Webinar Resources

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Bruce Johnson: Good afternoon. Everyone welcome. Thank you for joining us today for our webinar equitable measures, the role of assessments and education.

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Bruce Johnson: We’re thrilled to have you with us, as we begin an exploration aimed at positioning practitioners to understand and reform educational assessments, to ensure fair access to opportunities for all students, particularly those from underrepresented and underserved communities.

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Bruce Johnson: Today, our goal is to unpack the complex dynamics of educational assessments and their profound impact on equity within our education systems

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Bruce Johnson: we’ll delve into how current assessment practices can inadvertently perpetuate disparities and explore actionable strategies for fostering a more inclusive and just approach to measuring educational success.

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Bruce Johnson: My name is Bruce Johnson, your host, for today’s discussion I serve as a senior associate at Community Science, where my focus lies in fostering educational equity and advancing policy change through strategic evaluation and research.

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Bruce Johnson: I have a robust background in higher education administration, particularly within community colleges.

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Bruce Johnson: I’ve dedicated my career to enhancing educational pathways and workforce development opportunities for underrepresented groups.

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Bruce Johnson: Together today we’ll hear from distinguished experts who will share their perspectives and experiences, offering both a deep dive into the challenges and a look at innovative solutions that are making a difference.

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Bruce Johnson: Please allow me to introduce you to Dr. Erica Williams.

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Bruce Johnson: the Vice President of Education at Dogwood Health Trust.

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Bruce Johnson: Dr. Williams brings over 2 decades of experience in education, from teaching and scholarship to leadership.

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Bruce Johnson: Her work is dedicated to leveraging philanthropy to tackle systemic educational challenges, especially those for traditionally margin those who are traditionally marginalized in our society.

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Bruce Johnson: She has a rich history of building partnerships and initiating programs that enhance educational opportunities and equity, particularly in Western North Carolina.

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Bruce Johnson: Joining her is Dr. Carlos Anziano.

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Bruce Johnson: managing associate at community science. Carlos has a profound background in educational psychology, and is passionate about ensuring that all learners have equitable access to high quality education.

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Bruce Johnson: He specializes in evaluating educational programs, designing inclusive data collection methods and enhancing family school and community partnerships.

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Bruce Johnson: Carlos is particularly focused on using his expertise to support parent leadership and advocating for systemic changes

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Bruce Johnson: together. Their combined insights will help us to explore the critical role assessments play in shaping educational opportunities and outcomes.

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Bruce Johnson: We hope that you leave today’s session equipped with valuable insights and aspire to advocate for change within your own spheres of influence.

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Bruce Johnson: Let’s embark on this crucial conversation with open minds and a shared commitment to transforming educational outcomes for every student.

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Bruce Johnson: Thank you for being a part of today’s important discussion.

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Bruce Johnson: just a little background on community science, the organization that is hosting today’s discussion

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Bruce Johnson: at community science. Our mission is to help community and government organizations, foundations and nonprofits tackle complex social problems by providing expert research and development services.

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Bruce Johnson: Our goal is to strengthen the science and practice of community change in order to improve the wellbeing of people and the organizations that serve them.

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Bruce Johnson: Community science is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bct partners.

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Bruce Johnson: Through our work we aim to amplify voices from underserved communities.

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Bruce Johnson: foster collaborative change and support sustainable impact.

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Bruce Johnson: Today’s webinar will guide you through a series of lessons, learned and actionable strategies aimed at transforming educational assessments for equity.

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Bruce Johnson: We’ll start by examining the inherent limitations, limitations of traditional assessments.

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Bruce Johnson: We’ll then delve into the systemic barriers that perpetuate disparities in educational assessments.

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Bruce Johnson: Our conversation will also highlight the critical role of philanthropy in supporting educational equity.

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Bruce Johnson: and finally, we’ll explore the power of parental engagement in education.

