Constructing Accountability Performance for English Language Learner Students

In this article, I examine the assimilationist assumptions embedded in the development and implementation of the Texas Reading Proficiency Test in English (RPTE). The RPTE was designed as a developmental bridge for English language learner (ELL) students to perform on the English Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). These assumptions are revealed in the policy language and modification process. They are also negotiated and reconstructed in a school site, Márquez Elementary. I draw from a prior ethnographic study of Márquez to portray local practices and discourses of ELLs and accountability. As these accountability performance policies targeting ELLs circulate through a particular school, the space available for bilingual education is subsumed to performance-oriented mandates, symbols, and ideology. Consequently, the RPTE to TAKS accountability policy design privileges assimilationist discourse and subtly promotes the imposition of earlier transition models of bilingual and ELL education at the local level.