February 29, 2000

The Honorable Jeff Bingaman
United States Senate
703 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510

Dear Senator Bingaman:

We are writing on behalf of the159,000 members and affiliates of the American Psychological Association (APA) to express our strong support for your proposed amendment to Part A of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA). We commend you for your efforts to improve accountability for individual schools and local educational agencies (LEAs) and your reliance on "research-based" initiatives (e.g., with reference to programs, models, and curricula) to help accomplish this goal. We would like to take this opportunity to highlight several assessment-related issues in the hope that they would be clarified and further expounded upon in your legislation.

In Sec. 1111 of ESEA pertaining to state plans, we support calling for multiple methods of assessment of student performance. Research has found that the use of multiple measures provides a better indicator of performance than a single global measure. This is also reflected in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (1999), co-developed by APA, the American Educational Research Association, and the National Council on Measurement in Education. The same finding applies to the assessment of school systems. A set of indicators of performance should be selected, in addition to standard measures, to accurately reflect learning outcomes and to inform the kind of instruction that will help students improve. In addition to measures of academic performance, measures of student improvement should include motivation, social and behavioral skills, and citizenship.

We also support and commend the emphasis in your amendment on testing students in their first language. In addition to the requirement that Spanish language assessments be available in all States, we would support any other amendments that would foster the development and availability of student assessments in additional languages, with the goal of testing as many students as possible in their first language. We would slightly amend the requirement that a student's first language be used for assessment to read: "...requires that a student's first language be used for assessment if it is the language most likely to yield valid and reliable information..." The term "valid" has more specific meaning regarding the accuracy of assessments.

With respect to the reporting of findings, we commend your proposal to require "disaggregated data" in the determination of adequate yearly progress (AYP) to highlight gains made by poor, limited English proficient, and disabled students in addition to gender and race/ethnicity. It is also critical to examine the proportion of students in each disaggregated group who make gains, not just the average gain for the group as a whole. The problem with this latter approach is that average gain could be increased by focusing energy on the most proficient performers rather than on all students. An important additional criterion should be the proportion of students in each disaggregated group who reach proficiency in each subject matter. This would provide a clearer picture of the gains for all students in a given group. We fully support the requirement that LEAs should make available data on students excluded from testing, disaggregated by group (e.g., disability status and limited language proficiency).

Additionally, we believe it is vital that states judge yearly academic progress in the context of the resources available to individual schools. LEAs and schools should be required to provide a yearly "report card" on key indicators of educational resources and opportunities, such as education dollars spent per student, availability of curricular materials, class size, specific qualifications of teachers, staff development, and parent involvement. Such measures would enable schools to assess their own performance in the context of the resources they have available to them and would place student achievement in the context of the total learning environment. LEAs and SEAs need to be accountable for provision of adequate resources to help all students meet higher performance standards.

We fully support the proposed amendment to incorporate scientifically-based research strategies and technical assistance that strengthen the core academic program. Too often, school reforms are implemented that have not been thoroughly researched and are assumed to promote improvement, when they may be ineffective or even have a detrimental effect.

Thank you once again for your efforts to enhance assessment and accountability in our nation's schools. We hope our comments are helpful to you. Please contact Ellen Garrison, Ph.D., APA's Director of Public Interest Policy, at (202) 336-6066 if we can provide any further information or assistance to you.

Sincerely,

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