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Bruce Johnson: So for today’s agenda, we’ve actually already covered a decent portion of it. We started off with introductions and provided you some insight into community science and shared key takeaways. The next portion of our discussion today would provide just a little bit of background and context as we then transition into our panel discussion.

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Bruce Johnson: And then we ask that you go ahead and drop any questions that you may have of the panelists, that whether you have them now, or if they emerge throughout the conversation into the QA. Portion, and we’ll make sure that we lend attention to addressing those as time permits at the end.

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Bruce Johnson: assessments serve a critical gatekeeping function, and they often determine the trajectory of a student’s academic and professional future

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Bruce Johnson: placement tests and standardized tests. Well, they’re central to this process and are employed broadly across institutions to evaluate students’ readiness for college level work.

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Bruce Johnson: The intent behind those tests is to ensure students are adequately prepared to tackle the curriculum that they’ll encounter in their courses.

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Bruce Johnson: This process, theoretically aids educational institutions in aligning instructional resources, with student needs.

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Bruce Johnson: However.

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Bruce Johnson: the impact of these assessments. Assessments extends far beyond the initial sorting of students into various levels of introductory coursework.

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Bruce Johnson: The results of placement tests, for instance, directly influence the student starting point in college, often placing them in developmental, prerequisite classes that do not count towards a degree.

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Bruce Johnson: This can extend their time in college, increase their educational costs and

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Bruce Johnson: effective motivation and likelihood of completion.

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Bruce Johnson: Other standardized tests, such as sats or acts, play a significant role in the admission decisions and also influence which students gain entry into higher education institutions, and subsequently which doors are open or closed to them in the professional world.

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Bruce Johnson: I reference these assessment tools because while they’re designed to measure academic preparedness, they also inadvertently set many students, particularly those from underserved communities on a path with limited opportunities.

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Bruce Johnson: The early academic pathways determined by these tests can also predict the level of academic achievement. These students will reach, and the career options that are available to them after graduation.

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Bruce Johnson: Understanding the profound effects that these assessments have on students’ academic and career futures is crucial.

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Bruce Johnson: It compels us to critically analyze the fairness and effectiveness of these measures, and to advocate for systems that genuinely uplift all students towards their highest potential.

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Bruce Johnson: As we delve deeper into our discussion. It’s also crucial to acknowledge the pervasive and disproportionate impacts that these assessment methodologies exert on marginalized student groups

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Bruce Johnson: for students from historically underserved communities standardized test and placement exams can often misrepresent their potential and readiness. This misalignment disproportionately affects their ability to access educational opportunities, and sets a precedent that follows them from K. 12 into higher education.

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Bruce Johnson: This has a ripple effect on graduation of rates both high school graduation as well as college graduation research consistently shows that marginalized students, particularly those from low income backgrounds, graduate at lower rates than their peers. This disparity is not just about academic preparation, but it’s also about how these students are assessed and subsequently supported through their educational journey.

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Bruce Johnson: As we continue to take today’s discussion, let’s keep these long term impacts in mind.

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Bruce Johnson: understanding that these challenges. Understanding. These challenges, I should say, is the is the first step towards developing more equitable assessment practices that truly reflect the diverse strengths and potentials of all students

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Bruce Johnson: paving the way for more inclusive educational and career opportunities.

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Bruce Johnson: As we transition into our panel discussion today, let’s let’s focus on the critical critical role that community plays in promoting meaningful changes in assessment practices.

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Bruce Johnson: Parents are instrumental in this process because they provide unique insights into how assessment practices affect their children both inside and outside the classroom. Their advocacy and feedback are vital in pushing for assessments that truly measure and support their children’s learning and development.

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Bruce Johnson: But then students they, too, are are central in this conversation, cause they’re the ones that are directly impacted by these assessments, and they must have a voice. And how they’re designed and implemented

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Bruce Johnson: educators

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Bruce Johnson: from teachers to high school administrators play a dual role.

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Bruce Johnson: They’re both implementers and evaluators of assessment practices and their professional expertise and daily interaction with diverse student oper student populations, equip them with the necessary knowledge to identify shortcomings in the current methods.

