Looking Into a Crystal Ball: Is Requiring High-Stakes Language Proficiency Tests Really Going to Improve World Language Education?

Brigid Burke is the program coordinator of World Language Education at her university, which is housed in the College of Education and Human Development. Since obtaining this position 4 years ago, she has become most concerned about certain recommendations that were made by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) in 2002, which were then approved by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) to identify the most qualified student teachers and weed out the weakest. As a long-time and dedicated member of ACTFL and a concerned teacher-educator, she is writing this piece for "The Modern Language Journal's" "Perspectives" column in hopes that her voice will prompt other members to convey their sentiments for or against certain policies in place to accredit institutions of higher education as World Language Education programs. In particular, she wants to problematize that if a state, like her institutional home state of Ohio, requires the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) and the ACTFL Written Proficiency Test (WPT) for licensure, then a university desiring to achieve accreditation by NCATE in the area of World Language Education must have 80% of its program finishers obtain Advanced Low proficiency scores on these two high-stakes exams. At her university, students must obtain the required proficiency scores of Advanced Low before they are allowed to student teach. All World Language Education students are held to the same standard in order to graduate and become licensed teachers through the university in the state of Ohio. The OPI and WPT requirements have been affecting World Language Education majors at my institution who want to become teachers of French, German, and Spanish. For each of these languages, students must pass both exams with Advanced Low (AL) scores to begin student teaching; AL is an acceptable proficiency level for teachers according to ACTFL/NCATE. If students do not achieve these scores, they are not allowed to student teach until they do. Other U.S. universities require the same proficiency standards for students to student teach. However, many states set inconsistent requirements.