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Reimagining Assessment

Reimagining Assessment

Educators are rethinking the purposes, forms, and nature of assessment. Beyond testing mastery of traditional content noesis—an essential task, but not nearly sufficient—educators are designing cess for learning as an integral role of the learning process.

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COVID-nineteen has disrupted springtime testing; now is the time to ask why we use standardized tests, considering the racial bias in them.

As a high school student, I associated spring with sitting in a crowded classroom filling out bubbles on a test. In a normal yr at this time, high school students would face a barrage of exams including the SBAC, AP testing, the Sat, and the Human action. But like the economy, healthcare, and our social textile, COVID-19 has disrupted the education system, including the practice of springtime testing.

Given this temporary relief from testing, now is as good a time as ever to consider why we administrate standardized tests, particularly when we consider the racial bias in these tests. How are standardized tests unfair to Black and Latinx students?

Stereotype Threat

Racial bias in standardized testing shows up in multiple ways. Kickoff, Black and Latinx students face stereotype threat. Psychologists Joshua Aronson and Claude Steele have researched how the additional stress of negative stereotypes about students of color and their intelligence manifest in lower test scores. The fear of confirming a stereotype of inferiority creates stress and feet that contributes to poor exam performance.

Some suggestions to mitigate the impact of stereotype threat on test performance include telling students not to make full out demographic questions on the test, request students to call back of areas in their lives where they are successful, and emphasizing growth mindset—the idea that all students can, in fact, improve their performance through hard work.

(Courtesy of Young Whan Choi)

Racial Bias in Standardized Test Questions

Standardized testing poses another threat to historically marginalized students; these tests are often designed with racial, cultural, and socio-economical bias built in. I remember proctoring the at present defunct California High Schoolhouse Exit Examination to my 10th form students. I believed that I had prepared them well to write good five paragraph essays, only uncertainty crept in when a student called me over with a question. With a puzzled look, she pointed to the prompt request students to write nearly the qualities of someone who would deserve a "key to the city." Many of my students, nearly all of whom qualified for gratis and reduced lunch, were not familiar with the idea of a "central to the city."

Likewise often, test designers rely on questions which presume groundwork cognition more than often held by White, middle-course students. It'due south non simply that the designers have unconscious racial bias; the standardized testing industry depends on these kinds of biased questions in lodge to create a wide range of scores. Professor James Popham, a renowned educational testing good, put it this way, "Ane of the ways to have that exam create a spread of scores is to limit items in the examination to socioeconomic variables, because socioeconomic condition is a nicely spread out distribution, and that distribution does in fact spread kids' scores out on a test." (Frontline, PBS, 2001).

Ironically, if Black and Latinx students started to perform likewise equally their White and East Asian peers on these tests, and so the tests would be meaningless to colleges. They could no longer utilize test scores to differentiate among applicants.

Equitable Cess Tools

While much has been said nigh the racial achievement gap as a civil rights issue, more attending needs to be paid to the measurement tools used to define that gap. In other words, education reformists, ceremonious rights organizations, and all who are concerned with racial justice in pedagogy need to abet for assessment tools that don't replicate racial and economic inequality.

Where standardized tests consistently reinforce a racial accomplishment gap, OUSD students feel the capstone project equally a bridge over and beyond that gap.

Thankfully, some educators are using operation cess tools similar portfolios, public exhibitions, and capstone projects in ways that foster a positive exploration of identity and that encourage a growth mindset. I saw the ability of this kind of assessment for Blackness and Latinx students at Vanguard High School where I outset taught over twenty years ago. The school had a waiver from the New York Land Regents examination, and students demonstrated learning through oral presentations of their cognition. After reading Ralph Ellison'south Invisible Man, students explored topics like whether race relations now are worse or ameliorate than during Ellison's time. Students' work and the school itself had to pass an external review past the New York Performance Standards Consortium.

Merely, dissimilar a standardized test, when students came upwardly brusk on the rubric that defines quality, they received directly feedback on areas they needed to improve and had an firsthand opportunity to revise their work to achieve proficiency. This opportunity for revising work is critical. It signals to students that they can meliorate with additional work and that they are, in fact, expected to practice that work. Growth mindset lives at the heart of these kinds of operation assessments.

(Courtesy of Young Whan Choi)

Operation Assessment in Oakland Unified

My experience at Vanguard has impacted how I pb the work around performance assessments in Oakland Unified School Commune (OUSD). We have a ready of common rubrics that we enquire schools to use to evaluate their students on a graduate capstone task. Past receiving scores on these rubrics, students can clearly see where they need to meliorate in order to cross the threshold for passing. All schools implement scoring early plenty that students take time to revise.

Unlike standardized tests that intentionally include questions biased against students of color, the OUSD capstone task begins with students' interests. They pick a problem in the community that they are interested in then write a research paper on promising solutions to that problem. Ofttimes students choose questions that chronicle to their identities or a defining experience in their lives. Here are a few of the newspaper topics:

"Should We Utilise Urban Gardens Instead of Agribusiness in California"

"Promising Solutions to Accost the Bear on of Gun Violence on People'south Health"

"How to Accost Wildfire Smoke at Skyline Loftier School"

At the end of 2018, more than than ane,200 seniors completed a survey about their experience with the capstone projection. 70 per centum (seventy%) reported that the projection was valuable or very valuable in strengthening their oral presentation skills. The most remarkable fact most the data is what we meet when nosotros disaggregate by race and language proficiency.

Where standardized tests consistently reinforce a racial achievement gap, OUSD students experience the capstone project every bit a span over and beyond that gap. For case, Black, Latinx, and English language language learners study at higher rates that the capstone project is valuable or very valuable in strengthening oral presentation—73%, 74%, and 77%, respectively. This positive trend holds true in all areas we assessed—research skills, writing skills, and existence a proactive learner.

Performance assessments, like OUSD's capstone project, are just one part of addressing racism in the educational organization. We accept become overly reliant on a system of standardized testing that continues to produce the results it was designed to get—a spread of scores that maps neatly to race and socio-economic factors. These test scores, in turn, justify closing schools in poor communities of color and disallowment Blackness and Latinx students from educational opportunities, and thereby, from jobs that support a heart-course life.

(Courtesy of Immature Whan Choi)

COVID-19 has caused disruptions effectually the globe and in every area of our lives. In these moments of uncertainty, we are seeking new ways of existence and acting. At some betoken, hopefully soon, when the pandemic ends, I look forward to some aspects of life every bit I had known it—enjoying a dark out with friends, offering hugs and handshakes, and convening teachers for professional learning. I hope, by contrast, that we don't return to our usual do of standardized testing that unfairly disadvantages Black and Latinx students. Instead, let'due south use this opportunity to commit to more racial justice in teaching by creating an assessment system that supports the growth mindset and identities of students.

Young Whan Choi

Director of Functioning Assessments, Oakland Unified Schoolhouse District

Young Whan Choi has been a public school teacher in New York City, Providence, RI, and Oakland, CA, during which time he has developed expertise in projection-based learning, curriculum design, and school-based internships. Currently, he is Managing director of Functioning Assessments for Oakland Unified School District where he leads the Ethnic Studies program and supports schools to provide high quality instruction through a functioning organisation aligned to a rigorous and meaningful capstone project. He is the producer and host of The Young and the Woke podcast.

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Source: https://www.nextgenlearning.org/articles/racial-bias-standardized-testing