Joining other top experts from around the nation, Dr. Stephanie Cawthon is a featured plenary session speaker and a co-presenter at the 2023 National Conference on Student Assessment (NCSA) hosted by the Council of Chief State School Officers in New Orleans on June 26-28.
Dr. Cawthon’s plenary session — which was challenged to be a thought-provoking and timely topic for educational assessment leadership — is “Ableism, Accessibility, and Assessment.”
The session will:
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Address how conversations about equity for disabled test takers tend to be centered on accommodations and accessibility, yet ableism is often missing from this dialog.
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Encourage participants to think about ableism — the idea that people with disabilities are less valued than people without — and how addressing ableism can support the development of accessible assessment systems.
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Provide options for ways to think about accessible learning experiences as well as our own call to action to reduce ableism within our own roles and contexts.
She will present it at an all-conference lunch on June 27, then follow it up with a hands-on breakout session at 2:00 p.m.
Dr. Cawthon is also co-presenting “Data-Driven Assessment Development and Quality Review: Accessibility and Inclusion Considerations” on June 26 with Dr. Vitaliy Shyyan and Lynelle Morganthaler from the Smarter Balanced consortium and Jennifer Paul from the Michigan Department of Education.
Their presentation will address how high-quality, accessible, and inclusive assessment for all students, including students with disabilities and English learners, depends on an intentional, design-based approach. A comprehensive design-based approach requires attention to quality criteria at multiple stages in the life of a test item and assessment system.
The speakers will share their experiences with each stage of the assessment item pool development and review process – each from the lens of accessibility and inclusion. These stages include:
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Laying a foundation on what constitutes accessible and inclusive item design
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Training assessment content developers and reviewers
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Analyzing data on item functioning and supporting qualitative findings, and
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Conducting student evaluations and accessibility checks based on emerging issues from the field
United under the theme of Improving Student Learning for All: Advancing Innovative Uses of Assessment Data, the goal of 2023 NCSA is to give states a forum to share the best strategies, innovative methods, and resources so they can use assessment data to continuously improve student learning for all and their overall education system.