Symposium: Equity in Educational Assessment

Abstract

Testing and assessment are increasingly the levers of choice for educational reform in the United States today. The last two decades have seen an enormous rise in the attention and money devoted to testing and assessing students, and current proposals for a system of national standards and assessments, such as the Clinton administration's Goals 2000 legislation, promise more of the same. In this symposium, "Equity in Educational Assessment," the Harvard Educational Review examines the relationship between new assessment policies and issues of educational equity. Two assumptions about assessment dominate current policy debates. First is the assumption that changes in assessment policies can be used as a powerful lever for reforming schools. Second is the assumption that new, "authentic" forms of assessment, such as performance assessment and portfolio assessment, are inherently superior to traditional standardized, multiple-choice tests. Both assumptions, however, have gone largely unchallenged in the public discourse about assessment and school reform, despite the fact that there is yet little empirical evidence to indicate whether or not they are valid. In fact, as each contributor to this symposium points out, it is doubtful that merely changing the form of assessments from standardized, multiple-choice tests to open-ended performance and portfolio assessments will improve schools and reduce educational inequities in the United States.