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Bruce Johnson: Equity focused organizations. They provide the research resources and advocacy needed to drive systemic change.

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Bruce Johnson: And, lastly, school administration and leadership. They’re pivotal in operationalizing changes. Their commitment to reform can lead to the adoption of policies that prioritize equity and support all students’ educational journeys.

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Bruce Johnson: So as we

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Bruce Johnson: get ready to engage today’s panel discussion, I want to start off by directly engaging both of our panelists with a question and asking them to elaborate on their working definition of assessments.

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Bruce Johnson: So panelists.

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Bruce Johnson: how do these tools vary across educational settings. And what should our audience keep in mind about the role of assessments in both reflecting and shaping student outcomes in education?

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Bruce Johnson: And I’ll ask, maybe, how about Erica. Would you mind kicking us off with that response.

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Ereka Williams: Absolutely, absolutely. Thank you so much.

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Ereka Williams: you know. First, let me just go back to the what does the base word? Their assessment is from the Latin word, a seed array, and excuse me to people that were formally taught Latin. I had to stumble into it. But a seed array means to sit beside or sit with

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Ereka Williams: and so when I think about the most basic level of or primary, maybe micro level of assessment, I think, about the classroom.

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Ereka Williams: And I think about the teacher that understands the instructor, the professor. If we’re talking a higher situation that understands that assessment really is an opportunity

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Ereka Williams: to learn and unpack what your learners bring to the table, who they are, what they know around a subject or a content level or area and also an opportunity to unpack what’s next?

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Ereka Williams: You know. So there is assessment

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Ereka Williams: of learning assessment for learning, and then assessment as learning with the last one being a place where the student is an active part in the assessor role.

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Ereka Williams: And it functions as a way for them to engage and really own that learning and growth process for themselves. So I think at its best, particularly when it’s filtered through a prism of equity. Assessment gives us such a wonderful opportunity to unpack who our students are, what they bring to topics, what’s left for them to explore, and then how they’re interrogating or working through that concept, etc, on their own in meaningful ways.

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Ereka Williams: in meaningful ways.

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Ereka Williams: And I hope, what? What was the other part of that question. Did I miss a part of that, or is it time to ping it over to you, Carlos?

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Bruce Johnson: No, you captured well, especially about, especially in relation to how they vary across educational settings.

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Ereka Williams: Yes, thank you.

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Carlos Anguiano: And so with that I agree with everything

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Carlos Anguiano: Dr. Erica said and talked to William said, I go, but I wanna take a different approach on this and go from a higher level. And if you do a Google search and you look up education assessment in the Us. You’re gonna be bombarded with pages on the National National Center for Education Standard assessments. You’ll get the nation’s report card. You’ll get information on standardized assessments, really talking about the flaws of the education system, and how assessments are benefiting them in the way that they should.

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Carlos Anguiano: With that being said, I do wanna note that there’s more than just one type of assessment. Large scale assessments is one form. But taken from the American Psychological Association. Definition, assessment at a simplest form is really just an assessment process that allows you to obtain information for participants, and use that to make references or judgments based on that information.

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Carlos Anguiano: So when you take that definition

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Carlos Anguiano: in general and think about that, how it applies to everything that we do.

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Carlos Anguiano: We’re constantly making assessments in what we do. We’re constantly making assessments and how we do it.

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Carlos Anguiano: the real it there will be the real, the real question and deaf defining definition point of assessment to me is more that it has to be valid and reliable. And to me, what that means is, it has to be accurate and what it’s saying that’s measures. And it has to consistently measure that that trait over consistently number of times. So.

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Carlos Anguiano: although I do value psychometric properties, and I do know, understand the importance of them to large scale assessments. That is a small proportion of the assessments that are in this world that we utilize and a lot of the times. We utilize assessments in

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Carlos Anguiano: program evaluations and also education research to get that information. But a lot of the times we’re adapting assessments that have already been validated as being valid and reliable. But the minute we change any type of that information.

