The readings from this week challenge me to view assessment as a political process that determines which groups of people qualify as knowledgeable. García and Kleifgen (2018/2025) show that testing systems that use monolingual criteria lead to ongoing educational disadvantages for students who learn English as a second language. They write that “one of the key equity issues... concerns the ways in which emergent bilinguals are assessed according to national mandates” (p. 175). The WIDA exam, along with traditional tests, measures English language skills rather than assessing students' knowledge of the subject matter. García supports translanguaging assessments because students can demonstrate their learning in both languages, which he believes provides a more genuine assessment of their knowledge. The assessment process serves two critical purposes: meeting academic requirements and maintaining ethical standards.
The framework from Chapter 9 shows how digital tools can enhance translanguaging when teachers use them to achieve specific educational goals. García and Kleifgen caution that technology must not be treated as a mere scaffold but as an essential component of emergent bilinguals’ meaning-making systems (p. 134). Students who work with voice, visuals, and multiple languages to create multimodal projects experience assessment as an innovative and fair process. The authors explain that students need equal access to digital platforms to demonstrate their knowledge in different languages.
Padía Cioè-Peña and Phuong (2024) extend the discussion through Translanguaging Universal Design for Learning (TrUDL), which unites disability justice with linguistic justice. The authors strongly agreed with their statement that UDL fails to establish multilingualism as both its fundamental purpose and its essential method (p. 441). The authors merge translanguaging with UDL to create a new definition of accessibility that combines multiple languages and communication methods while eliminating the need for separate language assistance and disability support systems.
Gottlieb (2022) describes how theoretical frameworks lead to practical applications through his definition of assessment, which serves two main purposes: to evaluate student learning and support their educational development. The author demands that teachers protect the languages, cultural backgrounds, and personal identities of their multilingual students (p. 9). Through this approach, assessment evolves into a conversational process. Teachers work together with students to create meaning through rubrics that use multiple languages and feedback that includes different media formats.
The WIDA standardized model shows potential to shift from evaluation to empowerment through these combined readings. The main goal of assessment reform is to restore student autonomy in educational decision-making while advancing beyond minimum fairness requirements. Educators need to find ways to implement translanguaging and TrUDL-inspired assessments through accountability systems that maintain standardized English-only testing requirements. Schools need to change their evidence-based assessment systems to create authentic educational opportunities for all students.