AAHHE Workshop: Culturally Relevant Assessment Tools Workshop
13th Annual American Association of Hispanics in Higher Education (AAHHE) National Conference, Irvine, CA
President's remarks: Loui Olivas
Gift of books on policy, and one of assessment
Culturally Relevant Assessment Tools: Implications for Policy - Richard J. Tannenbaum (moderator)
Higher ed enrollment reflects range of student diversity (race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual identity and orientation, language and culture. education and development of students ant be agnostic to this diversity.
Assessment is an opportunity o g4t accurate and timely evidence of what student know and can do (selection use, formative, interim, summative). But also app to engaged and motivate students. Culturally relevant assessment provides students with accessible pathways. Differentiated instructional practices, we need differentiated assessment practices.
Equitable (Fair) Assessment
Goal is to maximize opportunity to for students to demonstrate their standing on constructs test is intended to measure. If not done with equity. privileges and validates certain kinds of learning.
Standards and Guidelines for Equitable Assessment
- test developers responsible for developing tests minimizing construct-irrelevant characteristics
- reduce threats to validity arising aging from language and related cultural differences
ETS standards, AERA, APA, NCME
Advances in Assessment Technology that may support cultural relevance:
Cultural relevance = opportunity
- Access to assessment (convenience, engagement, motivation) - tablets, cell phones, game like measures
- Context (Meaningfulness, authenticity) - scenarios, simulations, speech-dialogic systems
- Flexible evidence and its valuation (multiple acceptable forms) - portfolios, holistic rubrics, verifiable accomplishments, process data (cognitive processing looked at via keystroke data), automated scoring engines
Is Assessment THE Answer? No. It won't correct social, economic, etc, inequities in society. But better practices and evidence can inform decisions and actions to address some of these inequities.
Questions to Consider:
What are the most pressing issues facing Latinx students at your institution or program? Are these issues unique to Latinx students? What role does assessment play to address thee issues? What remains to be accomplished in terms of policies and assessments?
Re-Imagining Assessment: From Critique ot the Possibility of Reform - Laura I. Rendon
Critique of the assessment movement. Culturally responsive assessment has noble goal: to be mindful of student populations, use language appropriate for all students (Montenegro & Jankowski, 2017). In NIE report:
a) in order to improve student success, need to look at first year experience
b) assessment and feedback
Problems with the assessment movement: Equity is largely ignored; culturally-responsive assessment definitions vary. What do we mean by culture, and how is definition evolving as it goes beyond concerns of students of color to more intersectional definitions. What is meant by responsive?
Who really benefits? What is the public getting? Standardized testing regimes cost states 1.7B/year (Brown Center on Education Policy, 2012). Sociopolitical aspects are largely ignored--is it a distraction from the real problems of the US educational system because it focuses only on outputs and not inputs (underfunded schools, underprepared schools/teachers, etc). Money to output and not input.
Societal inequalities yield unequal student outcomes.
An entrenched, deficit-based framework about students of color underlies much of education practice and policy. entrenched racist narrative needs to be overturned. Prejudicial narratives linking race to human intelligence and educational achievement. Resurgence of the book The Bell Curve - race is a helpful indicator of certain capabilities including intelligence. Resurgence of sociobiology - making the unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and its Limits (2016) acknowledges racism in US schools. But critics posed sociobiology as a counter in prestigious American Historical Review.
Entrenched deficit-based story about underserved students and communities. Counter story: Math teacher Jaime Escalante (film: Stand and Deliver): low-income students of color can be assisted to succeed in STEM.
How do Latinx students manage to succeed despite difficult life adversities? (Latinx student who earned STEM degree.) See her book The Latino Student's Guide to STEM Careers. Counter storytelling as methodological approach (Solorzano & Yosso 2002; Delgado, 1989). Informed by critical race theory.
Testimonios (Telling to Live) (Latina Feminist Group 2001) - Documentation and explication of life experiences. Tara Yosso (2005) theory. What helped Latinx students to succeed in STEM? High Impact STEM practices: experiential hands-n learning; US Based and internships, teaching assistantships and summer programs, research with faculty member, faculty advising, financial support, participating in Latinx centered organizations and activities. Also: validating experiences--collective web of support - encouragement, inspiration, academic advice, exposure to STEM. What also helped and is not covered in tests: Latinx own ways of knowing, ways of giving back "spiritual nobility" where degree not just paper but to give back, to be role models, to understand they have a role to help larger society. Social justice consciousness, recognize inequities in society.
Testimonios: social justice consciousness.
Assets: family, responsibility, resistance, navigational ability, ganas/perseverance, academic.
Latinx Cultural Pedagogies: Family work ethic (witnessed family strength in action, sense of responsibility and importance of family and hard work); Family Carino - fit loved and cared for. Moral and Practical guidance.
Counterstory explains how Latinx succeeded; keys to Latinx success in STEM. Latinx cultural pedagogics, validating web of supports, STEM HIPs, financial support, early exposure, participating in latino centered orgs and activities. Reimagine and rethink assessment. Is what you are asking us to with learning outcomes assessments living to promise? What has been the impact of LOA? Where is the data? Are students, teachers, and schools benefiting?
Mapping decolonization : move from soft reform to hard reform to [? - get notes from presenter]
What questions can we ask Latinx students to ascertain how they would like to be assessed?
What does it mean to be educated and how do we capture that? Not covered by current assessment or tests.
