Equitable Assessment

A key aspect to assessment is ensuring that it is equitable - that every student has a chance to succeed based on their participation in the course. This is complicated becuase students arrive in our classrooms with a wide variety of experiences and backgrounds. The intersection of assessment and equity mindedness is an important and emerging focal point, and the following information is a start to this ongoing discussion. 

As a starting point, I would recommend the article "A New Decade for Assessment Links to an external site." by Montenegro and Jankowski. [Montenegro, E., & Jankowski, N. A. (2020, January). A new decade for assessment: Embedding equity into assessment praxis (Occasional Paper No. 42). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois and Indiana University, National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA).]

The authors remind us that equitable assessment requires intentional effort. Here is a short list of key elements to equitable sssessment: 

1. Culturally responsive assessment

“. . . culturally responsiveness calls for practices which respond to. . . the contexts in which we teach and learn; including the needs of the students we serve” (6).

2.  A socially just assessment perspective

In order to understand “why our students are achieving, persisting, or stopping-out in the ways they are. . . . there must be an understanding that learning and assessment operate under dynamics of power and oppression” (7).

3. Conceptualized through a critical perspective

“Both culturally responsive assessment and socially just assessment operate from a critical perspective. They strive to challenge the status quo; raise questions of privilege, power, and oppression; and work to remedy injustices whether purposeful or accidental” (9).

Critical assessment attempts to understand and reflect on the multiple contexts at work in assessment, including the institution/program, the person(s) conducting the assessment, and the learners (9).

For more details, read the full article Links to an external site.. 

 

Disciplinary-Specific Assessment Efforts

Becuase my own background is teaching Composition, I wanted to highlight one field that has examined assessment practices in the disciple and created antiracist assessment approaches. In particular, the work of Asao Inoue is leading labor-based writing assessment in Composition. For more information on these efforts, check out a book on the topic (I recommend Inoue's Antiracist Writing Assessment Ecologies Links to an external site. or Labor-Based Grading Contracts - available through the TLC) or his blog, Infrequent Words Links to an external site.. There are also many faculty who have posted their own reflections and variations on labor-based grading contracts. 

Currently, SCC and SFCC faculty are participating in a state-wide English 101 project connected to labor-based classroom grading practices, and you can expect to see more TLC events on this topic in the near future.