THE EXAMINATION OF TEACHER’S PRECEPTION ON ENGLISH LANGUAGE

LEARNERS TAKING STATE STANDARDIZED TESTING.

by

Tyrone Cooper

Dissertation

Submitted to the Faculty of

Trevecca Nazarene University

School of Graduate and Professional Studies

in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for

the Degree of

Doctor of Education

in

Leadership and Professional Practice

May Year Conferred

 Research Proposal Paper

Testing has been an integral component of school reform for over a decade. Academic

assessments matched the standards to measure student growth, with schools held accountable

depending on the findings. Testing is a practice that has proved widely effective with diverse

learners (Minnici, 2007). Historically, English language Learners (ELLs) have not participated in

standardized tests. Nevertheless, because of this practice, ELLs were not held to the same high

standards in school as their peers (Anglia, 2022). Tennessee's percentage of English language

learners (ELL) rose by 45 percent between 2011 and 2017. As of the 2016-2017 school year, 132

school districts and 1,451 individual schools in Tennessee provided instruction to English

language learners. If we keep expanding at this rate, we estimate to have over 60,000 ELs by

2020. The educational trends in Tennessee will be profoundly affected by these demographic

shifts (English Learners, n.d.). According to the National Center for Education Statistics

(NCES), students in English as a second language (ESL) are more likely to struggle

academically. Only around 67 percent will graduate from public high school in four years,

compared to the average of 84 percent for all students. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) has shifted

the focus away from student learning toward mandated standardized testing and has created a

culture of high-stakes testing whereby too many teachers are evaluated based on student's test

scores (Commission on No Child Left Behind, 2007). The new Every Student Succeeds Act,

signed into law on December 10, 2015, reduces the federal government's role in education

policy, including testing, teacher quality, and low-performing schools. In addition, it provides

states with new discretionary authority. Although, each state was permitted to determine

independently what "proficiency" should look like and which tests to utilize. This medium

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represents a substantial departure from the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which ESSA

replaced and reformed (Klein, 2020).

Statement of the Problem

Rationale

Research Questions

Contribution of the Study

References