Assessing the Performance of Equity at the Policy, Institutional, Departmental, and Individual Levels - Estela Mara Bensimon
How well do they perform equity: racial equity specifically. She holds that assessment done in the way she will speak about as form of inquiry done by institutional practitioners can be agent of change for Latinx and Black students. Tools for institutional assessment: data, language, policy, etc.
Equity: equity means proportional representation of historically marginalized groups (2 dimensions: accountability, or how you measure equity in outcomes-- cue.usc.edu @center4urbaned
Measuring equity from accountability perspective: access, equity in outcomes, opportunity for success; other is critical perspective--our structures produce racism because we institutional racism in ways we define excellence). Logics of assessment are based on the belief that merit is objective and neutral. We have to understand that everything we take for granted in our institutions are racialized. Fund same things htat reproduce inequity.
A belief we have equality but some have advantages, some disadvantages. Critical perspective dent blame student but recognizes and understands how inequalities have been produced by poorly funded schools, housing policies, etc. System is broken ladder - micro aggressions, implicit bias, disproportionate remediation, belief that Latinx are not smart.
Equity disaggregates data is just first step. Interpret that data requires critical analysis from critical theory. Need to set goals for equity - equity redistributed resources.
Equity-minded competence:
- awareness of racial identity (vs claiming not to see race)
- uses disaggregated data to identify racialized patterns of outcomes (vs not seeing value in disaggregated data)
- reflects on racial consequences of taken-for-granted practices (vs unable to notice racialized consequences or rationalizes them as being something else)
- exercises agency to produce racial equity
- views the classroom asa a racialized space and actively self-monitors interactions with students of color
Assessment of racial equity in policy: USC Rossier Assessing Policy from an Equity Perspective
Indicators 1 and 4 needed to be rewritten by governor's office: disaggregated data.
Core principles for transforming remediation within an comprehensive Student Success Strategy: a Joint Statement; the Transfer Playbook
For community colleges: Is race visible in the document? How is it visible? Does the depiction of problem and solutions reflect understanding. Transfer Playbook: race was invisible, transfer students written about as diversity supply for 4 year colleges; structural and procedural fixes.
Assessment of fluency in the language of racial equity: how fluent is your department? Do they identify groups specifically, or do they resort to euphemistic language that covers up race? ("Under-represented minority" instead of name chosen by specific groups that they fought for.)
Racial beliefs have been developed as a result of theories of student success in higher education, based on idea that success is very much attributed to the effort they exert in studies, motivation, commitment. These are not the only things that cause student success. As a consequence of these theories that play out in the everyday, faculty members form deficit perspectives of students (students lack educational background, students don't realize how much work students need to put in, etc.--externalizing instead of asking what practices are causing this).
Inquiry activities: protocol to analyze syllabus from racial equity perspective (Syllabus Review Guide for Equity Minded Practice). Syllabi are procedural now, not helping student be a good student.
Progress mapping: faculty bring grade book to meeting. Code grade book by race/ethnicity. Look at coding of how students perform on tests. Faculty members - racialized patterns in terms of absence and performance,
Assessment of radicalization in instructional practices. Classroom observations: teachers observe each other and document using protocol. Noticing whiteness in engagement, contextualizing and quantifying Latinx and White engagement, reflecting on racialization in engagement, white entitlement and rule-breaking.
Assessment of Core Institutional Processes
Counselor findings: in person orientation observation
Analysis of transfer information document (not welcoming, font too small, dry tone, no note of HSI) - used this assessment to change it.
Assessment of institutional agent competence.
Ricardo [?] Salazar - who do we use our networks for?
Institutional agent: self-assessment
Reframing the Assessment Discourse - Cristobal Rodriguez @Profe_Rodriguez
Deficit thinking across the education system (Richard Valencia, 2010). Victim blaming, oppression, pseudoscience, temporal change, educability, heterodoxy.
George I. Sanchez Legacy - referred to as Father of Chicano Psychology and Father of Bilingual Education for research and advocacy for spanish speaking children (UCB doctorate 1934). Director of Division of Information and Statistics for NM State Department for Public Education--Latinx Policy Advocacy. Sanchez' earliest publications on IQ testing - engages equity concepts and funding. Professor at UT Austin. Even when you change policy, wasn't implemented. Appointed ot positions of influence, but not enough. 1951 initiated American Council of Spanish Speaking People (ACSSP).
Framing assessment: highlight case of NM and reform policy experts. Blaming children for not reading at 3rd grade, blaming parents, or teachers. But what about the system? Pseudoscience of reading proficiency and prison populations (policy hype). Holding children back pushes them out of the education stream (pushed out vs drop out) - diverse populations, especially males, held back more frequently.
Mapping Dona Ana County 3rd grade reading proficiency scores. Reading proficiencies tied to economic differences. Policy would significantly hold back certain schools than others because fo population. Consider accessibility to early childhood ed, quality of teachers (degreed in 3 tiered licensure system, college access numbers, for a whole pipeline picture)--if we shifted conversation to look at access to those things, does educational opportunity play significant role? Statistically, yes.
Martinez vs New Mexico (school finance case) - measuring Achievement Reflective of Inequities
- NM argued achievement gaps are just reflective of the cultures of NM; student outcomes not indicative of failing school system but correlated to poverty and language skill deficits, factors over which schools have no control.
- Argument: If state's constitution of sufficient education and accountability concepts, then state has responsibility to respond to those inequities. Majority population is Raza, largest indigenous populations, state constitution declares it a bilingual state.
