Education Curriculum: Equitable Opportunities to Access and Evaluate Student Learning Through Assessments

Students need to be promoted to the next class or grade when assessed fairly on their skills and learnings. The common assessment methodologies have been under debate recently as it seems to be inequitable in supporting students for assessing core skills and the knowledge their diverse backgrounds provide for their interpretation. This paper aims to review how to ensure assessments provide an equitable opportunity to assess and evaluate student learning with historical evidence, contemporary curriculum practices, and a detailed position.

Historical Contextualization

It is mandatory to understand the steps taken in history for curriculum development so that early practices could be compared with todays modern ones to certify which ones worked best. How the needs of students grew and how culturally competent teaching and diversity inclusion impacted the way curriculum is designed today must be interpreted to the core.

Academic scientism (1890-1916) was when two approaches were seen to influence curriculum development: academic and scientific (Glatthorn et al., 2018, p. 36). The predominant trends at that time supported the ideology that scientific learning boosted rationale and gave students a holistic worldview of how things operate. It remained the essence of the curriculum content as students were believed to expand their horizons for gaining insight. This eras prominent proponents and leaders were G. Stanley Hall and Francis W. Parker.

The next era was progressive functionalism (1917-1940), in which two orientations were witnessed to hyperbolize the curriculum development directions: progressive or child-centered and functional orientations (Glatthorn et al., 2018, p. 37). The child-centered orientation seemed nave as it only emphasized the childs interests, who himself did not know what was right and wrong for him. The designing of the curriculum with the childs self-expression needs was required to be broader in its spectrum of effectiveness. On the other hand, functionalism orientation guided the curriculum to be developed based on learning activities of adult life so that stimulus-response should be infused in the syllabus. This eras prominent proponents and leaders were John Dewey and Franklin Bobbitt.

The era that came afterward was Developmental conformism (1941-1956) which highlighted the needs of youth and showed concern for curriculum development based on the conformity with...

…students in understanding the assessment task to answer it appropriately, and interpreting the results based on certain selected methodologies like comparing with peers or reviewing a childs growth (Suskie, 2000; McMillan, 2000).

Sociocultural influences and language learning of children, like in the case of English Language Learners (ELL), would direct the way educational experts would design the equitable assessments (Siegel, Wissehr & Halverson, 2008). The language challenge should be addressed while making the assessments so that all types of students understand what they are being asked in questions, give meaningful context to interpret, practice scaffolding and give extra time or break to let them make meaning of the assessment questions to answer them properly.

Conclusion

To meet contemporary times needs, the childs development could only be certified if assessments are based on equitable opportunities to learn. Culturally responsive and all-inclusive approaches should be earnestly pursued while formulating an assessment so that fairness and ethics of education are observed. To boost the meaningful engagement of students for a lifetime, the assessments should be designed to make an impact on their learning, which is critical for all educators to…