Educational Assessment
American Councils develops and administers educational assessments for K-12 students, university learners, and professionals in the United States and around the world. Our experienced assessment experts include specialists in language testing, psychometrics, statistics, and educational technology who design and deliver secure online assessments that meet the highest professional standards.
Our foreign language assessment portfolio includes two programs:
The National Examinations in World Languages
College-level proficiency assessments for U.S. high school students.→ Learn more
The Language Flagship
ILR-based proficiency assessments for advanced undergraduate language programs.→ Learn more
In addition to these programs, American Councils develops assessment technology, designs foreign language proficiency assessments, and provides educational assessment expertise and capacity building for governments and institutions around the world.
The National Examinations in World Languages (NEWL®)
NEWL is an online proficiency assessment designed for U.S. high school students studying Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic), Korean, Portuguese (Brazilian and European), and Russian.
Developed to address the absence of Advanced Placement (AP®) examinations in these strategically important languages, NEWL was endorsed by the College Board in 2017 and provides students with a college-level assessment option in these languages.
The assessments measure functional language proficiency across four skills: reading, listening, speaking, and writing, and serve both school-based language learners and heritage language learners.
Results are reported on AP®-style score reports that support college credit and placement decisions at colleges and universities nationwide.
In many states, qualifying NEWL® scores may also be used to earn the State Seal of Biliteracy, recognizing students who have demonstrated proficiency in English and another language.
The Language Flagship Assessments
With sponsorship from the National Security Education Program (NSEP), American Councils develops and administers foreign language proficiency assessments for The Language Flagship, using the Interagency Language Roundtable (ILR) proficiency guidelines.
In partnership with the Institute of International Education (IIE), The Language Flagship provides undergraduate students with opportunities to achieve professional-level proficiency through immersive study and overseas experiences.
American Councils currently assesses seven languages for the program: Arabic, Chinese, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, and Swahili. These online assessments are used for participant qualification as well as pre- and post-program proficiency measurement.
Assessment Development and Delivery
American Councils' assessments are delivered through the American Councils Language Assessment Support System (ACLASS), an end-to-end online testing platform. ACLASS supports every stage of the assessment lifecycle, from exam development to registration, scheduling, remote proctoring, exam administration, scoring, and score reporting. To date, ACLASS has delivered more than 20,000 online language examinations to learners around the world.
We collaborate with leading testing organizations, universities, and language experts worldwide. Longstanding partnerships with the College Board, the Educational Testing Service (ETS), and higher education institutions strengthen the quality and validity of our assessments. Our global network of educational partners further strengthens assessment development across Eastern Europe, Eurasia, and other regions where American Councils has decades of experience advancing educational and cultural exchange programs.
American Councils has developed comprehensive proficiency assessments in Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Korean, Persian, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, among other languages. We have also contributed to test development for the Defense Language Institute's Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT5), aligned with the ILR proficiency scale and guidelines.
Meet the Assessment Team
Mrs. Huma Shamsi is the Program Manager for the NEWL® program and has more than a decade of experience in educational assessment, language proficiency testing, and the development of assessments for less commonly taught languages. She is multilingual and experienced in applying the ILR and ACTFL proficiency frameworks. She oversees the strategic management of the NEWL program, including stakeholder engagement; partnerships with state education agencies, schools, and higher education institutions; communications and marketing; and engagement with students, parents, and educators. She works collaboratively with assessment and cross-functional teams to support the successful delivery and continued growth of the NEWL program. Since joining the American Councils Assessment team in Washington, DC, in 2012, she has contributed to the design, development, and delivery of educational assessments that advance language proficiency and cross-cultural competence.
Mr. Elias Wright is the Test Administration Coordinator for American Councils for International Education. As Test Administration Coordinator, Elias is responsible for coordinating exam administration, including registering examinees, deploying tests, generating score certificates, and performing quality assurance tests. He also provides remote monitoring and technical support for proctors during exams.
Mrs. Madhurima Chatterjee is our Assessment Technology Lead and holds a Master’s degree in Information Systems from Northeastern University, Boston. She brings over five years of experience in Information Technology, including her most recent role at Amazon Prime Video, before joining American Councils as a Systems Engineer. In addition to her engineering expertise, she has served as a Technical Educator, focusing on instructional design and content development for emerging technologies. She currently manages the software and technical infrastructure supporting NEWL and the Language Flagship programs.
Mrs. Nur Karatas, Ph.D., is the Lead Item Development Manager at American Councils and holds a doctorate in Second Language Acquisition from the University of Maryland. Since she joined American Councils in 2020, Dr. Karatas has monitored and coordinated the flow of item development per the ILR and ACTFL performance scales in multiple foreign language testing projects, such as DLPT5, Flagship, ProjectGo and NEWL. On NEWL, Dr. Karatas manages the process of ACTFL-based item development and exam form assembly. She provides regular trainings for target language experts, item writers/editors and raters of speaking and writing tasks to improve quality assurance of test items and scoring practices.
Mrs. Ying Li, Ph.D., is the Principal Psychometrician at American Councils and holds a doctorate in Educational Measurement and Assessment from the University of Maryland. Dr. Li joined American Councils in 2016, and since then, she has planned, implemented, and managed test development, scoring, standard setting, and report delivering processes for proficiency-based language assessments, including NEWL. Prior to her position at American Councils, Dr. Li had worked as a psychometrician on large scale statewide assessments, as well as national certification exams with intensive experiences in creating test blueprints, reviewing examinees’ data, and facilitating standard setting meetings to determine the cut scores.
Mr. Todd Drummond, Ph.D., has a doctorate in Education Policy from Michigan State University. He has worked in educational assessment, standards, test development, and statistics for over 20 years. Dr. Drummond has worked as a foreign language educator and test item development trainer on contract with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and the World Bank. He has conducted assessment and test item development and standard setting workshops in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Georgia, Tajikistan, Mozambique, Honduras, and Ukraine, and led educational assessment initiatives in several other countries. On NEWL he supports the Program Manager in all aspects of her work.