Sanchez book Forgotten People (1940) - "The hopes and aspirations of a people cannot be put on a graph."
Realities: high stakes testing, college readiness (Ap courses, etc), testing drives curriculum. From Higher ed perspective: college entrance exams for admissions, placement in Math and English and to award scholarships. Developmental education over enrollment of Black, Latinx, and Native American Students. Ranking to Guide Practices (US News & World Report). At what cost, and how does that reflect the legacy and mission of our institutions? High school GPA is still a much better indicator of college success and developmental education considerations.
- Equity-based assessments
- Pipeline access-based assessments (what would this look like?)
- Mission driven-based assessments (CAEP accreditation of education programs - how reflective of mission? How do you evaluate/assess that?)
- Culturally-grounded assessments
Policy Leverages for Equity based assessments
- federal/state policy:
- state equity plans (K-12 based right now);
- funding initiatives for teacher equity (upward bound type program for community and educational leadership), HEA Title V HSI Funding for educator preparation or Title III for HBCU; Pell grant increases in distribution amounts and qualifying amounts for educator preparation. Latinx teachers have highest turnover rate (NM or everywhere?) - why and how do we change it?
- Accreditation standards (Council for the accreditation of educator preparation)
- Institutional mission and philosophy
Tomas Morales, CSU San Bernardino
2nd largest HSI in CA, 60% Latino
80% 1st gen
Born Puerto Rico, came to US as kindergartener.
Was Provost at Cal Poly Promona, president of College of Staten Island. Came back because CSUSB is an anchor institution. Lowest baccalaureate attainment rate of any metro area of over 1 million people (flips with Detroit); over 50% of people in San Bernardino county are Latino.
Affinity groups make a difference, Latinx on the faculty make a difference. He has seen the evolution of assessment in higher ed. Changes significant over last decade.
Assessment of "not college material" driven by racism and informed by low college entrance exam scores--tracking is alive and well. CA is 6th largest economy in the world--UC and CSUs used to be free...when it was all white. Direct correlation in CA between A though G completion rate and socioeconomic status of schools kids attended. San Bernardino Unified School District - 17% to 30% in last 5 years. 85% community college students find themselves in remedial courses.
One of the major transitions over last decade or two was going from instructional centered assessment to a more learner centered assessment--far from perfect. 7 regional accrediting body and virtually every disciplinary accrediting body, they focus today on learning outcomes. What are students learning, where is evidence, how do you know they're learning? Don't factor in all of the soft skills, don't measure leadership, HIPs, participation, etc. Plays negative role for HSIs HBCUs and institutions serving those of lower income. We need more college graduates, especially critical in CA - 1.1 milling college grads by 2030. Lumina Foundation and others have written about need for this county and others to increase baccalaureate degrees. Road travels through HSIs, HBCUs, tribal colleges, MSIs.
Another reason he returned to CSU's system was to institute policies and practices to benefit students. Wanted to develop HIPs, increase number of students studying abroad, undergrad research activity. Increase of latino student moving into PhD programs, etc. Direct relationship between opportunity to do research with faculty and competitiveness in grad applications that mitigates some barriers like standardized exams.
Increasing accountability, increasing expectations of employers, shrinking budgets, need for cost effectiveness and efficiency all driving assessment (plus multibillion dollar industry). But now key driving force in this country is the accreditation landscape. Accreditation is primarily peer-driven which is good news. (Around the world, not the case--elsewhere in the world not peer-reviewed accreditation but accreditation conducted solely by the government.) Assessment of institutions is very different from assessment of learning outcomes.
Two policies to talk about relative to placement and remediation in higher education. Students with perfect GPAs blow exams and find themselves in lowest remedial math. Executive order 1110 and 1100 gaining traction throughout CA. Warning about what can be inferred from certain forms of testing: most ar expediting narrow results about certain types of student performance; standardized tests don't accurately future success or performance, but whether you really learned the stuff you learned in school. there have to be other ways of measuring whether students will be successful in higher ed. recognize barriers remediation creates in pipeline.
CSU EO 1100: CSU's GenEd systemwide GE policy can better address transferability, time to degree completion, and better address ways to create career pathways for community colleges. (43% of population of CA CCs are Latinx - need to crate pathways to CSU's and graduate in 2 years with the BA). Reminded him of the pathways program that was implemented in CUNY system - common to lose 30% of credits for transfers, even transferring to another senior college would lose significant number of credits. EO 1100 is about aligning GE requirements across the system (not as far as pathways in CUNY, allows CSU system much freedom in implementation).
CSU EO1110: deals with preparation for quant and written reasoning courses: provide multiple measures and determine course placement for first year students. Measuring a student's readiness to do college level work. Restructuring of summer bridge experiences. CSUSB was the first campus to implement a residential summer bridge program for all who tested into needing remediation. President acquired full philanthropic funding for it. Now offering summer courses for college credit during the summer.
These are policy questions that are critical. Another exciting initiative: CSUSB and UCR and both county offices, K12 superintendents, and CCs, awarded one of 5 Innovation awards to work with all 56 school districts and 11 CCs to increase A-G completion rates and college readiness in math, and increase baccalaureate degree attainment rates. Need to be impactful with K12 and CC partners.
Q & A Session
Q: I sit on undocumented student support & advocacy committee. Challenge: finding assessment for undocumented students (syllabi language, teaching training for faculty and staff, ways in which undocumented students bring to table but very real mental health and system housing and food struggles)... Any comments around that need right now on our campuses for undocumented students in terms of assessing admin policy, departments and outcomes?