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Carlos Anguiano: the Dow purpose and the intent of the assessment now changes. So one thing I do wanna emphasize is being the most important thing that I focus on is the purpose and intent. So, in order for an assessment to be valid and reliable.

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Carlos Anguiano: it has to be doing what it’s saying is gonna do and consistently doing that as well. So all those psychometric properties are there at the

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Carlos Anguiano: part of it, it’s really just making sure it’s assessing what we’re trying to assess.

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Carlos Anguiano: And so

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Carlos Anguiano: I say that in general, because I know a lot of the times this things up. I I

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Carlos Anguiano: I know a lot of the times. Just the word assessment causes anxiety. A lot of people. Me specific. Yeah, I hate assessments. And I’ll say that openly. I am at best A. C. Student. According to any test that I’ve ever taken across my education.

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Carlos Anguiano: However, I’ve demonstrated higher aptitude and cognition based on the conversation that I’m able to hold. And I’ve been fortunate that I’ve had professors and educators that have been able to see that there’s different forms of assessments, and utilize it, to make it a an actual decision about my best interest, and how to improve me. So, taking that best an assessment is something that we use to make decisions based on information regatta.

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Bruce Johnson: Excellent. Thank you very much, Carlos. And from from your perspective, Carlos, how how would you describe the current state of assessments? In education, research, and evaluation?

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Carlos Anguiano: That’s a loaded question, please, but I’ll do my best. I will do my best to answer that

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Carlos Anguiano: right now. I’m optimistic, and I’ll tell you why I’m optimistic.

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Carlos Anguiano: because I think this change coming. I think anytime you get people questioning. What’s is the purpose of this? And how are we use that I, utilizing these decisions is an opportunity for people to engage conversations about differences and expectations. So I think we’re in a good place right now in regards to

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Carlos Anguiano: people being aware that assessments exist

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Carlos Anguiano: from my understanding, assess large scale assessments have really been the dominant

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Carlos Anguiano: culture within academics over the last decade, and that has really dominated the conversation and led to some belief that assessments aligned with teacher quality and overall instructions practices.

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Carlos Anguiano: I do wanna note that that was never the intention of a large scale assessment, a large scale assessment. The purpose was it to really gave to how the student is doing compared to the national, the national average. And so it’s really designed to define, to decide what’s being done and how to divide strategies, to improve that.

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Carlos Anguiano: Yet we come to a place where we think of everyone just taking tests. And so it come to the point now where teachers are saying, we’re teaching to the test and our students so many different, different, different stuff. It’s parents saying, why are utilizing different assessments with a national standard? Is the standardized assessment. So when you ship from that standard. You cause controversy in every way.

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Carlos Anguiano: I think one of the

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Carlos Anguiano: one of the impacts and I think it’s an important impact of the COVID-19. Was it highlighted? Those assumptions we have within a session?

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Carlos Anguiano: I will provide you a concrete example of that. At the COVID-19 people of color, the resources they need. So they can do well into the education that they’re doing, because we know that’s a concern.

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Carlos Anguiano: How that manifested today, how that manifested came out in very different ways.

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Carlos Anguiano: Utah.

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Carlos Anguiano: this, so that you tell

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Carlos Anguiano: it, had the intent and had the purpose, and was really, really, really intentional about the way they did things. So they wanted to get perception of how other people did. So they asked, teachers, Hey, you guys are familiar with the students. What services do they need?

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Carlos Anguiano: And out of that conversation the conversation was that they need Internet, and they need electronic devices. So Utah decided to do a Grant and provide those resources to all schools within the U. Within the Utah school district.

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Carlos Anguiano: and

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Carlos Anguiano: that was great, found out everything was great. We now did an evaluation of it. One of the questions came out, and it was huge that most of the partners who received funding they didn’t utilize all their resources to get the stuff that they needed. And so that caused a huge question within the organization. And the board members asked, why didn’t they use that information? And so we developed questions to get that information. And what we found out was

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Carlos Anguiano: that it wasn’t necessarily that they needed Internet. They needed support on how to use the Internet, how to troubleshoot, how to how to activate it within their schools, and how to provide support for their children. So because of that, parents were able to support their children in that area.

