ABSTRACT
Oregon’s response to the assessment of English-language learners 1 (ELLs) can inform progress on national assessment issues as well as issues unique to Oregon. Like other states, Oregon is deeply involved in responding to national- and state-level calls for education reform, including calls for the use of assessments as tools to inform accountability and the use of assessment in making increasingly high-stakes decisions about students’ educational progress and certification. In this chapter, we examine Oregon’s strategies and outcomes for ELL assessment introduced since passage of 1991 legislation creating the Oregon Statewide Assessment System. 2 We begin with mention of national policy issues and related assessment concerns in the area of ELL assessment and the dovetailing of these concerns with fundamental validity issues in assessment.
