[EDEQUITY Dialogue on Assessment] Opening Statement by Dolores A.

From: Dolores.A.Grayson, Graymill, (www.graymill.com)
Date: Mon Dec 10 2001 - 09:38:06 EST


Grayson
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First, let me say what a pleasure and privilege it is to be asked to be
a part of this panel. I have thoroughly enjoyed the sharing of past
panels and feel that this is a very beneficial opportunity provided by
the EdEquity listserve.

Secondly, I want to apologize in advance for the fact that I am not in
my office this week and am involved during the first three days with a
professional development group in Baltimore County, MD. (My home is in
Southern California.) While I have access to an e-mail account, my time
and access will be limited until Wednesday evening, the 12th. However, I
will respond and participate to the best of my ability under the
circumstances.

For the benefit of those of you unfamiliar with my work, I have been a
professional educator, researcher and program developer for over 35
years. In addition to my practitioner experience as a former Science and
P.E. teacher, site and district administrator, I have held
equity-related positions at the California Department of Education, the
Midwest Equity Assistance Center and the Los Angeles County Office of
Education. I am the developer and principal author of Generating
Expectations for Student Achievement (GESA), formerly called
Gender/Ethnic Expectations and Student Achievement. A major component
of the GESA program is to equip teachers and other educators to collect
and disaggregate data through classroom and site observations, surveys
and collaborative self-assessment activities, with a focus on equitable
educational excellence.

In addition to GESA, I do Equity Leadership training with administrators
and a parent equity leadership training co-authored with my partner, Pam
Miller. Pam and I have co-owned GrayMill Consulting and publishing for
almost fifteen years and have provided equity technical assistance and
training for practitioners and educational agencies from all fifty
states and over twenty countries. All of our work is research based and
designed to collect and use data and assessment as a tool for change. I
am also a founding member of the Association for Gender Equity
Leadership in Education (AGELE), formerly the National Coalition for Sex
Equity in Education (NCSEE) and a current member of the National
Steering Committee. In that capacity, I serve as the Communications
Chair and was the Content Editor for a recent issue of the NCSEE News on
Testing, Standards, Assessment and Disaggregated Data: Challenges for
Gender Equity Leaders (Summer, 2001). Lastly, I have been an active
member of the American Educational Research Association for over 25
years and am a former chair of Research on Women and Education and Women
Educators.

I share all of this to provide you with a frame of reference for my
perspective on the topic of testing and assessment. More than any other
area, I see this topic driving the decision and policy-making in
education in the U.S. Teachers, administrators and community members are
caught up in the accountability movement that is sweeping our nation.
This is not necessarily all bad. The reason it sets the alarm off for
so many equity professionals is not that testing and assessment are bad.
It's that we have such a negative history of test construction and how
the tests are used to the detriment of specific populations of
students. As a profession, we know more than we have ever know about
the diverse ways in which people process information. We know that
traditional testing techniques have failed to assess and predict
according to the claims of the test developers. We have even moved to
more qualitative as well as quantitative methodologies of data
collection, research and assessment. Yet we continue to take the easy
way and compare students, grades, schools and districts based on a
single test or measurement (such as the Stanford 9 in California). As a
result, educators continue to perpetuate traditional performance gaps
tied to gender, ethnicity, language, special needs and socio economic
status/class. During the last year, I have collected articles and
information from across the country on the state assessment efforts and
the impact and reactions from practitioners and community members. As I
continue to participate with all of you this week, I will share some of
the specific observations and effects of our emerging standards-based
educational efforts and the rewards and sanctions associated with the
testing requirements. I look forward to highlighting some of the major
equity concerns related to this topic with all of you.

For the sake of time and space, I will save the specifics for my next
installment. I look forward to all of your comments.

Dolores A. Grayson, Ph.D
GrayMill
22821 Cove View St.
Canyon Lake, CA 92587
(909) 246-2106
(909) 246-2107 Fax
www.graymill.com



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