Abstract:
Maculaitis Assessment Program measures English language proficiency in non-native speakers of English in grades K-12. It can be used for identifying students who are eligible for ESL or bilingual education services, and for placement, diagnosis, achievement, and program evaluation purposes. Five skill categories are covered by the tests: 1) Oral Expression (asking and answering questions, connected discourse, fluency, pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and comprehension); 2) Listening Comprehension (minimal pairs, identifying words, counting words, positional auditory discrimination, situational comprehension, answering questions, comprehending statements, and comprehending dialogues); 3) Vocabulary Knowledge (vocabulary identification and comprehension, definitions of nouns); 4) Reading Comprehension (alphabetizing, recognizing vowels and consonants, recognizing long and short vowels, using word families, determining singular and plural forms, recognizing silent letters, recognizing homonyms and antonyms, recognizing abbreviations, and various reading outcomes); and, 5) Writing Ability (grammar, content, form, style, mechanics). Not all of these skills, however, are tested at every level. Levels K-1 and 2-3 have listening, speaking, and reading subtests. Levels 4-5, 6-8, and 9-12 add a writing subtest. A Basic Concepts Test for K-3 emphasizes the student's ability to identify colors, shapes, numbers, letters , and relationships on the listening and speaking sections. Stimulus booklets with pictures and diagrams accompany each test level, and answer keys are included in the test materials. Objective subtests may be scored by hand or by machine, and guidelines for scoring the Oral Expression and Writing Ability subtests are flexible to accommodate a variety of appropriate responses. Raw scores are converted to percentiles, stanines, and normal curve equivalents. The Basic Skills Test and the K-1 level are administered individually and take 15 and 25 minutes, respectively. The higher levels can be administered in groups for some subtests, but still require individual administration on the oral sections. Testing time ranges from 79-108 minutes. Norms were established for Form I and II on a sample of 100 students each, and the KR21 estimate of reliability for both forms is .97. Norms for the third form were established on a sample of 148 with a reliability of .96. Samples were chosen from urban and suburban areas that the test developer felt were comparable to most American settings in which Limited English Proficient students are being schooled. The only concurrent validity that was assessed was on course grades for examinees. Coefficients for that assessment vary across grade levels, but cluster mostly in the .30s, .40s, and .50s.