A social psychological perspective on the achievement gap in standardized test performance between White and minority students: Implications for Assessment

Author: Rodolfo Mendoza-Denton

Consulting Editors: Kenji Hakuta and Charlene Rivera

Social-psychological phenomena such as “fear of success,” “mindset,” “prejudice attribution,” “stereotype threat,” and other such existential states are reported to influence human performance. In this paper the author is asked to consider how extant and future assessment instruments and practices can be made more responsive to the diversity in the contexts in which students develop and their abilities are assessed; to the diversity in cultural identities that they bring; and to the variations in the attributions that they assign to their educational experiences as well as to educational assessment. VIEW DRAFT