Fairness and Equity Considerations When

Creating and Administering Assessments

Submitted by: Pamela Mae Balsamo

A fair assessment is one in which
students are given equitable
opportunities to demonstrate what they
know (Lam, 1995). Does this mean that
all students should be treated exactly the
same? No! Equitable assessment means
that students are assessed using
methods and procedures most
appropriate to them (Suskie, 2000).
What is the difference between treating
students “fairly” and treating them
“equally”? What are some examples of
how that looks in the classroom?
The idea that treating students fairly
can be different from treating them
equally is a phrase similar to the title
of a popular education book by Rick
Wormeli (who will be “wrapping
up” this four-part series with a
written commentary). This topic is
discussed a lot in schools, but what
does it actually look like in the
classroom?
 6 Ways to Ensure Your
Assessment Practices are
Fair and Unbiased
 Plan your assessments
Don't rush carefully

Aim for assignments

and questions that are
crystal clear

Guard against
unintended bias.

6. Try out large-scale

assessment tools
Ask a variety of people with
diverse perspectives to
review assessment tools.
Don't rush
 Assessments that are thrown
together at4 the last
5
6 minute

invariably include
3 flaws 7that greatly
affect the fairness, accuracy, and
KEYS
2 8
usefulness of 1the resulting
9 evidence.
Plan your assessments carefully
Aim not only to access your key learning
goals but to do so in a balanced,
representative way. If your key learning
goals are that students should
understand what happened during a
certain historical period and evaluate
the decisions made by key figures
during that period, for example, your
test should balance questions on basic
conceptual understanding with
questions assessing evaluation skills.
ADD YOUR TITLE HERE

Aim for assignments and questions that are

crystal clear.
 If students find the question
difficult to understand, they may
answer what they think is the
spirit of the question rather than
the question itself, which may
not match your intent.
Guard against unintended bias.
A fair and unbiased assessment uses contexts that are
equally familiar to all and uses words that have common
meanings to all. A test question on quantitative skills that
asks students to analyze football statistics might not be
fair to women, and using scenarios involving farming may
be biased against students from urban areas, unless you
are specifically assessing student learning in these
contexts
Ask a variety of people with diverse
perspectives to review assessment
tools
 This helps ensure that the
tools are clear, that they
appear to assess what you
want them to, and that they
don't favor students of a
particular background
Try out large-scale assessment tools.
If you are planning a large-scale
assessment with potentially
significant consequences, try out your
assessment tool with a small group of
students before launching the large-
scale implementation. Consider asking
some students to think out loud as
they answer a test question; their
thought processes should match up
with the ones you intended. Read
students' responses to assignments
and open-ended survey questions to
make sure their answers make sense,
and ask students if anything is unclear
or confusing
THANK YOU