As we noted earlier this month in a previous blog post, the sessions we attended at the WIDA Annual Conference sparked some important considerations around equity – its definition, what it means for teaching and assessment, how feedback is used with families, and what a hot button topic it has become. In an effort to bring our TESOL Scholars into the conversation, we collaboratively developed our understanding of equitable assessment practices by reading McTighe’s Three Key Questions on Measuring Learning and Heritage, Walquí, and Linquianti’s English Language Learners and the New Standards. We also invited Scholars to reflect on their own practice and consider what is working, what challenges they face, and what would be an ideal way to use assessment to enhance student learning. We posed the following questions to help them reflect and think deeply about this topic:
- Do you think our current assessment practices are equitable for ELLs/MLLs?
- Do you think ELLs/MLLs and their families/ caregivers receive feedback that is meaningful, informative, and actionable?
The overwhelming response from all TESOL Scholars – who are classroom teachers, specialists, district leaders, and pre-service teachers – indicated a resoundingly negative view of current assessment practices in terms of equity in assessment and feedback to families. Here are some examples of what they had to say:
- “Unfortunately, the assessments that I have observed to be most frequently used are those that are ‘rooted in theories of knowledge acquisition’ and that assess ‘passivity in learning rather than the active creation of knowledge through participation in a community of learners’ (Heritage et al., 2015, p. 87)…. Current assessment practices in the [School District] consist mainly of assessments of learning (Heritage et al., 2015 ). Students take quizzes and unit tests, filled with multiple choice, matching, and fill in the blanks. If our assessments consist primarily of ‘single-correct answer items, we validate rote learning and formulaic responses’ instead of facilitating higher order thinking skills (McTighe, 2022, p. 19). Although I understand that these results can be predictors of future outcomes and for benchmarks, it seems that for our ELs, teachers are completely missing the mark and are not demonstrating equity in assessment procedures.” (Elementary Specialist)
- “Meaningful feedback would be feedback that would move the student forward in their learning. Informative would be feedback that educated the student and their parents to understand the next steps in instruction. And actionable would be that the students and parents would know what actions need to be taken next in the learning process. The answer is simply, this is not happening. Relating this to my current context, we do not send home detailed enough feedback for a student or their parents to gather much information beyond that they are meeting or not meeting the expectations. This is true for all our families but specifically for ELL families.” (Elementary Specialist)
- Our state-level and national level standardized tests are not always testing what matters, and they are designed for quick and easy grading. Take for example the Next Generation Science practices – how can a student demonstrate these skills by completing a multiple choice assessment? These practices can only be evaluated in a performance based assessment, which is not the current practice in the NYS Regents exam. (High School Content Teacher)
- “Parents do not get information about the assessments their children take (purpose, score, importance or relevance). This often makes them feel disconnected and separated from the school community. Meaningful, actionable and informative feedback would help affirm that families are valued and a valuable part of the school/home relationship.“ (High School Content Teacher)
As evidenced by the quotes we shared, this topic made our TESOL Scholars reflect on their own practices and the practices within their schools and districts. Ultimately, we determined that assessment should be about communication. One district leader emphasized how assessment data often communicates a separate, and sometimes conflicting, “signal” to each stakeholder. She said, “My argument is that in [my school district] we don’t have a common language for this. That it [assessment]t is a fairly knotted thread that runs through each of these groups…. The signals are at odds with each other.”
Her mission in this program is to help her district untangle this thread and develop a common language and understanding of assessment for all. Our ALL4ELs community of practice aims to help her achieve this goal and, in doing so, move her district forward.
From our course reading and examples of several different assessment practices shared through videos and discussions, we built an understanding of equitable assessments as those that allow our ELLs/ MLLs to “show what they know;” those with a high degree of content validity, free of cultural bias, and scaffolded to ensure access to all. What does this look like? These assessments would include open-ended questions with more than one way to demonstrate understanding of content. They might be multi-modal, with students demonstrating their learning through writing (in English or another language), speaking, or drawing at early proficiency levels. We understand equitable practices as those that include multiple measures of learning, which might include both open-ended and multiple-choice questions, as well as projects that include written, spoken, and visual representations of learning. Ultimately, we determined that performance based assessments provide ELLs/ MLLs with the most opportunity to demonstrate their learning in authentic and meaningful ways. Multiple measures and performance based assessments also allow teachers to provide more meaningful feedback to students and create a system of assessment that is better aligned to standards and more informative for daily instruction.
We look forward to seeing how this first cohort of TESOL Scholars applies these ideas in the remainder of this course and in their spring course, as well, when we will see their learning in action through classroom lessons and interactions with students.