In this article, the author discusses how learning to effectively conduct, analyze, and present research has had an impact on her academic success, her ongoing development as an ESL teacher, and her proposals and protocols as the ESL department coordinator at an adult school in the Bay Area. The author triangulates these 3 areas of impact to demonstrate how the ability to employ research as a tool has provided her more knowledge and authority as a teacher and administrator.

In California adult schools, standardized language assessments are typically administered to adult English as a second language (ESL) students upon enrollment; students then take these same state-approved tests throughout the academic year to demonstrate progress. As these tests assess only listening and reading skills, schools may use their own internally developed assessments to more accurately place students and subsequently to determine level promotion. Engaged in participatory action research, the researcher interviewed adult school staff to document their varying assessment policies and procedures of adult ESL learners, highlighting the agency-created assessments that provide critical information of students’ language proficiencies and achievements. This study underscores the discrepancies between the state’s policies and actual pedagogical needs, and it proposes ways to reconstruct how ESL assessment is conducted, such as making available a wider, more comprehensive base of assessments for schools to use, and proposing an updated, common set of standards for use statewide.