Legislative audit: English learners face largest proficiency gaps; auditors urge faster data cycles and review of interventions

Nicole Luscher, an analyst from the Office of the Legislative Auditor General, told the Utah Legislature’s Interim Education Committee that statewide assessment data show persistent proficiency gaps and very limited year‑to‑year movement in student proficiency.

"The gap for multilingual learners is still above 30%," Luscher said, referring to a roughly 35% spread between English/multilingual learners and higher‑performing student groups on the statewide assessments. She said the auditors analyzed statewide results from 2017 through 2024 and built an interactive dashboard to let LEAs examine gaps by subgroup, grade range and subject.

The audit identified three primary objectives of the review: trends in testing by demographic and other factors, practices used in both high‑ and low‑performing LEAs, and whether prior performance correlates with future results. Luscher said auditors found that students who are proficient in one year tend to remain proficient the next year, and students who are nonproficient also tend to remain nonproficient — net movement was less than 1 percent between the 2022 and 2023 school years for English language arts on state summative measures.

The auditors told the committee that higher‑performing LEAs commonly use internal, timely data and intervention systems, maintain designated data analysis teams, and provide training for principals on using internal student metrics. Luscher said the audit does not claim causation — the office did not test whether the identified ‘‘best practices’’ directly caused higher performance — so a key recommendation was that LEAs evaluate whether their interventions actually move students toward proficiency.

Committee members asked whether the audit tracked how long individual students remain in the English/multilingual‑learner category. Luscher replied that the audit used the USBE dataset for each school year (students indicated as multilingual learners in a given year were included in that year’s counts) and did not follow individual students longitudinally within the report; she said state staff could likely provide longer individual‑level timelines.

Several legislators pressed on related context: Representative Hayes asked whether the pattern predates or follows COVID; Luscher said the COVID year showed a much larger drop but the post‑COVID recovery returned some metrics to pre‑pandemic levels. Representative Walton asked about ties between attendance and performance; Luscher said the audit includes a section on chronic absenteeism but the auditors did not link individual attendance records directly to test results in this report.

Leah Voorhees, deputy superintendent for student achievement at the Utah State Board of Education (USBE), delivered the agency’s response. She said USBE and the superintendent have acted on the audit findings by emphasizing formative assessment, creating assessment‑literacy modules for educators, and providing toolkits tied to interim measures such as Acadience. "Teachers get reports immediately," Voorhees said, while acknowledging that system‑level analysis for the state is available later in the year after testing and standard‑setting are complete.

Why it matters: the audit highlights student groups — especially multilingual learners — where proficiency gaps remain large and persistent. The report’s recommendations aim to shorten the interval between assessment administration and usable state analysis, and to encourage LEAs to show that their interventions actually change student proficiency rates.

What’s next: auditors said they will issue a best‑practices manual for LEAs this fall. USBE said it will continue to provide formative tools and professional learning cohorts and offered to provide the committee with additional follow‑up data such as average time to English proficiency for multilingual learners if available from state records.