We are in the final approval stages for a case study for Citrus County SD in Florida. They use Ballard & Tighe's IPT family of tests to get a read on English proficiency. What is most interesting, however, is the push for using this simple test to drive instruction.
I can't paste the link just yet but wanted to put the word out that it is coming soon. Here are snippets from the case study.
...One of the challenges all teachers face is not knowing about a student’s previous schooling. When there is a new student who speaks little or no English, then there is a substantial communication barrier that can make it impossible to know what the student already knows or can do. In keeping with the district’s focus on individualized instruction, Citrus County School District wants to give their teachers as much information about their ELL students as possible...
Johnson advises teachers to look at the item analysis that is generated with the IPT. “The IPT report
gives you an item-by-item analysis and tells you what learning level [Bloom’s taxonomy] the student is at,” says Mrs. Johnson. “It tells you the language and depth and cognitive skill that a student is drawing from.” With that amount of information, a teacher can adjust their instruction to fill in knowledge gaps and give a new student a chance to shine...
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