CT-7400: Assessment Practices

Middleton, K. V. (2020). The longer-term impact of COVID-19 on K-12 student learning and assessment. Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 39(3), 41-44.
This article describes issues schools must contend with regarding the validity of assessments due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The central issue is whether the assessments accurately represent student learning and how much learning was lost due to instruction and other factors at play during the pandemic.

Caldwell, L. D., & Bledsoe, K. L. (2019). Can social justice live in a house of structural racism? A question for the field of education. American Journal of Evaluation, 40(1), 6-18.
This article describes systemic racism in the context of evaluation, which practitioners often think of as being neutral and unbiased. The authors argue that evaluation isn’t neutral and offers solutions for how professionals can address equity and fairness issues.

Angelo, C., & Reis, A. B. (2021). Gender gaps in different grading systems. Education Economics, 29(1), 105-119.
This article reviews the literature on gender gaps under various testing and evaluation scenarios. The study examines gender differences in testing in Portugal to determine that gender plays a role in evaluation results under low, medium, and high-stakes assessments.

Herman, J., & Cook, L.. (2019). Fairness in class assessment. In S. M. Brookhart & J. H. McMillan (Eds.), Classroom assessment and educational measurement, (1st ed.), pp. 243-264. Routledge.
Read Chapter 13. This chapter is a dense, but important chapter about fairness in assessment and course instruction. Understanding fairness is important for determining ways not to disadvantage different students in the classroom and assess students. The authors present a series of suggestions for how practitioners can think about fairness and implement strategies to improve teaching, learning, and assessment.

Brenneise, A. D., & Congdon, Jr., M. (2020). Mobilizing a critical universal design for learning framework for justice minded course design and assessment. In K. C. Blinne (Ed.), Grading justice: Teacher-activist approaches to assessment (pp. 61-87). Lexington Books.
The authors provide an excellent synopsis of the Critical Universal Design for Learning framework, which integrates Univeral Design for Learning with Critical Communications Pedagogy, and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogy. They provide examples and suggestions for how open-minded teachers can approach course design and assessment from a social justice perspective. While the authors are higher education professors, the examples and the issues they discuss are relevant to K-12 classrooms today.