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Carlos Anguiano: Utah had good intentions of what they wanted to do. They wanted to solve a need, and they wanted to fill it.

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Carlos Anguiano: but because they didn’t include the parents

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Carlos Anguiano: in the decision making process about what’s there and didn’t get their perception.

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Carlos Anguiano: They use an assessment that didn’t really identify the problem. And they made decisions based on that. That was an accurate. So

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Carlos Anguiano: I think we’re in a good place in regards to educate education assessment. Because I believe we’re focusing on coaching responsive practices. We’re talking more about equity informed assessment practices. The National Center for Education assessment is also developed a handbook on equity within assessment.

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Carlos Anguiano: But what that fails to address are everyday assessments that we utilize within programs. How do we take practical assessments and use them in a classroom to make informate informed decisions also in programs.

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Carlos Anguiano: Large scale assessments are great for one purpose, but we need to start diversifying our use of assessments and also including multiple perspectives in it. So we can really get a holistic coaching responsive assessment. That’s really gonna tell us whether or not the program is working and how we can improve it.

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Bruce Johnson: Thank you, Carlson. I appreciate that latter portion because you actually started touching on a follow up question that I had for you, which was, what type of changes would you like to see, and how assessments are designed and utilized? And I think that you’ve touched on that in a in a big way. But are there any other things that you might like to add to that?

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Bruce Johnson: Regarding what type of transformative changes you might like to see.

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Carlos Anguiano: Yeah, that’s that’s good. Because I think we need to start. We need to start taking a step back on assessment

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Carlos Anguiano: and

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Carlos Anguiano: really talk about it hopefully as individuals, and how it benefits us. Because I think there’s a misunderstanding on the use of assessment and how it’s being utilized.

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Carlos Anguiano: I think one thing we can do is educate multiple stakeholders about the purpose of them. We can also add, add, include, invite them to include, to provide insight into that

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Carlos Anguiano: also.

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Carlos Anguiano: multiple stakeholders can also provide information on content expertise which is content validity. And they can talk about the construct. How is the term being defined? So if we’re talking about parent involvement.

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Carlos Anguiano: what does that look like to multiple parents? I assume and based on the research that everyone views parental involvement in a different state in different way

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Carlos Anguiano: from my perspective. My coach reviewed

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Carlos Anguiano: view assessments as an opportunity for me to pass or fail, and it was never geared towards improving. So a lot of the Times. The assessments were viewed as a punitive puit issue as opposed to being beneficial, and I think a lot of that stuff got lost in what’s being done. So I think in order for us to transform this, we really have to make more people involved. I think we also need to have more conversations like this, where we talk about assessments in a practical way.

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Carlos Anguiano: Not many people can understand the psychometric properties of assessments, and I will be fully transparent. I that was what my Ph. D. Was in.

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Carlos Anguiano: I understand, and I can translate it to what other people mean. But to get that deeper understanding. It’s really lost in me, because I don’t understand the practical application of it. So I really want us to really take assessments now as really being the

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Carlos Anguiano: the main goal of trying to assess the program is because if our measurements are not aligned with our program goals.

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Carlos Anguiano: we’re measuring inaccurate information. So the decisions we’re making are now based on information that’s not relevant. I’ve seen programs close based on decisions. I’ve seen funders

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Carlos Anguiano: come with a different perception on where they wanted to take their nest next strategy based on inaccurate information. So I think in order for us to transform that, we really need to start having these discussions and including multiple perspectives.

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Carlos Anguiano: As we discuss it.

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Bruce Johnson: Excellent. Thank you.

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Bruce Johnson: Dr. Williams, and Carlos’s response. He he shared even some personal some ways that the you know, assessments have impacted him personally, and how he’s even navigated those assessments and their intended uses. So I wanna center a little bit on utilization.

