It’s the first quarter of the academic year, and schools have just received the results of the district’s initial round of interim achievement tests. With programmatic, classroom, and individual student decisions to be made, grade-level, department, and leadership teams convene to dive into the data. Teachers notice that several multilingual learners’ scores on these measures are not reflective of those on their state achievement tests. Digging deeper, they realize that the interim tests and the annual state tests serve distinct purposes and have different measurement scales. While the interim tests provide baseline data for determining student growth over the year, annual state test data contribute to school accountability and program evaluation from year to year. The teachers are at a crossroads as to what to do with the conflicting information and how to plan individual learning goals with their students for the semester ahead.
Teachers often wonder why major instructional decisions tend to be based on results from standardized tests. They question why data from measures in English tend to prevail when their multilingual learners, by definition, are exposed to and interact in multiple languages. After all, shouldn’t these students be advantaged by having access to multilingual resources for instruction and multiple sources of information for assessment? Let’s investigate this matter a bit further.
There seems to be two assessment-related issues to examine here. The first addresses the paradox of the steadily growing multilingual school population juxtaposed to continued allegiance of assessment to English. Despite the welcoming of languages and cultures in classrooms and hallways, assessment tends to remain steadfastly monolingual. It’s time to revisit the privileging of English in assessment practices for multilingual learners and introduce multilingual multimodal ways to capture student growth.
The second issue pertains to the heavy reliance on decontextualized numbers and letters to make high-stakes decisions, at times, even depersonalizing multilingual learners, reducing their identities to a single number (e.g., “He’s a 3.”). We question the meaning of these outcomes when test scores are presented in isolation, especially when they depict only a slice of a student’s multilingual repertoire. How can teachers along with school and district leaders use these data to inform teaching and learning without having a sense of the multilingual learners’ bi/multiliteracy potential? How can these data alone evoke teacher and multilingual learner agency (Gottlieb, 2024)?
This article presents a case for resolving these dilemmas and convincing you of the resourcefulness of multilingual learners when they have entrée to and options for using multilingual resources for classroom assessment. By optimizing strengths-driven assessment, the option of multiple languages should be non-negotiable for these students. We intend to persuade you to take a multilingual stance, if you haven’t already, based on a set of premises:
- Increasing multilingual learners’ access to and use of multiple languages for instruction and assessment yield more equitable, realistic, and useful information for making meaningful decisions.
- Interweaving classroom assessment and instruction afford teachers ways to strategize and chronicle students’ multilingualism and multiculturalism while accentuating linguistic and cultural sustainability.
- Co-constructing assessment-embedded instruction with multilingual learners optimizes student choice and voice, bolstering multilingual learners’ motivation and self-assurance.
Changing the Monolingual Testing Mindset to Assessment in Multiple Languages
According to Jeff Zwiers (2024), “prevailing U.S. pedagogy tends to focus on preparing students to score well on multiple choice tests”. In large part, these tests, as those in the opening scenario, are part of local and state accountability systems. We might ask, ‘How do the results from these discrete measures impact individual multilingual learners and how can we offset their negative effects to accentuate our students’ multilingual assets’?
In shifting from a testing to an assessment mindset, we abandon reliance on a single data point and place our trust on a range of data sources; thus, we become more open to gathering information in multiple languages. In moving from testing in English (a monoglossic orientation) to a more heteroglossic one for assessment, we uncover possibilities for multilingual learners’ increased engagement (García, Kleifgen, & Fachi, 2008). We respond to this issue in Figure 1 by contrasting testing inequities inherent in one language with equitable assessment moves in multiple languages.
Figure 1. Counteracting Testing Only in English With Assessment in Multiple Languages
| Inequities in Testing Multilingual Learners Only in English | Assessment Equity in Multiple Languages: What We Can Do |
| Tests generally have a White middle-class linguistic and cultural orientation. | Offer students resources from multiple language varieties and cultural perspectives. |
| Tests are designed for and geared to monolingual outcomes. | Ensure assessment can capture student learning in multiple languages, no matter the language(s) of instruction. |
| Test results tend to be presented as scores or numbers. | Complement testing results with criteria for success based on multimodal evidence in multiple languages. |
| High-stakes tests generally do not represent the local curriculum. | Consider testing results as one data source; include additional information internal to local curriculum and instruction. |
| Content and language are often confounded in achievement tests. | Utilize multimodalities (e.g., audio, visuals, graphics, the arts) in combination with content to enhance student accessibility during instruction and assessment. |
| Standardized achievement tests usually consist of unrelated items. | Balance testing with documentation from project-based, place-based, or inquiry-based instruction and assessment. |
| Standardized achievement tests most likely have been normed on predominantly monolingual student populations. | Become assessment literate, aware of reliability, validity, and fairness issues of testing and their potential impact on multilingual learners. |
| Standardized achievement tests may not take multilingual multicultural perspectives into account, thereby producing bias and sensitivity issues. | Volunteer to participate on panels and committees that examine issues of bias, sensitivity, and accessibility. |
Testing in a single language can provide neither a full nor authentic portrayal of multilingual learners. Assessment, in contrast, entails an array of artifacts in one or more languages to more comprehensively show multilingual learners’ growth and attainment. Multilingual learners should be contributors to and vested in the assessment process.
