts can be seen as part of
the larger concern for educational equity and access (e.g., Gándara et al. 2005 ).
47.4.3 Assessment
Over the last few decades in the U.S., assessment-based accountability has been the
centerpiece of educational reform efforts. With the intention to erase persistent
achievement gaps among students, all students in grades 3–8 were tested annually
to gauge their achievement of standards. Students who were designated ELL were
also administered additional annual tests to determine their progress in English until
they achieved proficiency across the listening, speaking, reading, and writing
modalities. While some have argued the benefits of accountability tests (along with
the attendant sanctions for poorly performing schools), researchers have concluded
that achievement gaps were not closed and that many of the consequences of
high-stakes accountability tests have been negative (see Heritage 2014 for a full
discussion).
With the introduction of CCRS, annual summative assessment remains an
integral part of teachers’and students’school experience. While the assessments are
intended to reflect better models of learning than prior assessments, the dominant
role they still retain in American education means that teachers’focus remains
primarily on annual summative assessments, including a concentration on“teaching
to the test.”
So where does this current situation leave teacher education programs and what
challenges ensue from a continued emphasis on annual summative assessment? In
this context, we discuss two issues: (1) assessment literacy and (2) the practice of
formative assessment in supporting ongoing learning.
Smith et al. ( 2014 ) observed that when entering their teacher education pro-
grams, candidate teachers in New Zealand seem to view assessment“as a broad
concept, mainly summative in nature”(p. 313). U.S. teaches likely have similar
views. After all, throughout their own schooling many, if not most, will have
47 Imperatives for Teacher Education: Findings from Studies... 703