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Bruce Johnson: How how do you see the role of assessments as gatekeepers in education.

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Bruce Johnson: and what changes would you advocate for to ensure that they serve as gateways instead of barriers for marginalized students?

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Ereka Williams: Yeah, thank you for that. And Carlos’s examples hit home in so many ways.

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Ereka Williams: you know. First and foremost, as a classroom teacher who watched assessments

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Ereka Williams: be used in a gatekeeping almost webinars kind of way.

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Ereka Williams: Particularly for students that were culturally and linguistically diverse.

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Ereka Williams: When I taught in role settings and public K 12 schools.

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Ereka Williams: I saw a lot of assessments being used to keep kids out of academically gifted programs and then to disproportionately on the other side of that coin, put them in classifications for emotionally disturbed, etc, etc. I mean, we’ve got decades of literature and research out there on what happens? When we

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Ereka Williams: use assessments in that way. And to the point of what he mentioned, too, that hit home as well, Carlos, around

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Ereka Williams: test defining who you are, that at best, you’re an average student. You’re a Phd in psychometrics.

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Ereka Williams: Just let that sit for a second, you know. Think about it. And so I I go back, Bruce, to your question, to the first part of that, and I look at kind of the the history behind some of these key pieces with what Carlos unpacked there. Intent versus use.

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Ereka Williams: right? Because now we’re getting into valid and validity and reliability. I used to teach for years I taught a course on human growth and development and educational psychology, and I would bring in different theorists and

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Ereka Williams: and people that were critical to this notion of achievement, success, learning, cognitive development. And this was in the early 2 thousands. But Howard Gardner at the time was getting a lot of attention and multiple intelligences, and for good reason, although he would have been the first to say that a lot of his own theories were were misuse and misinterpreted and used against in the very way that he didn’t intend.

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Ereka Williams: But one of the things I used to show with students was some of his lectures where he talked about

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Ereka Williams: what happened when Alfred Benet’s exam. Crossed over to America and became standardized by the you know. By Stanford University. You know we know it as the Stanford Benet. It’s is kind of been used now for decades. Is kind of gold standard for IQ assessments. But what’s really interesting is that was never Benay’s original attempt.

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Ereka Williams: He was asked by the French Government to design that test to kind of help them decide who needed academic assistance. Right? It was later used to determine who was feeble minded.

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Ereka Williams: And from there you know, it became really notable that he originally had concerns about limitations of his own assessment, and he had concerns about ways that it could grow and improve, and he did not believe that there should be a single quantitative measure to define intelligence. He did not believe intelligence was fixed, and one of the things that Gardner used to talk about

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Ereka Williams: was that somehow we’ve transposed that here on our shores into this dipstick theory of intelligence kind of of the old days. I don’t know what’s under car hoods anymore, because I don’t even open mine up. But we used to check the oil under the engine, and you would you know you? You clean the stick, you dip it back in coal oil, you pull it out. You can know exactly how much oil is in there. And and Gardner used to reference these kinds of assessments

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Ereka Williams: in these ways as this dipstick theory of intelligence that we then transformed into saying that this kid because of this measure on this day at 10 o’clock on the Tuesday.

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Ereka Williams: This is where they are. This is their capacity. This is where they need to be tracked, sorted, taunt, etc. And it became this fixed notion.

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Ereka Williams: you know. Also used to share a lot about Dr. Asa Hilliard. passed away in 2,007 kind of he was leading students, as always, on an excursion in Africa and contracted malaria

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Ereka Williams: but Dr. Hillier spent his life research unpacking. He was a like you, Carlos. He was a psychiatrician. He was a psychologist. He was past founding member of the National Black Child Development Institute. He was on the board for the American College of Teacher Education, and he was a vehement opponent

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Ereka Williams: of how IQ testing was being used and codified. In exactly the same way. That I mentioned earlier to determine that primarily African American learners. We’re not qualified to be able to be ready to be taught

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Ereka Williams: and disproportionately placed in special education classes for the behaviorally emotionally disabled. He wrote powerful papers, hit one paper that was presented, I think, in 1979 to the American Psychological Association.

