5.8 Communicating Assessment Results to Students and Families
Key Takeaways
- Families have a federally grounded right to receive assessment information in a language and form they can understand.
- Assessment jargon must be translated conceptually, not just linguistically; percentiles and scale scores mean little without explanation.
- Student work samples make abstract scores concrete and are the most effective conference tool.
- Qualified interpreters are required for meaningful communication; students and untrained bilingual staff must not serve in that role.
- Student-involved conferences build metacognition and give learners ownership of their own growth data.
5.8 Communicating Assessment Results to Students and Families
The ETS content outline closes the Assessment and Evaluation category with a communication sub-topic: the candidate "is familiar with strategies for communicating assessment data to English learners and their guardians" and can "use graphics to convey test data, provide specific examples from the ELs' work samples, modify teacher jargon when speaking with parents of ELs, use interpreters to help convey test data," and follow federal compliance guidelines for information sent home.
This is where assessment meets the legal obligations in Section 6.3 and Section 7.1. A perfectly valid assessment that a family cannot understand has produced no benefit for that child.
1. What Families Are Entitled To
Federal civil rights obligations — Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974, and the guidance built on them — require districts to communicate with limited-English-proficient parents in a language and form they can understand. Applied to assessment, that means:
| Obligation | Practical requirement |
|---|---|
| Notification of EL identification and program placement | Written notice in the home language where practicable, with the results that led to the decision |
| Annual ELP progress reporting | Results communicated in an understandable language and form |
| Reclassification/exit decisions | Explanation of criteria and evidence used (Section 5.5) |
| Special education evaluation and IEP | Interpretation at meetings; translated notices and consent documents (Section 4.7) |
| Report cards, progress reports, testing notices | Same language-access standard as for English-speaking families |
The controlling principle: communication is not "provided" unless it is comprehensible. Sending an English document to a family that reads only Haitian Creole satisfies no obligation.
2. Interpreters: The Rules
- Use qualified, trained interpreters — people competent in both languages and in the specialized vocabulary of education, and bound by confidentiality.
- Never use the student as interpreter. It inverts family roles, breaches the student's confidentiality, places a child in the position of delivering bad news about themselves, and produces unreliable rendering of technical content.
- Never use a sibling or another student. The same objections apply.
- Do not assume any bilingual staff member is an interpreter. Conversational bilingualism is not interpreting competence.
- Machine translation is not a substitute for a human interpreter in legally significant meetings such as IEP or evaluation conferences (Section 4.4).
Working with an interpreter
- Speak to the parent, not to the interpreter ("How is Ana doing at home?" not "Ask her how Ana is doing").
- Use short segments and pause for rendering.
- Avoid idioms, acronyms, and jargon — they are the hardest things to interpret accurately.
- Brief the interpreter beforehand on the purpose and key terms.
- Allow extra time; an interpreted conference takes roughly twice as long.
3. Translating Jargon, Not Just Language
Even flawlessly interpreted, "Ana scored at the 38th percentile with a scale score of 312 and did not meet the reclassification composite threshold" conveys nothing. Assessment communication requires conceptual translation.
| Jargon | Plain-language version |
|---|---|
| "38th percentile" | "Out of 100 students who took this test, Ana scored higher than 38 of them." |
| "Scale score 312" | "This number lets us compare Ana's score this year to her score last year. It went up 18 points." |
| "Composite proficiency level 3.2" | "Ana is at the Developing level. She can understand and use English for many classroom tasks with pictures and support, and she is working toward doing it independently." |
| "Did not meet exit criteria" | "Ana is not yet ready to leave the language support program. Here is exactly what she needs to show next." |
| "Construct-irrelevant variance" | "The reading on the science test made it hard to show what she knows about science." |
| "Tier 2 intervention" | "Ana will get 30 extra minutes of small-group reading help four days a week." |
Use graphics
The outline names this explicitly. A simple bar showing this year against last year, a four-domain profile chart, or a growth line communicates more in five seconds than a table of scale scores. Color-coded proficiency-level charts with plain-language descriptors under each band are especially effective.
Use work samples
The single most powerful conference tool is the student's own work. Show a writing sample from September beside one from March. A family can see growth in a way no percentile conveys, and the conversation shifts from a number to the child.
4. Structuring the Conference
- Start with strengths, specifically and concretely — not as a rhetorical softener but because families are frequently told only what is wrong.
- Explain the purpose of the assessment before reporting any result.
- Report one or two key findings, not the full score report.
- Show the evidence — work samples, a graphic, a rubric.
- Name the next steps the school will take, with specifics.
- Name what the family can do, and make it doable in the home language: read together in any language, discuss the school day, ask the child to explain what they learned.
- Check for understanding, and invite questions in a way that makes asking safe.
Cultural considerations
Some families come from educational traditions in which questioning a teacher is disrespectful, or in which parent involvement means trusting the school entirely (Section 6.3). Silence and nodding do not reliably indicate understanding. Ask open questions — "What would you like me to explain again?" — rather than "Do you understand?", which invites a polite yes.
5. Communicating with the Student
Student-involved data conversations build metacognition and ownership:
- Share proficiency-level descriptors in student-friendly language — "I can retell a story using pictures and key words."
- Have students track their own growth on simple charts across the four domains.
- Use portfolio self-reflection — "What is different between your September writing and this one?" (Section 5.3).
- Co-set goals in student language: "By December, I want to explain my thinking in science using because and therefore."
- Include students in family conferences where age-appropriate — as participants presenting their own work, never as the interpreter.
A principal asks a fluent 8th-grade student to interpret her own ELP score report for her Spanish-speaking parents during a conference. What is the most accurate objection?
During a conference, a teacher tells a family through an interpreter that their child 'scored at the 38th percentile with a scale score of 312 and did not meet the composite threshold for reclassification.' What is the central problem?
Which conference practice most effectively helps a family understand their child's academic growth over a school year?
A teacher asks a family from a culture where questioning educators is considered disrespectful, 'Do you understand?' The parents nod and say yes. What is the most appropriate follow-up?