Tomas: CSU early on created a Dreamers Center (now called Undocumented Student Success Center - changed by students). Manifestations of poverty, segregation, poor performing HSs impacts undocumented and documented students in same way. With undocumented students, a tortuous position of the unknown, administration rounding up undocumented individuals in places like churches and schools and markets and other places where they know undocumented individuals frequent. Parents of citizens/split families are not leaving the house - not going to shop, church, hiding in own homes. These are the kinds of services we have to try to develop. Legal services from pro bono services form law firms, affinity groups work with them. Group of faculty led by Juan Delgado spending a lot of time on these issues and working with these students and burning RTP candle at both ends. Need to protect these faculty, especially this tends to be faculty of color spending this time with students.
Rendon: Even green card holders are terrified, tight now nothing is guaranteed as it was previously. Hug tissue at hand, feel helpless because not in charge of government policy. but we can help them feel that we have their back, that we care, are there for them. Communicating that and offering it as an authentic message is important.
Rodriguez: stories from his wife at elementary school level--protected status revoked, how do we factor the voices into the conversation, or factor it into political organizing? The fear is very real.
Q: [Teranishi-Martinez] Part of President's Task Force on Inclusive Excellence. Trying to take all of the languages in our documents and look from an equity lens. Even some of our statements and missions need to be taken apart. Strategies or resources or suggestions for how to do this for equity minded competence?
Bensimon: Need admin who understands and get it to offer power behind the transformation. At Cal Lutheran, changed hiring system in one year because Provost trained 15 faculty as equity agents to go out. The term Inclusive Excellence is problematic -- "inclusiveness" tends to be defined as inclusiveness into white culture, and you need to talk about racial equity before 'inclusiveness.' Literature on embedded agents as change agents, the proposition is that they can be effective in bringing about change depending on social status and access to resources (tenured positions have a certain power base to mobilize).
Rendon: My take is working with an asset based framework. To what extent is deficit based narrative embedded in institution? Talk to students about what is helping them succeed. We need to push that conversation further, because if we look back to the 70s, these are not new issues.
Bensimon: President has power to change faculty evaluation system. Equity minded competencies.
Rodriguez: University had white faculty get to know and engage with Maori students, and another conversation of equity, retention increased. faculty just needed to be asked to get to know their students.
Q: Gloria Rodriguez(?) [UC Davis] - Struck by how scary it is to see people I respect say they feel helpless and feel fear, but share these powerful strategies. Where *do* we have power? Most of us in the room have gone to college. So where do we have power in terms of the changes people are pushing for?
Bensimon: I don't feel I don't have power, I feel I'm very powerful, I have power of a research center, position at a research university. I think we all do have power and have to be strategic and have social status and have allies. By being here, everyone has agency.
Rendon: I am very taken by the students in FL who organized used social media, who are more than any legislator have influenced the gun policy in America. Goes to show the kind of power that we can have. So often I think we don't speak up because we've been taught to stay in our place. To take on power structures is intimidating, maybe we need to align with our students and make a statement. How we can organize to push these agendas further along.
Bensimon: Isn't that a racism being demonstrated? Black Lives Matter, Undocumented students, but FL students white and being listened to. CNN didn't convene a town hall for them.
Morales: Academic bully culture and academic incivility culture is alive and well. It's real for junior faculty and even for tenured faculty through the promotional process. It's real for presidents and provosts who have the courage to move forward. Some president impacted by state legislators or leadership of system or own faculty who see themselves being disempowered. its a real challenge as you try to impact change. Change is difficult in higher education.
Bensimon: Difficult but possible.
Rodriguez: Consciousness: I shifted my space to policy advocacy but my most powerful experience was being involved in my daughter's school. Not role to be leader but support leadership and how to enhance. Strategic planning and recognizing voices, mobilizing and organizing. Regardless of role, how are we involved at that level, when we're talking about a real political shift? Shift in demographics of who is running for office: POC, women.
Q: UCB - as a scholar practitioner, I see a whole landscape of administrators that aren't faculty without the PhD not being mobilized and not a lot of opportunities for this training to be advocates as well. Working on my own doctorate, seeing same thing I experienced in 90s--they can't afford to apply to grad school.
Bensimon: Left Out document can be used in part to leverage why we need the change. The UC system, none of them came out well. Need to organize an academy for what you brought up.
Tomas: Innovation requires faculty buy-in. faculty have to be willing to consider alternative approaches to status quo If leaders of faculty are resistant and get letters from AAUP etc., impacts the low income, first generation students disproportionately. (Campaign for College Opportunities website for report.) Was reading a commentary about math placement by Ed Sauce (sp?) algebra-based readiness for math and resistance to alternative ways to assess college readiness for those students especially not pursuing STEM majors. This has been a major obstacle for low income students across the country. It has become a social justice issue.
Rendon: While we are frustrated with slow process of change, there is little faculty to be engaged with more than they already do. We need to learn how to mobilize more people (faculty, staff, student) in another area: social movements. It's not part of the discussion that takes lace in colleges and universities. We're hit with so many things: gun violence, undocumented students, arming teachers, faculty are overburdened and so are students. And yet we need to be a part of these marches and protests and we can't just sit back and watch this happen. It calls for us to act and to think in a very different way. FL student leader of movement is a Latina president of the gay-straight alliance. We won't solve it today, but we have an active role that should be more than writing, and it should be rewarded in the RTP process.
