Assessing Writing in Children Who Use African American English: ​The Impact of a Culturally Responsive Scoring Approach in Grades 3-4

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Presenter(s)

Ellie Friedman, Sam Bourgeois

Abstract or Description

African American English (AAE) is a rule-governed dialect system that is spoken with variable density by African American adults and children in the United States (Washington & Craig, 2002; Fitton et al., 2021). It is a variety of, but neither a deficiency nor degradation of, mainstream American English (MAE), which is most often taught in classrooms and seen in print (Johnson et al., 2017). Recent literacy research has focused on how AAE is treated in standardized scoring processes; students who use AAE "may be penalized unfairly on assessment and instructional measures that examine their literacy abilities" (Horton-Ikard & Pittman, 2010). The current study assesses student writing through Correct minus Incorrect Word Sequences (CIWS), a standardized, sequence-based writing scoring method that detects word and sentence-level errors. However, speakers of MAE may mark allowable AAE syntax and grammar rules as incorrect when scoring with CIWS. To evaluate this dialectical disparity, we will be scoring informational writing for students in grades 3 and 4 using a culturally and linguistically responsive approach, one which accounts for students' use of AAE, and examining its impact on standardized writing scores. The goal of this research is to not only quantify possible scoring discrimination but also offer instructional tools for educators to account for dialectical diversity in their classrooms. We will also explore how our findings can be used to inform the ongoing construction of the Writing Architect, a web-based instrument developed to bridge the gap between student writing skills and instructional decision-making.

Mentor

Adrea Truckenmiller, Lindy Johnson