Issues in the Development of Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives for WIDA Consortium States
WCER Working Paper No. 2008-2
H. Gary Cook, Tim Boals, Carsten Wilmes, and Martín Santos
April 2008, 41 pp.
ABSTRACT: Title III of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) requires state education agencies to develop progress and attainment benchmarks for school districts, called annual measurable achievement objectives (AMAOs), for English language learners (ELLs). AMAOs must be based on annual assessments of English proficiency in the domains of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Conceptually, holding districts accountable for ELL student progress and attainment in English seems straightforward. However, the process for establishing AMAO criteria can be very complex, and current research on system accountability using ELL assessments is sparse at best. Because of this dearth of research, there has been little guidance available to inform states on how to appropriately establish AMAO policies. This paper attempts to fill that void by providing guidance and recommendations on how states might establish AMAO progress and English attainment policies. The first section of the paper provides guidance for AMAO 1—targeted annual increases in the number or percentage of children making progress in learning English. The second section provides guidance for AMAO 2—targeted annual increases in the number or percentage of children attaining English proficiency. The third section offers some alternative approaches to setting AMAO 1 criteria. The data used in this paper come from three member states of the World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) Consortium over a 3-year period (2005–2007) across all grades (kindergarten to 12th grade). The WIDA Consortium was originally established with funding from a U.S. Department of Education Enhanced Assessment Grant and includes 17 states. The English language proficiency assessment used by WIDA Consortium states is ACCESS for ELLs (Assessing Comprehension and Communication in English State to State). This assessment is aligned with WIDA English proficiency standards and reflects the state-specific academic content standards of member states as required under NCLB. The AMAO recommendations made in this paper relate specifically to states using ACCESS for ELLs; however, the methods, recommendations, and guidance offered here are easily generalizable to other types of ELL assessment systems.
keywords: English language learners (ELLs); annual measurable achievement objectives (AMAOs); English language proficiency; WIDA Consortium
