Balancing Rigor, Fairness, and Access
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In today’s classrooms, educators are expected to maintain high expectations while responding to increasingly diverse learning profiles, including anxiety, ADHD, learning disabilities, executive functioning needs, and a wide range of academic readiness.
Inclusive and differentiated assessment helps address that complexity by keeping the focus on the learning rather than on one fixed format. It protects rigor by clarifying the intended outcomes, the evidence that matters, and the different ways students may demonstrate understanding.tion, and meaningful ways for students to demonstrate learning.
Let's "exchange information": Jigsaw Puzzle Activity
What is Anxiety?
Manitoba Lens for Inclusive Assessment
Grounding assessment in Appropriate Educational Programming/ AEP
This session is grounded in Manitoba's framework for inclusive educational programming. This clarity matters because teachers need to know when they are differentiating, adapting, modifying, or planning beyond grade-level outcomes.
Understanding where a student sits within this continuum shapes every assessment decision, from task design to criteria to the supports offered.
Assessment Policy Explained:
Designing rigorous pathways for students to show what they know
Assessment should help more students show what they know, not simply sort who can succeed in one format. Educators can keep strong assessment practices that maintain high expectations AND increase access, flexibility, and clarity for diverse learners.
Assessment tasks used for summatie purposes must be presented in different ways:
Effective assessment and grading practices are based on what students know and can do relative to the curriculum.
Assessment Policy Explained:
Appropriate Educational Programming (AEP)
In Manitoba, all students have the right to appropriate educational programming as outlined in Manitoba Regulation 155/2005.
For most students, Appropriate Educational Programming means access to the provincial curriculum. Some students may need additional supports to participate fully in classroom learning, while a smaller number may require highly individualized learning outcomes, either in addition to or in place of the provincial curriculum.
Appropriate Educational Programming is a collaborative process through which school communities design learning environments and provide the necessary resources and services to support the lifelong learning, social, and emotional needs of every student.For more detailed information, please explore the provincial documents from Manitoba Education and Early Childhood Learning by following the links provided below.
Fair Is Not Equal
Protecting rigor while widening access
Fair assessment does not always mean identical assessment. Equality gives every student the same task in the same format under the same conditions. Fairness gives students what they need to access the same important learning. The goal is to keep the rigor in the thinking while allowing flexibility in the pathway, support, timing, and mode of response.
Rigor lies in the cognitive demand of the task, not in the rigidity of the format.
Start with the Learning Goal
Strong assessment begins with clarity
Assessment starts by unpacking the learning outcomes into clear, student-friendly criteria. In British Columbia, teachers use those learning standards to design multiple opportunities for students to show what they know, gather evidence over time, and make judgments using the Provincial Proficiency Scale. This helps keep the focus on the learning, not the format, and supports student self-assessment, reflection, and growth.
Source: British Columbia / K-12 Student Report Policy 🔗
These four questions anchor every assessment decision: from the initial task design to the criteria used to evaluate student work. When the goal is clear, flexibility in format becomes possible without sacrificing rigor.
“Success Criteria should provide a clear answer to the question:
- How will I know that I have learned it?
or
- How we will know that we have learned it?”
(Fisher & Hattie, 2019)
Unpacking Learning Outcomes using Learning Taxonomies
This deepens understanding of the outcome and prepares you to design assessments and instruction that match the required thinking level.
Unpacking Standards as a PLC practice
Activity Instructions: Unpacking Learning Outcomes
Purpose: To see how unpacking outcomes leads to better planning and clearer success criteria.
In a group, choose one learning outcome from the curriculum
Underline the nouns in each outcome
Highlight the key verb in each outcome
As a group, find the level of Understanding from Blooms Taxonomy:
Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, Create.
Complete the student-friendly learning Objectives and Evidence of Student Mastery
Discuss how understanding the verb and its context changes how you would:
- Teach the concept.
- Assess student learning.
Feedback QR code
Please click the link below or scan the QR code with your device to share your thoughts on how I can better support your school. Your responses will serve as an assessment FOR learning, guiding me in identifying next steps to enhance how I support schools. The questions aim to clarify your professional learning needs and will be used exclusively for planning professional development initiatives throughout the school year.
Inclusive and Differentiated Assessment