Calling for a Socially Just, Critical Reading Assessment for the 21st Century (Poster 7)

• In Event: University-Community Engagement as a Strategy for Dismantling Racial Injustice and Co-Constructing Educational Possibilities

Abstract

Standardized tests have been used widely across our schools, despite the fact have been long noted to be problematic, inadequately assessing students’ reading abilities across cultural, linguistic, and intellectual groups, particularly multilingual learners (Abedi et al., 2011; Bailey et al., 2007; Randall et al., 2022; Solano-Flores, 2022; ). To understand how school-based, standardized reading tests disproportionately impacted students at a predominantly Spanish-speaking local Title 1 elementary school, we engaged in a collaboration with our partnering elementary school, Ocean Elementary (pseudonym). This partnership is one of several associated with our University-Community Links programming called Community Based Literacies that connects university and elementary students to prepare young people for higher learning and develop a college-going mindset. Ocean Elementary largely serves children who live in working-class homes that predominantly (more than 95%) use Spanish outside of school and have Mexican (Chicanx) roots.

To date, Ocean Elementary has used a computerized test that they called the STAR reading test (Renaissance, 2022) in order to determine reading ability and support for those performing below grade level on this test. Developers of the STAR reading assessment assert that this assessment “is not intended to be used as a ‘high-stakes’ test” but could be used to “predict performance on high-stakes tests” (Renaissance Learning, 2022, p. 1). Hence, we used a mixed methods design to determine the potential bias of this widely used school-based test (Creswell & Clark, 2017).

We aimed to compare demonstrated abilities on the formative reading assessment called the Critical Reading Assessment (CRA) with performance on the STAR reading test, both of which occurred within the same time period in the spring 2023. It should be noted that the CRA was directly informed by young students who weighed in on the content and questioning during earlier piloting phases and as such, all materials were designed to be both culturally and linguistically inclusive (Author, 2022). A total of 91 fourth graders participated in this study; 51% (46 in total) identified as multilingual and 15 were receiving special education services. All but 10 of these students have Mexican (Chicanx) roots.

Results from analysis also supported the previously observed disparity between scores on the STAR (school-based reading test) and the CRA. On average, students’ reading grade levels as estimated by the STAR were 1.37 grade levels lower than the same students as estimated by the CRA. Thus, the STAR seemed to underestimate students’ reading abilities by more than a full grade level compared to the CRA. Further, the STAR seemed to underestimate reading grade levels more for multilingual students (by an additional two grade-level months) and for students receiving special education services (by an additional four grade-level months). Findings from our study suggest that schools would do well to reflect about the uses of a test that may be further marginalizing an already marginalized community. We endeavor to work with our partnering community in order to bring needed transformations in how students are assessed and dismantling the racial and linguistic biases that operate silently in school-based tests.

Authors

• Diana J. Arya, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Sabiha Sultana, University of California - Santa Barbara

• John Galisky, University of California - Santa Barbara

• Daniel Katz, NWEA