Austin ISD board accepts biliteracy monitoring report after presentation on dual-language measures

The Austin Independent School District Board of Trustees voted May 8 to accept the district's monitoring report on Scorecard Goal 5, biliteracy, following a presentation by Superintendent Miguel S—egura and district multilingual staff that explained new baselines, methodology changes to language proficiency testing, and an action plan for increasing dual-language proficiency and the number of graduates earning biliteracy recognitions.

The monitoring report covers two goal progress measures: GPM 5.1, which measures the percent of fifth-graders in dual-language programs who earn a level equivalent to a high-school language credit on the STAMP proficiency assessment; and GPM 5.2, which measures the percent of 9th'12th graders in dual-language on track to earn the Austin ISD seal of biliteracy. The board's acceptance was moved by Secretary Gonzales, seconded by Trustee Quintana, and passed unanimously by trustees present.

The superintendent and multilingual education staff told trustees that a key cause of the apparent year-to-year decline in some elementary STAMP results is a change in methodology. The district now requires that, when available, all four STAMP domains (reading, listening, speaking, writing) be counted to determine level-1 proficiency; last year the platform sometimes produced a composite when one domain (often speaking) was missing. Using the new, more rigorous…