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By Tom Chorneau
Friday, July 12, 2013
State officials appear on track for developing a new test by 2015-16 for identifying students whose home language is not English and who need help improving their language skills.
Adoption last fall of new English Language Development Standards for K-12 students – based on the common core standards – rendered obsolete the California English Language Development Test or CELDT. Creating a replacement that not only reflects the new standards but also one that takes advantage of current test management practices will require more time and money.
One major hurdle that officials from the California Department of Education hope will be cleared by the end of August is the task of carefully combing through thousands of questions that make up the current system to see how many can be used in the new assessment.
“The state has made an enormous investment in more than 3,500 test questions for the CELDT over the last dozen