Strategies for Developing Equitable Performance Tasks

Koelsch, Estrin, and Farr (1995) recommend the following strategies for developing equitable performance tasks:

• "Strategy 1: Translate an existing assessment into students' home languages.

• Strategy 2: Change the names or background information in an existing assessment to match the linguistic or cultural background of students.

• Strategy 3: Develop tasks that ask students to express or evaluate positions and ideas based on their own perspectives and experiences.

• Strategy 4: Develop tasks that promote connections between school knowledge and local context, including language and culture.

• Strategy 5: Develop tasks that integrate students' cognitive styles and strategies with school expectations for learning.

• Strategy 6: Develop tasks that assess multiple ways of knowing and tap more than one form of representation (oral, written, displayed)." (pp. 27-28)