Kate Mahoney is one of only four people in the nation who have been awarded a $15,000 dissertation fellowship to begin examining if language plays a part in how non-English speaking pupils do on a test.
"This is an honor to Kate and to ASU to have her selected for this fellowship," said Jeff MacSwan, Mahoney's adviser and an assistant professor of language and literature in the College of Education.
He added that this fellowship, through the American Educational Research Association, is very competitive.
Mahoney, an ASU student working on her doctorate in the interdisciplinary curriculum and instruction program, said even though most people think that language affects test scores, government officials typically don't agree.
"Many people tell me 'Well duh, of course language plays a part,'" she said.
But government officials decide the amount of money schools receive and teachers' salaries based on test results. They assume that low test scores are the results of poor teaching, she said.
Non-English speaking students are tested in English, with Arizona and California placing a lot of importance on these scores, she said.
MacSwan said this is an important study for Mahoney to do.
"Right now, the political climate in the U.S. is putting more emphasis on the accountability of testing," he said. "The government prescribes punishments for low test schools."
He said usually the higher the number of English learners there are at a school, the lower the test scores, but that it's unclear how these scores reflect the academic mastery of the students.
"Take, for example, if you were in a math class at ASU and at the end of the semester the instructor gives the test in Swahili," MacSwan said. "You would recognize the numbers, but the word problems and directions you wouldn't understand."
Mahoney will base her study on the 1996 test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress database of 6,000 fourth-grade students.
After which she will break the test results into two groups: one of students with English as their primary language and another of students who use English as a second language.
"I will look at 20 individual test items, some that are word problems and some that are math problems that didn't require reading," Mahoney said, adding that the project could take a year to complete. "This way I can see how language played a part in them answering a question correctly."
Reach the reporter at susan.padilla@asu.edu.
