Equity
It remains a critical challenge to ensure all childrenāregardless of race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economic status, and/or abilityāhave access to a high-quality education. We are at a pivotal time where communities and schools are navigating issues of equity, poverty, and opportunity gaps against a backdrop of shifting education policy. With access to exceptional data and a multi-disciplinary team of researchers and research partners, we are able to provide unique insight into these important issues.
The development of racial/ethnic and socioeconomic achievement gaps during the school years
This study examined developmental trends in academic achievement gaps between poverty and race/ethnicity groups from school entry to middle school using two large longitudinal data sets. We used time-varying effect modeling (TVEM) to estimate how the associations among race/ethnicity, poverty status, and math and reading achievement vary across continuous age from age 5 to age 15.
By: Megan Kuhfeld, Elizabeth Gershoff, Katherine Paschall
Topics: Equity, Growth modeling
This study examines whether test effort differs by student subgroup, including by race and gender. The sensitivity of achievement gap estimates to any differences in test effort is also considered.
By: James Soland
Topics: Equity, School & test engagement
Achievement gaps are a metric of fundamental importance to U.S. practice and policy. Gap estimates are often used to measure the effectiveness and fairness of the education system at a given point in time, over the course of decades, and as children progress through school.
By: James Soland
Topics: Equity, School & test engagement, Student growth & accountability policies
A longitudinal study of reading growth for students with visual impairments
This study compares reading growth for students with visual impairments with a nationally normed group of students from the general population using data from the NWEA MAP Growth assessment.
By: Beth Boroson, Elizabeth Barker, Xueming Li
Topics: Equity, Accessibility, Reading & language arts
NWEA promotes accessibility in assessment with release of image description guidelines
Image descriptions are important to make computer-based assessments accessible to students using assistive technology (AT) devices, such as screen readers and refreshable braille displays. NWEA, with support from the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), has created guidelines for describing many variations of images, charts, and graphics targeted specifically to the disciplines of reading, language usage, science, and mathematics.
By: Elizabeth Barker
Topics: Equity, Accessibility
What does equity and accessibility look like within assessment?
Creating tests and items from the beginning with Universal Design for Learning in mind, removing barriers by adding alt-tags, and incorporating more culturally rich materials are all steps NWEA is doing to improve our equity for all students.
By: Elizabeth Barker
Topics: Equity, Accessibility
Do high flyers maintain their altitude? Performance trends of top students
In this study from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, achievement trends from NWEAās longitudinal growth database were used to track students who scored at or above the 90th percentile on this assessment in order to see if they maintained their high achievement.
By: Yun Xiang, Michael Dahlin, John Cronin, Robert Theaker, Sarah Durant
Topics: Equity, High-growth schools & practices