Transcription
[Music] bias is inherently a bad thing. An assessment bias is every bit as bad a thing as our other forms of bias.
Assessment bias is so reprehensible because it almost always distorts the accuracy of any test-based interpretations teachers make about their students. Distorted test-based interpretations typically lead to unsound instructional decisions. That's why teachers need to know what assessment bias is and how to get rid of it.
Most assessment authorities agree that assessment bias is present whenever one or more items in a test offend or unfairly penalize students because of those students' personal characteristics, such as race, gender, socioeconomic status, or religion. But that definition includes two ways, not just one, that assessment bias can mess up teachers' test-based interpretations.
An educational test can be biased if it unfairly penalizes particular categories of students. For example, groups of students whose backgrounds make it less likely that they'll be able to respond successfully to certain sorts of test items. That's what usually comes to mind when most folks think about assessment bias.
But an educational test can also be biased if it offends any group of test takers. For instance, by subtly discounting the worth of certain ethnic groups. Students from those groups who encounter even one test item that offends them will understandably be distressed and, as a consequence, may underperform on subsequent items in that test.
It's one thing to know what assessment bias is. It is quite another to know how to excise it from our test. For large-scale tests, such as statewide accountability exams, substantial care is usually taken these days to eliminate biased items. But rarely do we find teachers taking pains to identify and dump biased items from their own classroom exams.
One of the reasons for this absence of bias detection regarding teacher-made tests is that most teachers really don't know how to do it. Clearly, teachers first need to know what sorts of procedures exist to eradicate bias from their classroom tests before deciding if they wish to use any of those procedures themselves.
But assessment bias is a truly tricky concept. For instance, do you think that any time a large-scale test has has a disparate impact on a particular group of test takers, the test is therefore biased against those test takers? Well, it may not be. You can find out why disparate impact is not the same thing as assessment bias by digging into one or more of the resources provided here. Really should.