What stood out to me the most from the two García et al. chapters, 8 and 9 is how much power the current system of high-stakes testing has and how unfair it is to emergent bilinguals (EBs). It is honestly shocking that EBs are still required to take standardized English tests that cannot really show what they know. These tests are not just neutral tools. They act like a language policy that forces students to focus on English and ignore their home languages. Instead of supporting them, the tests end up labeling, punishing, and reinforcing negative ideas about bilingual students. Because of this, many EBs drop out or get placed in remedial or special education programs when that is not what they need. It really shows how far school policies are from what research actually says about bilingual learning.
The examples of Jeehyae and Moussa helped me clearly understand why these tests are flawed. Jeehyae came from Korea and could already do complex academic tasks in Korean, like writing essays, while Moussa came from Guinea and had less experience with academic language in any language. But on an English-only test, both of them would score low. That reminded me of my own experience when I first came to the U.S. I still remember being introduced to multiple-choice questions for the first time and feeling completely lost, even though I understood the content. The format itself was unfamiliar, so it did not reflect what I actually knew. I could try my best to do well on exams but still struggled to pass, thus dropping my Econommics major. I imagine Jeehyae must have felt something similar, and can't imagine many other students who go through the same even at a younger age.
The biggest thing I am taking away is the need for fairer, more authentic ways to assess bilingual students. Dynamic assessments and performance-based tasks that let students use all their languages would be a much better way to see what they really know. Allowing translanguaging in testing would turn assessments from something that hurts students into something that actually helps them grow and show their strengths.