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Ereka Williams: where he essentially talked about the ideology of intelligence and how it had been used that that instrument had been used wrongfully in schools, and that he called for the absolute cancellation of that tool. And it’s use.

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Ereka Williams: And instead, ask that teachers do formative diagnostic work with learners and build on that assessment of learning assessment for learning piece that I talked about earlier Dr. Hilliets. Words would be carried on in quite a few ways. But you also saw court cases that use a lot of his, the basis of his thought that his challenges to how these tests were being used from a psycho psychometric standpoint.

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Ereka Williams: I just think that we have a long history of understanding and unpacking how we’ve misinterpreted, misused assessments, and as such turn them into gatekeeping practices which was not the intent from the beginning.

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Bruce Johnson: Excellent, thank you. And you know, based on some of our previous conversations. I already knew that you had a a deep understanding of some of the root causes behind disparities and educational assessments. So I really appreciate you sharing what you have. And you really hit on some of the key systemic barriers that perpetuate these disparities. So let me ask you, though, in response to that.

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Bruce Johnson: might you have any suggestions on how we might be able to further dismantle some of those challenges that you spoke to.

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Ereka Williams: Yeah, you know, I would go back. The National Institute for Learning Outcomes and assessment. I I work with them for quite a few years. We were brought in and invited in, we meaning scholars, individuals that were dedicated to education and assessment and accreditation to help with quite a few pieces with higher Ed access postsecondary access.

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Ereka Williams: and it was there that I met Natasha Jankowski and George Ku and other heavyweights in the assessment world for post. Secondary. Ed. Natasha and Eric Montenegro published a piece called Equity and Assessment, culturally responsive Assessment, and

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Ereka Williams: there were so many nuggets in what they wrote that really built off of this culturally responsive teaching framework, that some of the, I would say heavy weights like Dr. Geneva, Gay and Gloria lats and billions, people that have spent their whole life work dedicated to what does it mean to have a culturally responsive classroom? What does it mean to have a culturally responsive institution. What does it mean to flip your instruction on its head, and to make sure

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Ereka Williams: that you are understanding that culture and language and cognition work in tandem.

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Ereka Williams: And so Eric and Natasha published a very similar piece around that the responsibility that assessors have in making sure that their practices are culturally responsive and embedded. You know, we understand the students have multiple ways of learning, but then we say they all must show up and have it assessed in one singular way.

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Ereka Williams: We understand that we have their multiple intelligences and multiple ways that people retrieve and export information, but we tell them they have to show up at this day at this time, and it has to be a multiple choice test.

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Ereka Williams: you know. So a lot of the things that we know to do, we know, to do them if we’re doing them through equity, because we’ve we’ve already unpacked it on the culturally, the responsive teaching side, invite the student into the conversation. Have the student have a menu of choices. Let the student identify the ways they want to demonstrate their learning to. You have a portfolio of things that they could show over time. And then, really, critically, you know. And I’ll say this as a former department chair.

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Ereka Williams: really unpack. Why, you’re doing the thing that you’re doing to assess learning. In the first place, I I wish I could. I you know, for privacy reasons I can’t go into this

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Ereka Williams: but the numbers of syllabi that I would have to go through and sit with faculty and ask why this assessment? Why, in this place. And what does it yield? What does it show us about our program outcomes? Yes, now I am an accreditation person. So yes, we have programmatic outcomes. We have degree expectations. There are things that we have to confer with the Unc. System, and when a person walks across the stage that degree should stand for a couple of certain dispositions and skills.

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Ereka Williams: But explain to me, on the most micro level, on your syllabus on this assignment, how does this assignment, which is an assessment. How does this midterm? How does this final unpack, what our candidates cause? I was always in education primarily what our candidates know and can do, because if you can’t attach it, if you can’t explicitly explain why it’s there, and it means something. It doesn’t need to be there.

