SECTION 210:15-35-3. Assessments

(a)   Inclusion of ELL students in state academic content assessments. An ELL student must be included in the state academic assessment system immediately upon enrollment, and shall participate in assessments administered under the Oklahoma School Testing Program (OSTP). A student may not be excluded from participation in OSTP assessments based on English proficiency status, with the exception that an ELL student who has attended school in the United States for less than twelve (12) months may receive a one-time exemption for the OSTP Reading test in grades three (3) through eight (8), or the English EOI II/III. This one-time exception does not waive ACE graduation requirements.

(b)   Accommodations for ELL students taking state academic content assessments. While ELL students must participate in content assessments required under the OSTP, an ELL student may qualify for a test accommodation based on limited English proficiency. Test accommodations for ELL students may be either linguistic (direct) or nonlinguistic (indirect), and are intended to increase the likelihood that English Language Learners are tested on their knowledge of the subject content rather than their proficiency in English. Decisions concerning OSTP accommodations for an ELL student shall be made by the Language Instruction Educational Plan (LIEP) committee, or the district or consortium equivalent.

(1)   Eligibility. An individual ELL student is eligible for testing accommodations only when all of the following factors apply:

(A)   The student has a primary language other than English and is not proficient in listening, speaking, reading, writing, or comprehension in an English-speaking classroom;

(B)   The student routinely uses the accommodation during classroom instruction andassessment in the subject, both before and after the OSTP test is administered;

(C)   The accommodation must be documented on the student's current LIEP or locally designed equivalent plan;

(D)   The accommodation must be among those approved by the State Department of Education; and

(E)   The student requires the accommodation in order to participate in OSTP testing.

(2)   Impermissible accommodations. An ELL test accommodation may not:

(A)   Alter, explain, simplify, paraphrase, or eliminate any test question, reading passage, writing prompt, or multiple-choice answer option;

(B)   Provide verbal clues or other suggestions that hint at or give away the correct response to the student; or

(C)   Contradict test administration requirements or result in the violation of test security, including but not limited to modifying, reordering, or reformatting test questions or altering, enlarging, or duplicating tests.

(c)   Accommodations for ELL students with disabilities. For an ELL student who is also identified as a student with disabilities, any testing accommodations other than the ELL supports addressed in subsection (b) must be based on the student's disability and documented in the student's IEP or Section 504 Plan.

(d)   English language proficiency assessments. The English language proficiency of every ELL student shall be assessed annually using the ACCESS for ELLs test, which shall measure ELL students' oral language, reading, and writing skills in English. Any testing accommodations provided to an ELL student with a disability must be based on the student's disability and documented in the student's IEP or Section 504 Plan.

[Source: Added at 32 Ok Reg 906, eff 8-27-15]