Achieving “equity-minded assessment” is the focus of a new report from the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment (NILOA) that examines existing practices and recommends changes to address the needs of an increasingly diverse college student population.
The January 2020 report, “A New Decade For Assessment: Embedding Equity into Assessment Praxis,” suggests new models that actively involve students throughout the process and offer enhanced professional development for relevant personnel.
Co-authored by Dr. Natasha A. Jankowski and Erick Montenegro, the latest report builds upon a 2017 NILOA paper that led to a national conversation around the issue of culturally responsive assessment.
“Far too often, we compare the outcomes of students of color to those of White students,” this year’s report stated. “White students are then normed as the population to which others should strive.” The authors explained that such comparisons, especially if not worded or contextualized appropriately, can send the message that non-White students should strive to be like their White peers without examining the unique experience of non-White students.
“When we see it in assessment, it’s sort of under the guise of measurement that they’re applying these theories,” Jankowski told Diverse, “but the theories they’re applying are based on a student population that we’re not serving right now. ” She added that assessments should involve “really seeing who our students are and how they learn and what we can do to support them in the way that they are learners.”
Jankowski is NILOA’s executive director and research associate professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in the Department of Education Policy, Organization and Leadership. Montenegro, co-author of the report, is a doctoral student in the Education Policy, Organization and Leadership program at the University of Illinois and NILOA’s communications coordinator and research analyst.
In a section titled “Socially Just Assessment,” the authors contend that assessment is not an apolitical process. “We need to first understand how systems of power and oppression influence how students experience college, engage with the learning process and build knowledge before we can understand how to better assess their learning,” the report stated.
