The Atascadero Unified School District Board of Trustees received an overview from AUSD testing and accountability coordinator Dan Mosunich regarding the expected results of the California English Language Development Test, which is administered to students every year to assess their spelling, listening, reading and writing skills, during a school board meeting Tuesday.

The district was required to administer the CELDT before the Oct. 31 deadline and the results of those tests are being hand-scored locally to obtain unofficial scores, which will be provided immediately to teachers and school administrators before the district sends the tests to the state for evaluation. Official results from the state are expected by Jan. 1.

“All districts in the state are required to test any student who is identified through the home language survey by Oct. 31 of each year using the California English Language Development Test,” the staff report said. “This is a test of oral language, reading and writing, Students who are new to the country or students for whom we have no CELDT results from a previous district must be tested within 30 days of enrollment. Additionally, students who are tested for the first time must also take a fluency test in Spanish if that is the home language of the student. This must be administered by a fluent Spanish speaker.”

In previous years, Educational Services has used a team of trained substitutes to go to each school and assess students on the CELDT. The state requires that only trained people may administer the test and that training must be repeated each year. Last year, the cost of administering the CELDT was $23,000 and, this year, the cost to administer the CELDT in personnel costs outside the district will be approximately $4,000, the staff report said.

“Due to budget cuts, the assessment team has been reconfigured to include Mosunich, Barb Boud and learning center staff members at each school site,” the staff report said. “In the rare or unusual circumstances, outside consultants and substitute teachers were used to complete assessments or to test in Spanish.”

AUSD and other districts are also required to administer tests of students in their primary language and native-speaking educators must administer the test.

Each test takes from 30 minutes to two hours to administer and more than 300 assessments were given. In the AUSD, 74 students took the CELDT test, 53 students took the language development test and 284 students took the annual CELDT test, Mosunich said.

“The number of English language learners is much larger than in previous years and has grown to seven to nine percent of the student body,” he said.

Mosunich said English language learners in the district are primarily Spanish speaking students but include students whose native language is Hebrew, Russian or several different Asian languages as well.

“The district provides support for the student regardless of his or her home language,” he said.

The district also administered the Annual Measurable Achievement Objectives, federally-mandated testing that revealed that 55 percent of students who were tested in the district advanced one step toward greater proficiency in English.

The results also revealed that 33.2 percent of students tested in the district are making the transition to English language proficiency, compared with 28.9 percent nationwide, and 26.4 percent are meeting their targets in achievement in English language learning and 31.3 percent in mathematic, compared respectively with 34 percent in English language learning and 34.6 percent in mathematics nationwide. Districts throughout San Luis Obispo County posted similar shortfalls in achievement in the third category.

Mosunich said the district was able to reduce substantially the cost for administering the test by hiring fewer substitute teachers to administer the test and relying to a greater degree on teachers who are already employed by the district and are proficient in a foreign language.

Mosunich said the goal was to ensure that fewer English language teachers be taken away from classroom instruction time with their students who are English language learners. He expressed concern about the teacher’s time away from instruction, as well as the increased mandated testing that, thus far, has not been accompanied with reimbursement of the cost of administering the tests. School districts are required by the state and federal government to give more tests than ever before and do so with substantially less staffing and funding to accomplish the task, he said.

Trustee George Galvan expressed concern regarding the sheer number of tests that students are required to take and wondered aloud whether all of the tests were necessary.

Mosunich said he is sensitive to the mounting number of tests and has sought to glean as much practical and useful information from the mandated tests in order to improve the delivery of quality education to every student in the district. He said careful analysis and use of the test results can not only create value in classroom and help teachers to better meet the academic needs of their students, but also identify program strengths and weaknesses and better evaluate the achievement of individual students.

When asked by Trustee Corinne Kuhnle about the significance of response to intervention, or RTI, Mosunich explained that the use of RTI enables the district to remain proactive in helping students meet their academic goals while preventing the need for remediation. He said the district has established a learning center to address the academic needs of students throughout the school day, while at the same time maintaining a rich classroom environment in which students can develop the necessary academic language and vocabulary that is key to their future success in every other academic subject.

Superintendent John Rogers said a group of superintendents throughout SLO County, himself included, have met with Congressman Kevin McCarthy, R-Bakersfield, several times to articulate their collective wishes regarding federal education policy and what they would hope would be included when proposed modifications are discussed when No Child Left Behind legislation comes before the House of Representatives for reauthorization.