A Focus on Educational Assessment: Advancing African-American Education Excellence

Of the major population groups in the United States, African Americans face the greatest educational assessment challenges. On April 3rd and 4th ETS, ACT®, the Center for Assessment, the College Board®, the Learning Policy Institute, and the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine sponsored a conference entitled, "A Focus on Educational Assessment: Advancing African-American Education Excellence," to address these challenges in both the K–12 and college admissions arenas. The conference was held at the Keck Center of the National Academies of Science in Washington, D.C.

Among the issues discussed were: Innovations in assessment, interventions that excite students and improve their performance, and policies that induce and reward improvement in the teaching, learning and assessment of students. Speakers discussed strategies for improving performance among African-American students. Questions explored include:

• As states implement the Every Student Succeeds Act, what changes in large-scale standardized tests need to be made toward improving the performance and scores of African-American students?
• What key societal factors need to be addressed in order to make measureable progress in closing performance and score gaps for African-American students? How do we address them?
• What types of education interventions are effective and needed for improving African-American student performance on large-scale assessments? And how can we bring the interventions to scale?
• What are key technologies and innovations of assessment that offer promise for improving African-American student performance on large-scale assessments and how can they be implemented?