President's remarks: Loui Olivas
Gift of books on policy, and one of assessment
Culturally Relevant Assessment Tools: Implications for Policy - Richard J. Tannenbaum (moderator)
Higher ed enrollment reflects range of student diversity (race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexual identity and orientation, language and culture. education and development of students ant be agnostic to this diversity.
Assessment is an opportunity o g4t accurate and timely evidence of what student know and can do (selection use, formative, interim, summative). But also app to engaged and motivate students. Culturally relevant assessment provides students with accessible pathways. Differentiated instructional practices, we need differentiated assessment practices.
Equitable (Fair) Assessment
Goal is to maximize opportunity to for students to demonstrate their standing on constructs test is intended to measure. If not done with equity. privileges and validates certain kinds of learning.
Standards and Guidelines for Equitable Assessment
- test developers responsible for developing tests minimizing construct-irrelevant characteristics
- reduce threats to validity arising aging from language and related cultural differences
ETS standards, AERA, APA, NCME
Advances in Assessment Technology that may support cultural relevance:
Cultural relevance = opportunity
- Access to assessment (convenience, engagement, motivation) - tablets, cell phones, game like measures
- Context (Meaningfulness, authenticity) - scenarios, simulations, speech-dialogic systems
- Flexible evidence and its valuation (multiple acceptable forms) - portfolios, holistic rubrics, verifiable accomplishments, process data (cognitive processing looked at via keystroke data), automated scoring engines
Is Assessment THE Answer? No. It won't correct social, economic, etc, inequities in society. But better practices and evidence can inform decisions and actions to address some of these inequities.
Questions to Consider:
What are the most pressing issues facing Latinx students at your institution or program? Are these issues unique to Latinx students? What role does assessment play to address thee issues? What remains to be accomplished in terms of policies and assessments?
Re-Imagining Assessment: From Critique ot the Possibility of Reform - Laura I. Rendon
Critique of the assessment movement. Culturally responsive assessment has noble goal: to be mindful of student populations, use language appropriate for all students (Montenegro & Jankowski, 2017). In NIE report:
a) in order to improve student success, need to look at first year experience
b) assessment and feedback
Problems with the assessment movement: Equity is largely ignored; culturally-responsive assessment definitions vary. What do we mean by culture, and how is definition evolving as it goes beyond concerns of students of color to more intersectional definitions. What is meant by responsive?
Who really benefits? What is the public getting? Standardized testing regimes cost states 1.7B/year (Brown Center on Education Policy, 2012). Sociopolitical aspects are largely ignored--is it a distraction from the real problems of the US educational system because it focuses only on outputs and not inputs (underfunded schools, underprepared schools/teachers, etc). Money to output and not input.
Societal inequalities yield unequal student outcomes.
An entrenched, deficit-based framework about students of color underlies much of education practice and policy. entrenched racist narrative needs to be overturned. Prejudicial narratives linking race to human intelligence and educational achievement. Resurgence of the book The Bell Curve - race is a helpful indicator of certain capabilities including intelligence. Resurgence of sociobiology - making the unequal Metropolis: School Desegregation and its Limits (2016) acknowledges racism in US schools. But critics posed sociobiology as a counter in prestigious American Historical Review.
Entrenched deficit-based story about underserved students and communities. Counter story: Math teacher Jaime Escalante (film: Stand and Deliver): low-income students of color can be assisted to succeed in STEM.
How do Latinx students manage to succeed despite difficult life adversities? (Latinx student who earned STEM degree.) See her book The Latino Student's Guide to STEM Careers. Counter storytelling as methodological approach (Solorzano & Yosso 2002; Delgado, 1989). Informed by critical race theory.
Testimonios (Telling to Live) (Latina Feminist Group 2001) - Documentation and explication of life experiences. Tara Yosso (2005) theory. What helped Latinx students to succeed in STEM? High Impact STEM practices: experiential hands-n learning; US Based and internships, teaching assistantships and summer programs, research with faculty member, faculty advising, financial support, participating in Latinx centered organizations and activities. Also: validating experiences--collective web of support - encouragement, inspiration, academic advice, exposure to STEM. What also helped and is not covered in tests: Latinx own ways of knowing, ways of giving back "spiritual nobility" where degree not just paper but to give back, to be role models, to understand they have a role to help larger society. Social justice consciousness, recognize inequities in society.
Testimonios: social justice consciousness.
Assets: family, responsibility, resistance, navigational ability, ganas/perseverance, academic.
Latinx Cultural Pedagogies: Family work ethic (witnessed family strength in action, sense of responsibility and importance of family and hard work); Family Carino - fit loved and cared for. Moral and Practical guidance.
Counterstory explains how Latinx succeeded; keys to Latinx success in STEM. Latinx cultural pedagogics, validating web of supports, STEM HIPs, financial support, early exposure, participating in latino centered orgs and activities. Reimagine and rethink assessment. Is what you are asking us to with learning outcomes assessments living to promise? What has been the impact of LOA? Where is the data? Are students, teachers, and schools benefiting?
Mapping decolonization : move from soft reform to hard reform to [? - get notes from presenter]
What questions can we ask Latinx students to ascertain how they would like to be assessed?
What does it mean to be educated and how do we capture that? Not covered by current assessment or tests.
