Equity concerns require that representatives of many culture, gender, and language backgrounds are included on assessment research and development teams and on teams charged with the design and implementation of an assessment system. Carefully selected focus or advisory groups and teacher-researcher teams can support such efforts.
Parental and community involvement in the design and use of assessments is being recognized as instrumental in communicating high expectations, promoting an understanding of mathematics reform, and ensuring equity. PTA meetings and other public forums where educators, parents, and community members work with assessments can be particularly helpful in developing agreement that doing well by old standards is no longer good enough to prepare students for the future. Parents' reactions to specific assessment problems also can reveal a lot about their children's backgrounds and prior knowledge.
The Center for Research, Evaluation, and Student Testing (CRESST) encourages the "public reporting of assessment blueprints as an equity remedy for assessment design." CRESST recommends that the blueprints address questions about required world knowledge and prior knowledge; language demands and alternatives; task structures and topics; scoring criteria; evaluators' selection, knowledge, and influence; access; and the equity of educational settings. (cited in National Research Council, 1993)
References