The U.S. Department of Education announced that the state education agency in Oregon has won a $6.3 million grant to create a new English-language-proficiency test that will measure the language demands of the common standards.
Oregon is the lead state in a group of 12—including the ELL-rich states of California and Florida—that will develop the assessments used to annually measure how English-language learners are progressing toward proficiency. Other states in the group are Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Nebraska, Ohio, South Carolina, Washington, and West Virginia, and other partners in the endeavor include Stanford University and the Council of Chief State School Officers.
This is the second federal grant issued to support the creation of an English-language-proficiency test that aligns with the common-core standards. The first—a $10.5 million award to a group of 28 states led by Wisconsin—was announced a year ago. That group of states is collaborating with the World-Class Instructional Design and Assessment Consortium to develop technology-based exams.