Strategizing How to Implement Assessment in Multiple Languages
Every educator of multilingual learners, whether monolingual or a polyglot, can assume an agentive and advocacy role in highlighting student strengths in curriculum, instruction, and classroom assessment. For those of you who declare, “There are multilingual learners from 10 languages and cultures in my classroom; how can I equitably assess their conceptual and language development?” or “How can I secure multilingual resources when I am monolingual?” It can be done if you adopt multilingualism as the norm and engage in collaborative assessment with colleagues and your multilingual learners (Gottlieb & Honigsfeld, 2025).
The following are my top ten student-centered strategies for instruction and classroom assessment (in no particular order):
- Invite students to choose among multimodalities (linguistic, visual, graphic, spatial, kinesthetic in combination with text) to demonstrate their learning for units of learning and individual lessons.
- Expand accessibility of multilingual digital resources across content areas through apps and internet sites (don’t forget artificial intelligence).
- Highlight student-student interaction in their shared languages throughout the instructional and assessment cycles.
- Promote student self-assessment in the language(s) of their choice for reflecting on learning or applying a set of agreed upon descriptors to their work.
- Utilize (standards-referenced) criteria for success for peer assessment and have classmates exchange concrete actionable feedback with each other.
- Compile and maintain a schoolwide multilingual resource bank of student/family expertise and multilingual community services that tie to student experiences.
- Organize a buddy system between different grades with regular structured exchanges to further students’ (bi)literacy development.
- Arrange tutorials between older and younger multilingual learners of the same partner language to help meet individual learning goals.
- Incentivize middle and high school students to participate in service learning and apprenticeships, including options in multiple languages.
- Encourage translanguaging as a form of student expression in oral and/or written communication.
Committing to Fair and Equitable Assessment Practices for Multilingual Learners
Multilingual learners are constantly navigating within and across ecosystems where the languages of the home, school, and community interact (see Figure 2). Although linguistically and culturally sustainable classrooms offer space for multilingual learners to engage in and make connections across these ecosystems, unfortunately, the natural interweaving and flow of languages and cultures generally do not extend to assessment policy and practice (Zacarian, Calderón, & Gottlieb, 2021).
Figure 2. The Linguistic Worlds of Multilingual Learners
Soto, et.al, 2023, p.93
By embracing these interconnected ecosystems, we accept and build on students’ language and cultural capital. However, if multilingual learners’ entire school experience is confined to English, there will always be discontinuity. In valuing the languages of learning inside and out of school, we must commit to securing resources in multiple languages while fortifying those of our students and their families. Consequently, we must insist on congruence between the languages and cultures of multilingual learners and local assessment practices.
Expanding Language Proficiency Assessment
Standardized testing comes with specific requirements for administration and interpretation of results. Educators of multilingual learners must be aware of its regulations, constraints, and benefits for both academic achievement and language proficiency. English language proficiency testing is unique in that it is:
- Federally mandated (ESEA Section 1111(b)(1)(F) for a subset of multilingual learners
- Applicable across the K-12 spectrum
- Aligned to English language proficiency/ development standards
- Administered on an annual basis across language domains
- The primary state metric for determining students’ English language growth
- A tool that contributes to reclassification of multilingual learners categorized as ‘English Learners.’
Many educators, however, have broadened the scope of what constitutes language proficiency,shifting from examining language development solely in English to being more inclusive of students’ multilingualism. With expanded instructional and classroom assessment practices, teachers are moving away from language proficiency as domain specific (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) to envisioning language development as integral to students’ identity formation, including their metacognitive, metalinguistic, and metacultural influences (Gottlieb, 2024; Gottlieb & Leung, 2024). In other words, multilingual learners, in some situations, are no longer being defined according to a score on a test in English, but rather, according to the totality of their lived experiences.
A common activity exclusive to multilinguals is translanguaging, the dynamic, natural, fluid, and meaningful flow of languages between/among bilinguals that has been embraced and researched worldwide. As an invaluable contributor to multilingual learners’ development and self-worth, translanguaging exemplifies and reinforces the strengths of multilingualism. Figure 3 offers ideas for incorporating multiple languages, together with translanguaging, into instruction and classroom assessment.
