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Essential Criteria for Evaluating Educational Assessments Essay

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Definition Absence-of-Bias is just as the name implies, there is no bias present. It is the last of the three essential criteria for evaluating educational assessments. The other two are reliability and validity. Assessment bias is a part of an assessment that disadvantages a certain group of people because of their gender, race, socioeconomic status, or any other group-defining characteristic. It occurs when an element of an assessment “distorts a student’s performance”(Popham 2014 p.128). The initial judgments that a teacher makes can be extremely important considering the future success of the student (Blankenship, Hubbard, Johnson, 2009). Educators need to recognize so that they can free their tests of as much bias as possible. …show more content…

Students that are unfamiliar with the opera will be unfairly penalized. (Popham, 2014, p. 129-131) Teachers must remember that different cultures react differently to authority figures. For example, Arab American students have hard times following female leadership because they are not used to female authority figures. Another example is that American Indian or Native Hawaiian students do not respond well to competition because “their cultures emphasize cooperation and collaboration” (Blankenship, Hubbard, Johnson, 2009).
Disparate Impact A disparate impact refers to assessment items that appear to be unbiased that produce a disproportional result from certain groups of peoples. Because an assessment item produces a disparate impact does not necessarily mean that the test is biased. Questions cannot be thrown out because of disparate impact. The primary reason for a disparate impact is inadequate instruction. (Popham, 2014, p.131)
Bias Review Panels High stakes tests require approval of a bias review panel. Assessments like state accountability exams and SATs use panels of fifteen to twenty people to review their tests for bias (Schellenberg, 2009). Bias review panels are comprised of professionals in specific content areas who belong to at risk groups of people. They also comprise equally of females and males. Panelists must be well versed in assessment bias, offensiveness, and unfair penalization. (Popham,

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