P-12

Future of Assessments: Centering Equity and the Lived Experiences of Students, Families, and Educators

Addressing inequities in the educational outcomes — particularly for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds — cannot…

April 19, 2023 by Sarah Mehrotra, Nicholas Munyan-Penney

Addressing inequities in the educational outcomes — particularly for students of color and students from low-income backgrounds — cannot happen without comparable data from statewide summative assessments. Statewide assessment results help schools and district leaders target state and local resources to the students and schools with the greatest need and track whether these resources are impacting student achievement.

Despite this, many educators, students, and families say that federal assessment and accountability policies take away from instructional time without providing actionable data. Meanwhile, pandemic pauses in administering statewide assessments and changes in political dynamics at the state and federal levels have opened a window of opportunity to develop new statewide summative assessments that gauge how students are doing, highlight disparities, and show where interventions aren’t measuring up to their promise and might be improved.

This report centers the lived experiences and perspectives of students, families, educators, and district and state leaders, so that they can be used to design assessments that provide data that will enable us to promote equitable learning opportunities and improve outcomes for all students.  

To better understand how directly impacted communities experience statewide assessments, we held focus groups with diverse stakeholders who are on the ground, focusing on those who are often underserved. 

Our focus group discussions not only shed light on the unique challenges facing each stakeholder group, but also highlighted some common experiences and ideas for improvement that align with some of the longstanding debates around summative assessments. Across all focus groups of students, caregivers, educators, and administrators, we heard that:

• Data from multiple sources, including and not solely assessment data, is important for understanding students’ opportunities and progress toward state standards for college readiness.
• Stakeholders currently use, or want to use, summative assessments for different purposes, and many expressed confusion or frustration about how assessments are used.
• Assessments are only one indicator of college readiness, and stakeholders are eager for additional information on student knowledge and skills.
• There are common recommendations for improvement, including the need to have timely assessment results, remove racial and/or cultural bias from assessments, and make assessment results more useful and accessible.
• All stakeholder groups said that they would like to see better follow-through on resource allocation. They noted that education systems often fall short when it comes to using assessment systems to allocate resources and supports to the schools that need them most.

The focus group findings led us to develop four “equity pillars,” which highlight our key values and identify criteria for improving federal assessment policy:

• Pillar 1 – Ensure Consistent, High Expectations for Student Success
• Pilar 2 – Encourage Relevant, Inclusive Assessments
• Pillar 3 – Provide Timely, Actionable, and Easily Accessible Results
• Pillar 4 – Make Assessment Results Meaningful

These equity pillars represent what we view as a framework for any forthcoming federal policy action on assessments, including the reauthorization of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), and are grounded in Ed Trust’s equity-centered values and the lived experiences of those students who are often underserved by our public school system: students of color, students from low-income backgrounds, students with disabilities, and English learners.

This framework includes recommendations for developing better and more useful assessments through new or revised federal policies. Our hope is that these equity pillars and federal policy recommendations — both for a future reauthorization of ESSA and more immediate federal action — will spur conversations and debates among students, families, educators, state and district leaders, advocates, and policymakers, so that we might work together to ensure that future assessments provide data that can help educators and policymakers identify and address longstanding educational inequities.

Which Assessments Are We Talking About?

Throughout this report, when we refer to assessments, unless otherwise indicated, we’re discussing statewide summative assessments, which are year-end tests administered to all students across a state. Statewide summative assessments provide insights on the extent to which students have mastered grade-level content that is aligned to state college and career readiness academic standards. Per federal law, math and English language arts assessments are administered in grades 3-8 and once in high school; science assessments are administered once in grades 3-5, 6-9, and 10-12.

One parent said: “I think helping prepare Black and Latino and other underserved children for college, isn’t just about how the children score. I think it’s about looking at the holistic environment of the school they’re in, the school environment, the levels of equitable access to resources. There’s this child opportunity index from Brandeis, which is a remarkable look at neighborhood level equity, in terms of what resources children and families have access to by zip code.”

Key Findings

Our focus group discussions not only shed light on the unique challenges facing each stakeholder group, but also highlighted some common experiences and ideas for improvement that align with some of the longstanding debates around summative assessments:

• Students, caregivers, educators, and administrators believe data is important for understanding student opportunities and progress.
• Students, caregivers, educators, and administrations use, or want to use, summative assessments for different purposes. When we asked stakeholders what the purpose of assessments is and how they use assessments, we received different answers from each stakeholder group that were, at times, in tension with one another.
• Students, caregivers, educators, and administrators see assessments as only one indicator of college readiness: Stakeholders said that college success goes beyond what statewide assessments can measure.
• Students, caregivers, educators, and administrators had overlapping recommendations for assessment improvements: Stakeholders suggested various ways to improve statewide assessments. All stakeholder groups agreed that there is a need to get results in a timelier manner
• Stakeholder groups would like to see better follow-through on resource allocation. Across all groups, we heard that education systems often fall short when it comes to using assessment systems to allocate resources and supports to the schools that need them most.