Figure 3 Translanguaging as an Instructional and Assessment Norm for Multilingual Learners
| Teacher Moves to Stimulate Instruction and Assessment in Multiple Languages | Multilingual Learners’ Opportunities to Translanguage During Instruction and Assessment |
| Co-create with students learning goals for units of learning or learning targets for lessons attainable in multiple languages | Co-plan with teachers ways of presenting learning using one or more languages |
| Invite multilingual learners to thoughtfully choose one or multiple languages to explore different avenues to learning | Use multilingual multimodal means (e.g., bilingual videos, podcasts, and AI) to examine, explore, and share content |
| Offer an array of language and multimodal resources of interest to students | Produce multilingual multimodal evidence, such as audio recordings, videos, multimedia, labeled graphics, or kinesthetics to showcase learning |
| Encourage student discussions in small groups with interaction in multiple shared languages | Create products, projects, or performances in teams according to bilingual criteria for success |
| Pair students of the same partner language to reflect on learning and give each other feedback | Engage in peer assessment based on familiar descriptors in students’ language(s) of choice |
Adapted from Soto, et.al, 2023.
Taking Action
The benefits of multilingualism are well-documented and are becoming increasingly visible across classrooms, schools, districts, and states. If we accept these advantages as integral to the collective multilingual learner identity, then educational stakeholders must support assessment in multiple languages. Taking this proposition further, the acceptance of multiple language use requires a shift in mindset to one of multilingualism and multiculturalism reflective of multilingual learners’ communities, homes, and schools. The following suggested actions are a starting point for you and your colleagues to initiate or acknowledge change in your local assessment practices.
- Introduce school and community-wide multilingual multicultural campaigns or projects as outgrowths of curriculum, instruction, and assessment.
- Invite multilingual learners to take agentive roles in classroom assessment by co-constructing goals for learning and their pathways to learning along with accompanying evidence.
- Elicit support of families in sharing their skills and expertise in multiple languages to embed into instruction and assessment.
- Establish ongoing professional learning around assessment literacy in multiple languages for school/district leaders, teachers, and families.
- Devote time for grade-level teams of teachers and coaches to collaborate in taking data-dives at critical points in the school year (e.g., on a quarterly basis).
- Make decisions with your multilingual learners based on multilingual sources.
Accepting the changing landscape from testing exclusively in English to assessment in multiple languages for teachers with multilingual learners is nothing short of a paradigm shift. We must cast away equating assessment with decontextualized test scores or performance levels generated from monolingual measures to envisioning assessment as an ongoing process of gathering and analyzing multimodal multilingual data to reveal a comprehensive story of who our students truly are and their growth over time. In doing so, we honor and uphold the invaluable contributions of our multilingual learners, multilingual families, and educators. In transitioning to assessment inclusive of our students’ many languages and cultures, it’s time to revisit how we may have been privileging English and take the multilingual turn (May, 2014) to reform our assessment practices.
References
García, O., Kleifgen, J. A., & Fuchi, L. (2008). From English language learners to emergent bilinguals. Equity Matters: Research Review 1. Teachers College.
Gottlieb, M. (2021). Classroom assessment in multiple languages: A handbook for teachers. Corwin
Gottlieb, M. (2024). Assessing multilingual learners: Bridges to empowerment (3e). Corwin.
Gottlieb, M., & Honigsfeld, A. (2025). Collaborative assessment for multilingual learners and teachers: Pathways to partnerships. Corwin.
Gottlieb, M., & Leung, C. (2024, March). Situated language proficiency: revisiting the relationship between construct and use in linguistically diverse settings. Presentation at the AAAL Conference, Houston.
May, S. (2014). Disciplinary divides, knowledge construction, and the multilingual turn. In S. May (Ed.), The multilingual turn: Implications for SLA, TESOL and bilingual education (pp. 7–31). New York, NY: Routledge.
Soto, I., Synder, S., Calderón, M., Gottlieb, M., Honigsfeld, A., Lachance, J., Marshall, M., Nungaray, D., Flores, R., & Scott, L. (2023). Breaking down the monolingual wall: Essential shifts for multilingual learners’ success. Corwin.
Zacarian, D., Calderón, M. E., & Gottlieb, M. (2021). Beyond crisis: Overcoming linguistic and cultural inequities in communities, schools, and classrooms. Corwin.
Zwiers, J. (2024, February). Foster pedagogical justice for multilingual learners. Corwin Connect.
Margo Gottlieb, Ph.D., co-founder and lead developer of WIDA at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has authored, co-authored, and co-edited 18 Corwin books, accentuating the power of multilingualism of multilingual learners and their teachers in instruction and classroom assessment. She can be contacted at [email protected].