Assessing the Performance of Equity at the Policy, Institutional, Departmental, and Individual Levels - Estela Mara Bensimon
How well do they perform equity: racial equity specifically. She holds that assessment done in the way she will speak about as form of inquiry done by institutional practitioners can be agent of change for Latinx and Black students. Tools for institutional assessment: data, language, policy, etc.
Equity: equity means proportional representation of historically marginalized groups (2 dimensions: accountability, or how you measure equity in outcomes-- cue.usc.edu @center4urbaned
Measuring equity from accountability perspective: access, equity in outcomes, opportunity for success; other is critical perspective--our structures produce racism because we institutional racism in ways we define excellence). Logics of assessment are based on the belief that merit is objective and neutral. We have to understand that everything we take for granted in our institutions are racialized. Fund same things htat reproduce inequity.
A belief we have equality but some have advantages, some disadvantages. Critical perspective dent blame student but recognizes and understands how inequalities have been produced by poorly funded schools, housing policies, etc. System is broken ladder - micro aggressions, implicit bias, disproportionate remediation, belief that Latinx are not smart.
Equity disaggregates data is just first step. Interpret that data requires critical analysis from critical theory. Need to set goals for equity - equity redistributed resources.
Equity-minded competence:
- awareness of racial identity (vs claiming not to see race)
- uses disaggregated data to identify racialized patterns of outcomes (vs not seeing value in disaggregated data)
- reflects on racial consequences of taken-for-granted practices (vs unable to notice racialized consequences or rationalizes them as being something else)
- exercises agency to produce racial equity
- views the classroom asa a racialized space and actively self-monitors interactions with students of color
Assessment of racial equity in policy: USC Rossier Assessing Policy from an Equity Perspective
Indicators 1 and 4 needed to be rewritten by governor's office: disaggregated data.
Core principles for transforming remediation within an comprehensive Student Success Strategy: a Joint Statement; the Transfer Playbook
For community colleges: Is race visible in the document? How is it visible? Does the depiction of problem and solutions reflect understanding. Transfer Playbook: race was invisible, transfer students written about as diversity supply for 4 year colleges; structural and procedural fixes.
Assessment of fluency in the language of racial equity: how fluent is your department? Do they identify groups specifically, or do they resort to euphemistic language that covers up race? ("Under-represented minority" instead of name chosen by specific groups that they fought for.)
Racial beliefs have been developed as a result of theories of student success in higher education, based on idea that success is very much attributed to the effort they exert in studies, motivation, commitment. These are not the only things that cause student success. As a consequence of these theories that play out in the everyday, faculty members form deficit perspectives of students (students lack educational background, students don't realize how much work students need to put in, etc.--externalizing instead of asking what practices are causing this).
Inquiry activities: protocol to analyze syllabus from racial equity perspective (Syllabus Review Guide for Equity Minded Practice). Syllabi are procedural now, not helping student be a good student.
Progress mapping: faculty bring grade book to meeting. Code grade book by race/ethnicity. Look at coding of how students perform on tests. Faculty members - racialized patterns in terms of absence and performance,
Assessment of radicalization in instructional practices. Classroom observations: teachers observe each other and document using protocol. Noticing whiteness in engagement, contextualizing and quantifying Latinx and White engagement, reflecting on racialization in engagement, white entitlement and rule-breaking.
Assessment of Core Institutional Processes
Counselor findings: in person orientation observation
Analysis of transfer information document (not welcoming, font too small, dry tone, no note of HSI) - used this assessment to change it.
Assessment of institutional agent competence.
Ricardo [?] Salazar - who do we use our networks for?
Institutional agent: self-assessment
Reframing the Assessment Discourse - Cristobal Rodriguez @Profe_Rodriguez
Deficit thinking across the education system (Richard Valencia, 2010). Victim blaming, oppression, pseudoscience, temporal change, educability, heterodoxy.
George I. Sanchez Legacy - referred to as Father of Chicano Psychology and Father of Bilingual Education for research and advocacy for spanish speaking children (UCB doctorate 1934). Director of Division of Information and Statistics for NM State Department for Public Education--Latinx Policy Advocacy. Sanchez' earliest publications on IQ testing - engages equity concepts and funding. Professor at UT Austin. Even when you change policy, wasn't implemented. Appointed ot positions of influence, but not enough. 1951 initiated American Council of Spanish Speaking People (ACSSP).
Framing assessment: highlight case of NM and reform policy experts. Blaming children for not reading at 3rd grade, blaming parents, or teachers. But what about the system? Pseudoscience of reading proficiency and prison populations (policy hype). Holding children back pushes them out of the education stream (pushed out vs drop out) - diverse populations, especially males, held back more frequently.
Mapping Dona Ana County 3rd grade reading proficiency scores. Reading proficiencies tied to economic differences. Policy would significantly hold back certain schools than others because fo population. Consider accessibility to early childhood ed, quality of teachers (degreed in 3 tiered licensure system, college access numbers, for a whole pipeline picture)--if we shifted conversation to look at access to those things, does educational opportunity play significant role? Statistically, yes.
Martinez vs New Mexico (school finance case) - measuring Achievement Reflective of Inequities
- NM argued achievement gaps are just reflective of the cultures of NM; student outcomes not indicative of failing school system but correlated to poverty and language skill deficits, factors over which schools have no control.
- Argument: If state's constitution of sufficient education and accountability concepts, then state has responsibility to respond to those inequities. Majority population is Raza, largest indigenous populations, state constitution declares it a bilingual state.
Sanchez book Forgotten People (1940) - "The hopes and aspirations of a people cannot be put on a graph."
