Why administer Functional Level Testing?

• There is a often wide disparity in skill levels of ELLs (especially in the higher grades)

• To get reliable and accurate test results for students at all proficiency levels within each grade-span would require more test items

• Test administration time is kept short by giving students only those items most appropriate for their skill level

• Without functional level testing, measures of growth are inaccurate for very low performing students

Speaker Notes:

• The widest disparity in skill levels is typically found in the high school grades, where ELLs can range from recently arrived, non-English speaking students with no native-language literacy skills to high-performing students ready to demonstrate sufficient English language proficiency to exit the English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) program.

• In order to provide precise and reliable results for each student at each CELLA level, additional test items would have to be administered to ensure that all proficiency levels are tested within each grade-span.

• To keep testing time as short as possible, CELLA was designed to assess students according to their "functional" skill levels in Reading and Writing rather than their actual grade level.