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This study is part of a larger effort to investigate linguistic features of assessment items that might explain differential performance of English learners on science assessments. An analysis of a large set of multiple-choice items suggested two features that held promise in reducing the performance gap: the presence of contrast words and the reduction of 1+ clauses. A subset of 48 items were modified and used in a study with 638 students to investigate the effect of these features. For half of those items, we reduced the number of 1+ clauses; for the other half, we removed contrast words. We analyzed the results from two subsets of students: 358 9th grade native-English and native-Spanish speaking students from across the U.S. and 138 8th grade students from one teacher at a school with 50% Spanish speaking students who agreed to participate in follow-up focus group discussions about the items. We compared student performance on the modified and original items and found little to no support for the selected linguistic features as affecting English learners' scores differentially, suggesting that performance was more strongly dependent on content knowledge than on the linguistic features of the items. The follow-up discussions also supported the idea that students' performance was strongly related to their content knowledge level.

This monograph explores the ways in which large-scale school reform efforts play out in American Indian/Alaska Native communities and schools, starting from a historical and cultural perspective, and focusing on the translation of research into concrete steps leading to American Indian/Alaska Native student academic success and personal well-being.

Beginning in the 1997-98 school year, WestEd staff, with the support of the Pacific Resources for Education and Learning (PREL), worked intensively with a group of five Chamorro teachers from Rota Elementary School (Hawaii) to develop culturally responsive, standards-based science units. The larger goal was to develop Web-based case examples of culturally responsive science pedagogy that draws upon students' culture-based content knowledge and uses instructional methods compatible with those that are used at home and in the community. The Chamorro teachers decided that the coconut tree could serve as the basis for units across the grades, so they named the project the "Coconut Wireless." These culture-based units would be taught in conjunction with Chamorro Week, observed in the schools during May each year. This document reports on the Coconut Wireless Project. Discussion highlights include: documenting culturally responsive pedagogy in order to share with others; use of technology to capture instruction; instructional foci for Web-based examples; creating storyboards; what is on the Web page; standards addressed by the Coconut Wireless units; linking the project to ongoing local standards development; strategies for assessment of student learning; common threads across teachers' successful pedagogy; the support of the principal; value of the Coconut Wireless Project to empower teacher leadership; value of the Project for students; and recommendations. Six tables present information on: learning about local plants; frequently asked questions; elements of sixth-grade Coconut Tree unit; beginning the storyboard process; successful pedagogical strategies; and elements of success in the Coconut Wireless Project. (AEF)

This brief focuses on assessment issues for American Indian and Alaska Native (collectively referred to as "Native") students, as well as other pedagogical issues related to improved teaching and educational outcomes. Although traditional Native educational strategies emphasize cooperation, experiential learning, and reflection, Native students continue to be at a disadvantage in the classroom. The reasons lie in several intersecting realities: troubled historical relations between tribes and the federal government affecting Native schooling, ongoing educational practices that ignore or devalue cultural ways of knowing, and the dearth of American Indian and Alaska Native teachers. Understanding the school performance of Native students requires a sociocultural perspective that takes into account differences between community and school in social and cultural context, the unconscious nature of these contexts, effects on student learning and organization of knowledge, and implications for effective instructional styles and student evaluation. Despite supportive federal legislation, a repertoire of culturally specific instruments to assess Native student performance does not exist. Standardized norm-referenced tests present such difficulties as inappropriate content, time pressures, reliance on verbal information, basic premises of multiple-choice testing, and alien nature of formal on-demand testing. Indeed, achievement tests can be seen as merely indices of the student's acculturation to Western cultural knowledge and conventions for displaying knowledge. More culturally responsive assessment incorporates content reflecting local contexts and experiences, uses procedures that reflect local ways of thinking and learning, and provides students with options. Other concerns related to the question of whose standards are appropriate, proper interpretation and use of test data, and the value of alternative assessments. (SV)

This monograph addresses concerns about mathematics and science instruction and educational outcomes for Native students. The sociocultural contexts of schooling and community come together in particular ways to influence how Native children learn and, consequently, their life outcomes. It is important to look beyond the performance of individual students to the systems in which they are educated and to the historical and social influences on how mathematics and science are conceptualized and taught. Methods for implementing current mathematics and science reforms are shaped by assumptions about what children should know and be able to do. This monograph seeks to make such assumptions and the Western cultural values underlying them more explicit, and suggests that a generic approach to reform is ineffective and inequitable. Student differences with implications for teachers' choices about instructional strategies include differences in: (1) ways of knowing with regard to mathematics and science, rooted in varying world views; (2) approaches to learning and problem solving; (3) communication styles, strategies, and uses; and (4) cultural values about use and sharing of particular kinds of knowledge. Ethnoscience and ethnomathematics (forms embedded in cultural activities, the workplace, or everyday life) can serve to contextualize instruction--to provide real-life connections that make classroom theories and practices meaningful. Several examples demonstrate how such connections can be made. A set of guidelines is presented for instruction that bridges cultures and situates mathematics and science learning in meaningful contexts for Native students, as well as for all underserved students. Contains 130 references. (SV)