Realities: high stakes testing, college readiness (Ap courses, etc), testing drives curriculum. From Higher ed perspective: college entrance exams for admissions, placement in Math and English and to award scholarships. Developmental education over enrollment of Black, Latinx, and Native American Students. Ranking to Guide Practices (US News & World Report). At what cost, and how does that reflect the legacy and mission of our institutions? High school GPA is still a much better indicator of college success and developmental education considerations.
- Equity-based assessments
- Pipeline access-based assessments (what would this look like?)
- Mission driven-based assessments (CAEP accreditation of education programs - how reflective of mission? How do you evaluate/assess that?)
- Culturally-grounded assessments
Policy Leverages for Equity based assessments
- federal/state policy:
- state equity plans (K-12 based right now);
- funding initiatives for teacher equity (upward bound type program for community and educational leadership), HEA Title V HSI Funding for educator preparation or Title III for HBCU; Pell grant increases in distribution amounts and qualifying amounts for educator preparation. Latinx teachers have highest turnover rate (NM or everywhere?) - why and how do we change it?
- Accreditation standards (Council for the accreditation of educator preparation)
- Institutional mission and philosophy
Tomas Morales, CSU San Bernardino
2nd largest HSI in CA, 60% Latino
80% 1st gen
Born Puerto Rico, came to US as kindergartener.
Was Provost at Cal Poly Promona, president of College of Staten Island. Came back because CSUSB is an anchor institution. Lowest baccalaureate attainment rate of any metro area of over 1 million people (flips with Detroit); over 50% of people in San Bernardino county are Latino.
Affinity groups make a difference, Latinx on the faculty make a difference. He has seen the evolution of assessment in higher ed. Changes significant over last decade.
Assessment of "not college material" driven by racism and informed by low college entrance exam scores--tracking is alive and well. CA is 6th largest economy in the world--UC and CSUs used to be free...when it was all white. Direct correlation in CA between A though G completion rate and socioeconomic status of schools kids attended. San Bernardino Unified School District - 17% to 30% in last 5 years. 85% community college students find themselves in remedial courses.
One of the major transitions over last decade or two was going from instructional centered assessment to a more learner centered assessment--far from perfect. 7 regional accrediting body and virtually every disciplinary accrediting body, they focus today on learning outcomes. What are students learning, where is evidence, how do you know they're learning? Don't factor in all of the soft skills, don't measure leadership, HIPs, participation, etc. Plays negative role for HSIs HBCUs and institutions serving those of lower income. We need more college graduates, especially critical in CA - 1.1 milling college grads by 2030. Lumina Foundation and others have written about need for this county and others to increase baccalaureate degrees. Road travels through HSIs, HBCUs, tribal colleges, MSIs.
Another reason he returned to CSU's system was to institute policies and practices to benefit students. Wanted to develop HIPs, increase number of students studying abroad, undergrad research activity. Increase of latino student moving into PhD programs, etc. Direct relationship between opportunity to do research with faculty and competitiveness in grad applications that mitigates some barriers like standardized exams.
Increasing accountability, increasing expectations of employers, shrinking budgets, need for cost effectiveness and efficiency all driving assessment (plus multibillion dollar industry). But now key driving force in this country is the accreditation landscape. Accreditation is primarily peer-driven which is good news. (Around the world, not the case--elsewhere in the world not peer-reviewed accreditation but accreditation conducted solely by the government.) Assessment of institutions is very different from assessment of learning outcomes.
Two policies to talk about relative to placement and remediation in higher education. Students with perfect GPAs blow exams and find themselves in lowest remedial math. Executive order 1110 and 1100 gaining traction throughout CA. Warning about what can be inferred from certain forms of testing: most ar expediting narrow results about certain types of student performance; standardized tests don't accurately future success or performance, but whether you really learned the stuff you learned in school. there have to be other ways of measuring whether students will be successful in higher ed. recognize barriers remediation creates in pipeline.
CSU EO 1100: CSU's GenEd systemwide GE policy can better address transferability, time to degree completion, and better address ways to create career pathways for community colleges. (43% of population of CA CCs are Latinx - need to crate pathways to CSU's and graduate in 2 years with the BA). Reminded him of the pathways program that was implemented in CUNY system - common to lose 30% of credits for transfers, even transferring to another senior college would lose significant number of credits. EO 1100 is about aligning GE requirements across the system (not as far as pathways in CUNY, allows CSU system much freedom in implementation).
CSU EO1110: deals with preparation for quant and written reasoning courses: provide multiple measures and determine course placement for first year students. Measuring a student's readiness to do college level work. Restructuring of summer bridge experiences. CSUSB was the first campus to implement a residential summer bridge program for all who tested into needing remediation. President acquired full philanthropic funding for it. Now offering summer courses for college credit during the summer.
These are policy questions that are critical. Another exciting initiative: CSUSB and UCR and both county offices, K12 superintendents, and CCs, awarded one of 5 Innovation awards to work with all 56 school districts and 11 CCs to increase A-G completion rates and college readiness in math, and increase baccalaureate degree attainment rates. Need to be impactful with K12 and CC partners.
Q & A Session
Q: I sit on undocumented student support & advocacy committee. Challenge: finding assessment for undocumented students (syllabi language, teaching training for faculty and staff, ways in which undocumented students bring to table but very real mental health and system housing and food struggles)... Any comments around that need right now on our campuses for undocumented students in terms of assessing admin policy, departments and outcomes?
