Reacting to Reviews, States Cut Portfolio Assessments for ELL Students

Arkansas and Wisconsin have dropped portfolio assessments for English-language learners after receiving letters from the U.S. Department of Education saying the states had to prove those tests were valid or their large-scale assessment systems would be rejected under the No Child Left Behind Act.

Arkansas officials were told to show the comparability of the state’s portfolio assessment with its regular mathematics and reading tests by the end of this school year, but state officials doubted they could overcome the technical issues required to do so, said Gayle Potter, the associate director of curriculum, assessment, and research for the Arkansas education department.

“If it would have been possible in the time frame to address it, we would have,” she said last week. “It was impossible for us to do so. We...