This past week, Dr. William Trent of the Department of Education Policy, Organization & Leadership (EPOL) served as an invited discussant for chapters comprising an upcoming volume of The ANNALS on Educational Assessment as Useful and Useable Evidence (working title), which was administered by the National Academy of Education (NAEd) and the American Academy of Political and Social Science (AAPSS). 

Dr. Trent offered his expertise on how discussions surrounding assessment – specifically testing for accountability and for making value judgements about student aptitude, school rigor, and teacher effectiveness – can have consequences for issues of education inequality, status attainment, social mobility, social (in)equity, and equality of access and opportunity. In a two-day intensive workshop, Dr. Trent made great strides in ensuring these issues weren’t lost in the minds of authors and discussants.

This convening and upcoming, timely edited volume on assessment and its uses can have various policy implications for both higher education and K-12. Dr. Trent’s voice was quite often the sole reminder of how issues of equity must be kept in the forefront of these discussions to limit any potentially harmful unintended consequences stemming from this important work.

This is just one of many examples of how faculty at the College of Education at the University of Illinois work to impact research, policy, and practice while positively representing the College and university.