Tomas: CSU early on created a Dreamers Center (now called Undocumented Student Success Center - changed by students). Manifestations of poverty, segregation, poor performing HSs impacts undocumented and documented students in same way. With undocumented students, a tortuous position of the unknown, administration rounding up undocumented individuals in places like churches and schools and markets and other places where they know undocumented individuals frequent. Parents of citizens/split families are not leaving the house - not going to shop, church, hiding in own homes. These are the kinds of services we have to try to develop. Legal services from pro bono services form law firms, affinity groups work with them. Group of faculty led by Juan Delgado spending a lot of time on these issues and working with these students and burning RTP candle at both ends. Need to protect these faculty, especially this tends to be faculty of color spending this time with students.
Rendon: Even green card holders are terrified, tight now nothing is guaranteed as it was previously. Hug tissue at hand, feel helpless because not in charge of government policy. but we can help them feel that we have their back, that we care, are there for them. Communicating that and offering it as an authentic message is important.
Rodriguez: stories from his wife at elementary school level--protected status revoked, how do we factor the voices into the conversation, or factor it into political organizing? The fear is very real.
Q: [Teranishi-Martinez] Part of President's Task Force on Inclusive Excellence. Trying to take all of the languages in our documents and look from an equity lens. Even some of our statements and missions need to be taken apart. Strategies or resources or suggestions for how to do this for equity minded competence?
Bensimon: Need admin who understands and get it to offer power behind the transformation. At Cal Lutheran, changed hiring system in one year because Provost trained 15 faculty as equity agents to go out. The term Inclusive Excellence is problematic -- "inclusiveness" tends to be defined as inclusiveness into white culture, and you need to talk about racial equity before 'inclusiveness.' Literature on embedded agents as change agents, the proposition is that they can be effective in bringing about change depending on social status and access to resources (tenured positions have a certain power base to mobilize).
Rendon: My take is working with an asset based framework. To what extent is deficit based narrative embedded in institution? Talk to students about what is helping them succeed. We need to push that conversation further, because if we look back to the 70s, these are not new issues.
Bensimon: President has power to change faculty evaluation system. Equity minded competencies.
Rodriguez: University had white faculty get to know and engage with Maori students, and another conversation of equity, retention increased. faculty just needed to be asked to get to know their students.
Q: Gloria Rodriguez(?) [UC Davis] - Struck by how scary it is to see people I respect say they feel helpless and feel fear, but share these powerful strategies. Where *do* we have power? Most of us in the room have gone to college. So where do we have power in terms of the changes people are pushing for?
Bensimon: I don't feel I don't have power, I feel I'm very powerful, I have power of a research center, position at a research university. I think we all do have power and have to be strategic and have social status and have allies. By being here, everyone has agency.
Rendon: I am very taken by the students in FL who organized used social media, who are more than any legislator have influenced the gun policy in America. Goes to show the kind of power that we can have. So often I think we don't speak up because we've been taught to stay in our place. To take on power structures is intimidating, maybe we need to align with our students and make a statement. How we can organize to push these agendas further along.
Bensimon: Isn't that a racism being demonstrated? Black Lives Matter, Undocumented students, but FL students white and being listened to. CNN didn't convene a town hall for them.
Morales: Academic bully culture and academic incivility culture is alive and well. It's real for junior faculty and even for tenured faculty through the promotional process. It's real for presidents and provosts who have the courage to move forward. Some president impacted by state legislators or leadership of system or own faculty who see themselves being disempowered. its a real challenge as you try to impact change. Change is difficult in higher education.
Bensimon: Difficult but possible.
Rodriguez: Consciousness: I shifted my space to policy advocacy but my most powerful experience was being involved in my daughter's school. Not role to be leader but support leadership and how to enhance. Strategic planning and recognizing voices, mobilizing and organizing. Regardless of role, how are we involved at that level, when we're talking about a real political shift? Shift in demographics of who is running for office: POC, women.
Q: UCB - as a scholar practitioner, I see a whole landscape of administrators that aren't faculty without the PhD not being mobilized and not a lot of opportunities for this training to be advocates as well. Working on my own doctorate, seeing same thing I experienced in 90s--they can't afford to apply to grad school.
Bensimon: Left Out document can be used in part to leverage why we need the change. The UC system, none of them came out well. Need to organize an academy for what you brought up.
Tomas: Innovation requires faculty buy-in. faculty have to be willing to consider alternative approaches to status quo If leaders of faculty are resistant and get letters from AAUP etc., impacts the low income, first generation students disproportionately. (Campaign for College Opportunities website for report.) Was reading a commentary about math placement by Ed Sauce (sp?) algebra-based readiness for math and resistance to alternative ways to assess college readiness for those students especially not pursuing STEM majors. This has been a major obstacle for low income students across the country. It has become a social justice issue.
Rendon: While we are frustrated with slow process of change, there is little faculty to be engaged with more than they already do. We need to learn how to mobilize more people (faculty, staff, student) in another area: social movements. It's not part of the discussion that takes lace in colleges and universities. We're hit with so many things: gun violence, undocumented students, arming teachers, faculty are overburdened and so are students. And yet we need to be a part of these marches and protests and we can't just sit back and watch this happen. It calls for us to act and to think in a very different way. FL student leader of movement is a Latina president of the gay-straight alliance. We won't solve it today, but we have an active role that should be more than writing, and it should be rewarded in the RTP process.
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