Words are Hard...

I went to a training today that dealt with teaching English Language Learners. They are obviously at a disadvantage because they're learning both language and content at the same speed that native English speakers are learning the content, so the county has decided to educate its teachers about how better to serve this group. Most suggestions they had, perhaps obviously, can serve all populations of students. But what I found most interesting was that we wrapped up the session with a reading selection from an old SOL test. I have no idea what grade level it was for, but holy crap it was difficult for anyone other than a high achieving (not average) Junior native speaker. It was ridiculous. There is no wonder ELL students have a difficult time passing standardized tests. I'm not saying we should dumb things down, but I'm saying we should expect them to perform at a specific level which may be lower than their peers, because words are hard, man.