Addressing and Combating the Impact of Racial Injustice in Educational Data Displays

• In Event: AERA Graduate Student Research-in-Progress Session 3
  In Roundtable Session: Critical Questions in Research Measurement and Methodology: Scale Development, Efficacy Validation, and Racial Justice (Table 4)

Abstract

Despite initial pushes for equitable evaluative practices, little has been done in the context of the (mis)representation of statistics from educational assessment reports to eradicate ethical, cultural, and racial divides. There are important facts embedded in assessment reports that cannot be undermined, but the use of such language as "gap data" poses a continuation of deficit mindsets and materializes the idea that some are lesser-than. Therefore, this research utilizes critical lenses to investigate the ways that score reporting practices centralize colonized notions of educational practices, thereby decentralizing historically minoritized populations. It proposes, evaluates, and displays a critical approach to reporting that makes educational data answerable to historically marginalized populations and that eradicates the perpetuation of negative stigmas in data displays.

Author

• Kimberly McIntee, University of Massachusetts - Amherst