The paradox of biliteracy and assessments
What are we actually assessing?
If we’re going to talk biliteracy, we need to talk assessments. If you follow my work, you won’t be shocked to hear that Multilingual Learners tend to score lower on literacy assessments than their English-dominant peers. And you’ll be even less shocked when I tell you that this discrepancy is largely due to a profoundly flawed approach to assessing literacy. Half the time we say we’re assessing literacy, we’re actually assessing English proficiency, and neglecting the overall language proficiency and comprehension skills of our MLLs.
So, the goal of today’s post is to marry your emerging awareness of the Monolingual Bias and its impact on assessments for our bilingual learners.
(If you aren’t updated on the Monolingual Bias and wish to learn more, watch this video below and check out my blog post all about the concept!)
Unfair Advantage? 🤔
Here’s a story for you….
Bilingual scholars and fellow disruptors Laura Ascenzi-Moreno and Kate Seltzer were presenting their work on responsive adaptations to reading assessments to a room full of teachers. MLLs often perform poorly on such assessments, which are geared toward monolingual English speakers who possess a linguistic mastery and cultural understanding that many emergent bilinguals have not yet achieved. When they discussed the efficacy of strategies such as translanguaging in providing educators with an accurate assessment of emergent bilinguals’ literacy skills, a teacher in the audience raised their hand.
“Well that would just be giving advantage to the bilingual students...if you make adaptations, you’re making the assessments unfair.”
I mean, I cannot imagine a more perfect example of the Monolingual Bias than the accusation that it is somehow “unjust” to adapt materials so they accurately depict MLLs’ literacy skills. That this came from a language teacher blows my mind. And makes me cringe. And a lot of other things.
Because: what kind of impact are these attitudes and practices having on our MLLs? It doesn't stretch your imagination to imagine how demoralizing it must feel to be labeled as “less than” because your full capabilities are not being cultivated, or even acknowledged. It leads to low confidence, it creates resistance, and it eviscerates a student’s sense of agency.
We can do better. we must do better.
There are more accurate and equitable ways to assess literacy with MLLs in mind. You know there’s nowhere I like to look for answers more than in the research. So let’s dig into The Literacy Squared team’s 2020 paper, “Beyond Monolingual Reading Assessments for Emerging Bilingual Learners: Expanding the Understanding of Biliteracy Assessment Through Writing.”
Escamilla and her colleagues make a compelling argument against literacy tests like the DIBELS, which evaluate language proficiency through a monolingual lens. They present a more holistic approach to assessing emergent bilinguals’ literacy skills by performing a qualitative analysis on three biliterate writing samples from twenty-nine 2nd grade students. Their assessment hones in on key skills like textual organization and fluency in sentence construction, and what’s more, they document literacy knowledge and skills across two languages. This approach provides a much richer and more accurate picture of MLLs’ overall language abilities as they navigate between two languages. Assessments like these are a huge step toward bringing more equity into bilingual education.
Let’s start doing better, right now.
I’m not going to send you on your way without a useful tip to help you put these insights into action. You can approach assessments through a multilingual lens by checking out any of these resources (some of which are mine, some of which I’ve used with my grad students):
The Biliteracy Look-Fors helps you track real-time student understandings in classroom discussions. Download it for free!
Margo Gottlieb (OG Monolingual Bias Disruptor and Founder of WIDA) has a new book out about dynamic assessments: Classroom Assessment in Multiple Languages
Read Laura and Kate’s article about translanguaging at the moment of reading assessment. They offer clear responses and protocols for integrating dynamic bilingualism on reading assessments. You can find it here.
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