Systemic inequities in higher education persist despite 'authentic assessments'—research reveals structural barriers beyond grading methods
Original framing: “Creative assessments address inequalities in students' performance, new research shows” — Phys.org
Assessment disparities are not new but rooted in 19th-century eugenics and IQ testing, which pathologized non-white students while justifying segregation and underfunding. The SAT’s origins in racial hierarchies (e.g., 'scientific' claims of Black intellectual inferiority) parallel today’s 'authentic assessments,' which often measure proximity to dominant cultural norms rather than true learning. Apartheid-era Bantu education in South Africa similarly used 'practical' curricula to justify second-class citizenship—echoing how 'innovative' assessments can mask structural exclusion.
The Phys.
org headline’s celebration of 'authentic assessments' as a fix for racial disparities in higher education exemplifies how neoliberal reforms individualize systemic inequities, obscuring the colonial legacies of assessment cultures, the material conditions of marginalized students, and the labor exploitation that undergirds such 'innovations.' Historical parallels—from apartheid-era Bantu education to the SAT’s eugenicist origins—reveal that 'authentic' is often a racialized construct, where creativity is measured against dominant norms rather than true liberation. Indigenous and Global South pedagogies, from Māori 'ako' to Brazilian 'pedagogia da autonomia,' offer models where assessment is relational, not extractive, yet these are sidelined in favor of marketable 'solutions.' The trickster’s laughter lies in how 'authentic assessments' perform radical change while reinforcing the very institutions they claim to disrupt, particularly when implemented by underpaid adjuncts of color in underfunded public universities. A decolonial future demands not just new rubrics but the dismantling of the hierarchies of knowledge and labor that produce the 'awarding gap' in the first place.