Rethinking Students’ Role in Assessment to Promote Greater Equity

This memo, which is the first in the series, explores some of the assessment for learning practices that the initiative is supporting at Del Lago Academy of Applied Sciences, a small public high school in Escondido, California that educates a diverse group of scholars to develop industry-specific skills and expand their social networks and access to opportunities.

In a recent EdWeek Deeper Learning blog post, SCOPE Associate Director Ann Jaquith further describes the deeper learning work at DLA where students experience deeper learning through their coursework and through their participation in a carefully constructed and assessed six-week internship.

The Assessment for Learning Project (ALP) is a multi-year grant program and field-building initiative designed to fundamentally rethink the roles that assessment can and should play to advance student learning and improve K-12 education in the United States. If assessment is to become a lever for improving individual students’ opportunities and capacities to learn, then assessment must also become a lever for achieving more equitable education outcomes because it is not possible to achieve excellence without equity.