Equity in assessments: How to design appropriate learning assessments to ensure greater inclusion of children with disabilities

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Article 24 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) states that countries must ensure that “persons with disabilities are not excluded from the general education system on the basis of disability,”...with the goal of full inclusion (UN General Assembly, 2006). Further, Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 aims to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” (United Nations, 2015).

To this end, many countries have invested considerable efforts to increase access to and the quality of education for children with disabilities. Nevertheless, a myriad of challenges remain to reach these goals. For countries that are succeeding in getting children with disabilities into the classroom and addressing their needs through inclusive pedagogies, there is a fundamental need to ensure that assessments–at the classroom, school, national, and international level–are inclusive and accessible to these children. Learners with disabilities should be able to equitably access the assessments administered to their peers, both to provide evidence around what they know and to ensure that the education system can effectively address their learning needs (Chakraborty, A., Kaushik, A., & UNESCO Office Bangkok and Regional Bureau for Education in Asia and the Pacific, 2019). Indeed, an inclusive assessment framework predicates that assessments should (1) include all learners; (2) be accessible and appropriate for all learners; and (3) assess and report areas of relevance (Douglas, McLinden, Robertson, Travers, & Smith, 2016).

In many high-income-country contexts, learners with disabilities are allowed accommodations during assessments that enable them to access the content and show their true aptitude or achievement level. (Adapted or alternative assessments are sometimes appropriate and provided for learners with disabilities; these are likely different in their content or administration to an extent that the results are not comparable to those from the non-adapted assessment.) However, a recent review of international, national, and large-scale household learning assessments showed that, as of 2019, learners with disabilities were largely excluded from assessments, and more often in low-income contexts (World Bank, 2019). (These assessments include PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS, PASEC, SEA-PLM, SACMEQ, and PILNA. In some cases, accommodations were described for learners but it is unclear how frequently they were utilized. Some exclusion criteria identified by the assessments include: learners in special (segregated) schools, learners with functional or intellectual disabilities, and non-native language speakers, likely including learners who are deaf). Excluding learners with disabilities from high-stakes assessments is discriminatory and likely further institutionalizes their marginalization within the educational system. It is also non-compliant with CRPD and does not allow for measurement towards achievement of SDG 4.6. In cases when learners with disabilities are included in assessments, they are often not provided with adequate accommodations or adaptations that allow them to equitably access assessment content and demonstrate what they know. As a result, measurement of learning outcomes for learners with disabilities may not be valid or reliable, leading to false understandings or interpretations of their abilities.

With global priorities (SDG & CPRD) and funders driving organizations to engage learners with disabilities in education programming, appropriate assessment tools are critical to ensure their full participation and success. Additionally, more and more funders and implementers are driven by value for money and effectiveness in terms of learning outcomes of programming for learners with disabilities. To measure value for money and effectiveness, and for donor accountability, it is necessary to have valid and reliable learning outcome data. Additionally, these data are important to ensure that learners with disabilities are being equitably supported, are benefitting in terms of learning outcomes and they are included in programme monitoring and evaluation.

Many funders and implementers have confronted the question of how to create learning assessments that can be inclusive of learners with disabilities. However, their experiences and learnings had not been captured to-date through a review specifically on designing inclusive learning assessments.

As such, the Girls’ Education Challenge (GEC) Fund Manager (FM), funded by the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), and All Children Reading: A Grand Challenge for Development (ACR GCD)--a partnership of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), World Vision and the Australian Government—collaboratively developed a technical brief that captures the importance of, progress towards, and lessons learned from the development of inclusive learning assessments for children. The goal of this technical brief is to help others make their learning assessments more inclusive of children with disabilities and to measure their learning outcomes more validly and reliably. Panelists will highlight experiences documented in the technical brief and will present specific case studies on how projects have adapted learning assessments to be inclusive of children with disabilities.

Additionally, this panel will highlight the Toolkit on Universal Design for Assessment (UDA), created by Inclusive Development Partners (IDP) with the support of the World Bank. UDA offers a framework to ensure that formative, summative and large-scale learning assessments consider learners with disabilities and student variability.

In this panel, contributors to the technical brief will share key insights, lessons learned, and next step recommendations from the donor, researcher and implementer perspective. Attendees of the panel will learn why including children with disabilities in learning assessments is imperative, how to take concrete actions towards inclusion, and how including children with disabilities in learning assessments can benefit project implementation.

Sub Unit

• Inclusive Education SIG

Chair

• Michelle Oetman, World Vision

Individual Presentations

• Leveraging a Grand Challenge to end bias against learners with disabilities in reading assessments - Michelle Malecki, World Vision Inc.

• Assessing All Children's Foundational Skills Inclusively: Lessons from Nepal - Purna Kumar Shrestha, VSO; Ashley Doria, Volunteer Services Overseas

• Lessons learned and recommendations from ACR GCD and GEC’s technical brief on inclusive learning assessments - Aimee Reeves

Discussant

• Joshua Josa