Fairness in Educational and Psychological Tests: Critical Issues and Solutions (2017)

Overview

The meeting was supported by the American Educational Research Association's (AERA) Research Conference grant fund, as well as the Buros Center for Testing, to examine fairness in testing issues from multiple professional perspectives of nationally recognized scholars including professionals from educational policy, educational measurement, school psychology, clinical/counseling psychology, and industrial/organizational psychology. Topics included fairness issues and methodologies for individuals of different cultural backgrounds, individuals with disabilities, and English Language Learners. Each speaker was selected based on a record of scholarship focusing on these areas.

Conference Goals

The goal of the day and a half meeting was to allow featured speakers to present and engage in an interactive discussion to identify gaps in research and practice and to develop action plans. In addition, the participants worked in advance to produce a presentation and written summary of key ideas reflecting their expertise. A key meeting outcome will be to bring more attention to fairness in testing by engaging and disseminating ideas from the meeting to key constituents and our broader professional communities through collective published scholarship and future professional conference presentations.

Meeting Outcomes

The book Fairness in Educational and Psychological Testing: Examining Theoretical, Research, Practice, and Policy Implications of the 2014 Standards edited by Jessica L. Jonson and Kurt F. Geisinger includes chapters from each of the conference presenters. To learn more and access the resource visit, https://www.aera.net/Publications/-Online-Store/Books-Publications/BKctl/ViewDetails/SKU/AERWFEPT.

For more information about the meeting contact Dr. Jessica L. Jonson at jjonson@buros.org

Meeting Rationale

A substantive change to the 2014 Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (AERA, APA, & NCME) was the elevation of fairness in testing as a foundational element of professional practice in addition to validity and reliability. The Standards endorse the view that all steps in the testing process--including test design, validation, development, administration, and scoring procedures--should be addressed in a manner as to minimize construct-irrelevant variance and to promote valid score interpretations for the intended use for all examinees in the intended population. Therefore, this meeting attempted to advance current scholarship on critical issues and best practice methodologies for investigating fairness in educational and psychological tests. Although the Standards provide general guidelines for testing practice, the Standards do not cite key empirical or methodological scholarship related to recommendations or include examples or recommendations for practice. Therefore, goals for this meeting were to: identify critical fairness issues addressed by the Standards and important to testing in different professional fields; share empirical or methodological scholarship for investigating fairness across different types of educational and psychological tests; and identify gaps in research or practice to encourage advancements in how fairness evidence is gathered, used, and documented for tests.

Topics and Featured Speakers

Welcome/Introduction

Panel Presentations I:
Fairness in Testing: Big Picture Issues and Solutions

Panel Presentations II:
Fairness in Testing: Subgroup Considerations--Race/Culture, English Learners, Individuals with Disabilities

Panel Presentations III:
Fairness in Testing: Testing in Context and Measurement Issues