ABSTRACT
Educational accountability systems in the United States that employ standardized testing practices can be traced back through various historical efforts to centralize and professionalize educational institutions that often dealt with immigrant students and families. This includes the use of IQ testing to support more centralized, comprehensive high schools in the progressive era and early efforts at professionalization and centralization during the common school movement (Fass, 1980; Spring, 2001; Tyack, 1974). Notwithstanding this long, complex, and disputed history, recent policy discourse around accountability systems has paid much less attention to these systems’ impact on, and design for, English language learners (ELLs), more commonly referred to as limited English proficient (LEP) students, many of whom are immigrants. In Texas, for example, despite a decade long system of accountability, in 2001, only an estimated 20% of ELL 10th graders met minimum standards on all three high-school exitlevel tests (Ruiz de Velasco, forthcoming).
