⏤ 🟡 DRAFT – EARLY WORK IN PROGRESS 🟡 ⏤
Summary: Equity is not an add-on. Assessments must be designed from the start with flexibility, access, and justice built in — so no student has to fight, disclose, or explain in order to belong.
Description: Too often, equity in assessment is treated as a retrofit: an exception, an accommodation, or a patch applied after barriers have already excluded students. This approach burdens students with disclosure, making them negotiate access in spaces never designed for them. As Dolmage (2017) reminds us, retrofitting preserves exclusion while signaling inclusion.
GOAL takes a different stance: equity and flexibility are proactively designed into assessment from the outset. This means assuming variability, not uniformity, and creating multiple ways for students to demonstrate learning without penalty or stigma. Carillo (2021) warns that equity is undermined when we equate fairness with uniform labor expectations. Price (2011) and Wood (2017) highlight how rigid spaces and timelines exclude disabled and neurodivergent learners, and why nonlinear, flexible pacing must be normalized. Crenshaw’s (1989) intersectionality reminds us that inequities multiply across race, class, gender, language, and disability. Yosso (2005) calls us to value community cultural wealth, recognizing the knowledge students bring from their lived contexts as assets, not deficits.
Designing for equity and flexibility is not lowering standards. It is raising our responsibility: to build structures where rigor is measured by depth of learning, not conformity to a single pace, product, or path.
Core Practices
- Build flexibility into assignment design from the start: deadlines, modalities, and formats that allow for multiple pathways.
- Anticipate barriers (technological, linguistic, disability-related, socioeconomic) before they occur.
- Make flexibility universal: available to all students, not conditional on disclosure.
- Audit assessments for hidden assumptions about the “ideal student” (time, language, access, cultural background).
- Validate community and cultural knowledge as legitimate, valued contributions to academic work.
Reflective Questions
- Does my assessment design assume a single “normal” student?
- Are flexibility and access defaults in this assignment, or do students have to ask for them?
- What barriers am I proactively anticipating — and for whom?
- How does my design validate the cultural wealth students bring with them?
- In what ways do I balance flexibility with clarity, consistency, and rigor?
Lineage & Influences
- Dolmage (2017) critiques retrofits as insufficient, calling for proactive design.
- Carillo (2021) highlights the inequities of labor-based measures, underscoring the need for anticipatory flexibility.
- Price (2011) and Wood (2017) articulate how rigid spaces and timelines exclude mental disability, introducing nonlinear, flexible pacing as an alternative.
- Crenshaw (1989) establishes intersectionality, essential for understanding overlapping inequities.
- Yosso (2005) advances community cultural wealth, valuing the assets students bring from marginalized communities.
- CAST UDL (2018) reinforces multiple means of engagement and expression, grounding flexibility in universal design.
- Inoue (2019) calls for resisting exclusionary norms and centering equity in assessment.
Interested in learning more or trying GOAL in your course? Start small. Start with one pillar. Start with one assignment. And know you’re not alone; the community is growing.