Assessment

Office of English Language Learners & Global Languages

The Bilingual Verbal Ability Test (BVAT) & Woodcock-Muñoz Test

Potentially eligible students without a MAT reading score and not tested between 1/1/03 and 6/15/03, must be tested with the BVAT and Woodcock-Muñoz Tests.

The Bilingual Verbal Ability Test

  • According to the requirements of the Office for Civil Rights and State of Michigan guidelines to serve bilingual students, the district is required to assess the English language proficiency level and academic performance of bilingual students once a year. The Bilingual Verbal Ability Test (BVAT) is used to comply with this requirement. The BVAT reports five levels of Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) to help describe the student's language proficiency in English. (Riverside Publishing, 1998)
  • Potentially eligible students without a MAT reading score and not tested between 1/1/02 and 6/15/02 must be tested with the BVAT. The BVAT provides a standardized and psychometrically sound procedure for combining verbal and cognitive assessment in English and in the home language of the student in the same instrument. Items that students fail are assessed in the students' home language to ascertain whether the students have that knowledge or ability developed in the home language. The BVAT assesses the linguistic and conceptual knowledge that the students possess regardless of their language.
  • The BVAT was administered by trained bilingual staff during the past three years. New students and those who were not tested in the late Spring, will take the BVAT test September 3-24, 2003.

The Woodcock-Muñoz Test

The Office of English Language Learners & Global Languages will administer a new bilingual test this fall to all bilingual students who are identified by a home language survey as being bilingual. This new test adoption will assist schools with pre and post data that will help the school meet the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) requirements of the new Title III law.

Workshops: Administering the Bilingual Verbal Ability Test (BVAT) and Woodcock Munoz Test

 

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