This paper presents an analysis of one district’s performance based assessment of reading comprehension specifically designed for 5th grade transitional bilingual students in their first year of English instruction. In contrast to the common practice of using one assessment measure for all students and modifying assessment conditions for students from diverse backgrounds, they created a new instrument which was administered instead of the district-wide performance based assessment. Findings from the study indicate that: (a) characteristics of second language learning in the areas of phonology, syntax, and semantics were present to varying degrees in 100% of the students’ responses; (b) specific knowledge of the linguistic characteristics of transitional students was necessary for effective interpretation and accurate scoring of student responses; (c) the transitional students demonstrated the ability to comprehend and interpret English texts at inferential levels when assessed on the transitional assessment measure; and (d) the transitional performance-based assessment results suggested to teachers many possible changes they could make in their instruction to meet the literacy needs of transitional students.
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