Book Review: Social Consequences of Testing for Language-minoritized Bilinguals in the United States

Although dynamic, diverse, and constructive discussions of multilingual teaching and learning are currently taking place within the language education field, the phenomenon is completely overlooked in the assessment field that continues to view language as a monolingual, homogenous, and often still native-like construct. (Shohamy, 2011, p. 419)

At a time when our national education department relies heavily on educational testing for accountability and there are mounting organized efforts pushing back against it (e.g., parents opting out of standardized testing of their children), Jamie Schissel’s 2019 foray into the Social Consequences of Testing for Language-minoritized Bilinguals in the United States is a welcome discussion of the consequential validity of testing for multilinguals, and one that is informative for child second language assessment worldwide. A general call to action for language testers, this book not only provides important historical underpinnings and background on the foundational power relations and discrimination upon which current testing practices have been built, but also situates readers theoretically via a use-oriented lens (Shohamy, 2006), in order to “center on the perspectives of test-takers” (p. 5) and “understand the situatedness of definitions and how inferences are made, or, more precisely, who is making the inferences and who is impacted by these inferences” (p. 5).

The book serves as a plea to the field of language testing, scholars, educators, and test developers alike, to consider the historical narrative of testing contexts as an essential component within consequential validity in order to disrupt thriving legacies of “white settler colonialism” (p. 13) in testing scenarios, not only but especially in the US context. Importantly, the author explains that, in her writing of this book, she set out to “ensure that the historical narrative presented in this book is applicable to an audience that has the power to make meaningful changes in testing practices related to language-minoritized bilinguals” (p. 1). The following review provides a description of Schissel’s approach and positions the usefulness of informative historical narrative within the greater consequential validity discourse among language testing scholars.

In her introduction, Schissel sets the stage to tackle important definitions related to population and context and provides an overview of the book. In Chapter 1, Schissel begins by orienting readers in the language testing field to the long history of the social consequences of testing for language-minoritized groups. The rest of Chapter 1 is devoted to a discussion of what validity in testing means to language-minoritized bilinguals. Chapters 2 and 3 comprise Part 1 in which Schissel outlines testing scenarios (e.g., the US naturalization test) historically encountered along various trajectories of immigration (e.g., Ellis Island, an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century point of immigration into the United States) and the impact of testing on affected communities (e.g., deportation). Chapters 4 and 5 comprise Part 2: Chapter 4 gives extensive treatment relative to other chapters on the long-term consequences for language-minoritized bilinguals in the K–12 context (e.g., the erasure of bilingualism), and Chapter 5 explores testing as gatekeeping to higher education. In her conclusion, Schissel artfully weaves theory, history, and present circumstances together, giving an important nod toward the intersectionality of language-minoritized bilinguals.

Admirably, the author begins by confronting problematic terminology. She wastes little time in identifying the monolingual bias inherent in the use of “English language learner” within The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA, & NCME, 2014), and replaces biased language with a more specific and authentic label of “language-minoritized bilinguals.” This is an important way to set the stage for this book as it undergirds the argument to follow: that the field of language testing should bend its understanding of what tests should mean to language-minoritized bilinguals, an underexplored subset of the total population of English language learners. Also useful are Schissel’s overviews of intersectionality and race and white supremacy, which provide appropriate background frameworks in order to contextualize the nature of longstanding discrimination in the United States of language-minoritized bilinguals resulting from testing. Schissel makes quick, clean work of these overviews, making them sufficient to bring the socially oriented language tester up to speed with the discourse that is relatively more commonplace in the education field. Of particular value in the book is Chapter 4, which is devoted to seeking education in K–12 contexts and focuses on standardized testing, accommodations, and English proficiency testing.

Only two minor limitations arise despite the book’s aforementioned strengths. First, despite the insights found in Chapter 4, the section lacks particular development with regard to the problems arising for language-minoritized bilinguals in the realm of content testing in the United States K–12 context. Specifically, for the US readership, a state-specific example would go a long way in illustrating the depth of consequences for young language-minoritized bilinguals. For example, Winke and Zhang (2019) foreshadowed the incredible impact on language-minoritized bilinguals resulting from the state of Michigan’s third-grade reading law.

Second, what the book does not do (nor does it purport to do) is to speak directly to a wide array of audiences. It perhaps has a narrow audience. The most testing-oriented of graduate students will be able to grapple with Schissel’s history of validity, and the most socially oriented language testing scholars will approve of Schissel’s argument and embrace the book’s mission. It would be wonderful if this book could reach test developers or educators in state departments of education in the United States where its message could arguably do the most good. Readers outside of the United States who are already intimately knowledgeable about the historical narrative of testing in their own contexts will be able to apply Schissel’s arguments to their own testing scenarios. While the thorough foray into the history of discrimination based on testing in the United States is commendable and the deep analysis of negative testing consequences for various communities is absolutely imperative, the scope of the book is wide and its history long. This speaks again to the book’s general accessibility and its range in terms of various audiences, each concerned with language testing in myriad ways and to various degrees.

These quibbles aside, Schissel achieves what she sets out to do in this resourceful and insightful book. It provides an intact and thorough historical narrative of key issues at the heart of the social consequences of testing for language-minoritized bilinguals in the United States, and it serves as an important starting point for language testing scholars’ reflections on their roles in the field with respect to test-taskers’ perspectives and experiences.