Article

Culturally Sustaining Content Development in Standardized Testing: Practical Considerations and Lessons Learned

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Abstract

There is a pressing need to bridge the theoretical discussions and emerging empirical evidence of the benefits of culturally relevant, responsive, and sustaining assessments with the reality of its operational implementation. This paper details our efforts to operationalize culturally sustaining (CS) content development for a high-stakes, multiple-choice admission assessment for grades 2-12. Across two rounds of content development trials, we outline our design for different stages of content development, and discuss what works and what is less effective in our iterative processes. We collected and analyzed both qualitative and quantitative data to synthesize our lessons learned into three areas: organizing effective student focus groups for topic generation, supporting CS item authoring, and reconceptualizing item evaluation practices. We also provide practical strategies based on our lessons learned for other testing programs considering implementing CS content development. We then provide our design of a comprehensive content development workflow joining an established conventional development flow with a proposed CS content development flow in operation to illustrate scalability. Finally, we discuss the limitations of our work and future avenues of research to accumulate additional validity evidence for CS assessment.

Keywords: Culturally Sustaining Assessment, Assessment Content Development, High-stakes K-12 Testing, Student-centered Assessment Design

How to Cite:

Hu, S. & Meyer, R., (2025) “Culturally Sustaining Content Development in Standardized Testing: Practical Considerations and Lessons Learned”, Practical Assessment, Research, and Evaluation 30(2): 3. doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/pare.3281