A Report Card For The Nation

In 2003 the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) will measure, for the first time, the foreign language achievement of U.S. 12th-grade students. The Foreign Language NAEP will give the nation a "report card" to allow educators, parents, policymakers and others to evaluate what America's students know and can do in foreign languages.

NAEP is a congressionally mandated project of the U.S. Dept. of Education, and the only nationally representative and continuing assessment of U.S. students abilities in various subjects. Since 1969, NAEP has periodically assessed reading, mathematics, science, writing, history, geography and other fields.

The first development phase, funded by the National Assessment Governing Board (NAGB), concluded in May 2000. The Center for Applied Linguistics, with its partners the American Council on the Teaching of For-eign Languages (ACTFL) and the American Institutes for Research (AIR) led a consensus-building project to develop recommendations for the assessment's framework and test and item specifications.
After preliminary recommendations had been developed last fall, they were presented for public comment in a variety of forums: CAL's Website, in teacher focus groups, meetings of state teacher associations, a meeting of representatives of several government agencies, and at the November 1999 annual meeting of ACTFL in Dallas. On the basis of these comments, the working groups refined the framework and specifications and submitted them to NAGB.

In May, 2000, after a further round of refinement, NAGB unanimously approved the framework and specifications, commending CAL, ACTFL, AIR, and the members of the committees for their work. In the second phase, now getting underway, the National Center for Education Statistics has contracted with the Educational Testing Service (ETS), working with CAL, AIR, and ACTFL, for the development of items for the foreign language

NAEP according to the framework established in the first phase.
In the proposed general framework, communicative ability in languages other than English will be assessed within three modes of communication:

• the interpersonal mode, which involves two-way, interactive communication;
• the interpretive mode, which relates to the understanding of language;
• the presentational mode, which involves creating spoken or written communication.

Examinees will perform authentic communication tasks that are called for in daily life. The tasks will reflect four interrelated goals that provide the basis for communication:

• gaining knowledge of other cultures;
  
• connecting with other academic subject areas to acquire knowledge;
  
• developing insights into the nature of language and culture through comparisons;
• participating in multilingual communities at home and around the world.
  

Performance will be evaluated on how well the student understands (comprehension) and can be understood (comprehensibility).
The foreign language NAEP will include a two-stage procedure. The first stage, a language survey/background questionnaire will be given to a representative national sample of 12th-grade students to collect data on demographics, experiences with foreign language learning both in school and beyond, attitudes toward language study, and self-reported abilities.

This sample will include both students who have studied a foreign language and those who have not. Data on all foreign languages will be collected through this survey. In the second stage, the focus will narrow as a Spanish version of the foreign language NAEP is administered to a sub-sample of students responding to the national survey. That sample will be 12th-grade students who have learned Spanish in a variety of ways and for different lengths of time.

Developing the framework for this national assessment presented an unprecedented opportunity to foster national discussion and build national consensus on the role of foreign language education in America's future__both within the foreign language community and across government, business, industry, and the general public. Analyses of the data to be collected via tests and questionnaires administered by the FL NAEP will give policymakers, educators, and the general public a much-needed report to use for strengthening the condition of foreign language education in the U.S. Download a complete copy of the final Framework from the publications page of NAGB's website at www.nagb.org