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Ereka Williams: And unfortunately, in our field of assessment. Sometimes we do a lot of things out of nostalgia, and because it’s the way it’s always been done, and we really haven’t qualified. It’s meaning and purpose. And this utility for right now for learners, for employers, and for where they’re going off to beyond us. I think we have a lot of ways that we can diversify and unpack what we’ve done historically for better outcomes.

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Bruce Johnson: Excellent. Thank you. You know one takeaway that I I gather from this I I really appreciate how you kind of weave this tapestry together where you talk about information game from research student perspectives and even faculty input on this process. So

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Bruce Johnson: that prompts me to kind of begin thinking again about community in one of the earlier slides we talked about this a community of assessment. So I’m gonna pivot in that direction. Just a little bit. And, Carlos, I’m gonna ask you,

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Bruce Johnson: in the in that thinking in that realm about community, anyway, could you share your approach to conducting and evaluating projects? That aim to be participatory.

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Carlos Anguiano: Definitely and and thank you so much, Erica, for sharing that I I do. Wanna add, before I go on to that, I do wanna add that

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Carlos Anguiano: she talked about the history of it. And that’s important.

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Carlos Anguiano: But the reality over this is still going on today.

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Carlos Anguiano: One perfect example of it is, I have 3 kids.

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Carlos Anguiano: I went.

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Carlos Anguiano: I was obtaining my Phd, as my kids are going to school

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Carlos Anguiano: by by federal definition. That means they’re technically still first year generation, because they didn’t benefit from that. They didn’t benefit from that support before.

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Carlos Anguiano: So my son came home, and he was talking about how he was called into the office with

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Carlos Anguiano: 14 other Hispanic and black kids, and put in there, and what the school, what the class was, was designed to get them into a trade school.

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Carlos Anguiano: and one of those conversations was that came out. Was they asked them.

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Carlos Anguiano: Did your parents graduate from college?

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Carlos Anguiano: His response was, yes.

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Carlos Anguiano: right off the bat, they told them. Okay, you don’t belong here because you have parents that support that. So we no longer need to provide support for that.

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Carlos Anguiano: My son doesn’t want to go to college. I would love to learn about what opportunities there are to help them support him in trade school, because I know that I went to a trade school. When I did that I went. I’m a construction labor, that’s my trade, and that’s what I’ve done all my life, cause. That’s what my family did.

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Carlos Anguiano: How do I support him? With that? I can only right now support him in construction, because that’s the connection and familiarity that I have. I’d love to learn what other opportunities they are. But my kid didn’t have those opportunities because he was escorted out because

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Carlos Anguiano: he hit one check mark on there that didn’t even align with the overall purpose of the class was so as a parent, I am a parent first before anything. And so I reached out to the school. I’m like my son wants to take this class because it’s interesting to him. He actually is curious about what opportunities he has. And they’re like, well, funding wise. It’s based on this requirement. And I’m like, well, that’s wrong. You’re assessing them inaccurate, which you should be assessing them as

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Carlos Anguiano: do you want to do this type of work? And if so, here, I can get you to do that, and that’s not what’s being done? This has been now a 2 year battle with me in the school.

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Carlos Anguiano: really to try to get them to change their assessment practices and really making more opportunities for that, because college isn’t for everyone. I’ve learned that. And I know that is, people struggle and some it for it. It makes sense, and some it doesn’t. I respect everyone’s choices, but they should have the opportunity to make those choices based on sound assessment practices that really support them and help improve them overall.

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Carlos Anguiano: So I just wanted to add that, and so tie to tie on to the the next question. So

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Carlos Anguiano: the first thing I do as I approach any evaluation specifically participatory is, what does that mean?

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Carlos Anguiano: Everybody has an understanding of what participatory means to some founders that’s them just really being at the table listening to the conversations. Others they’re driving the assessment practices.

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Carlos Anguiano: Other times they’re just participating in regards to providing content knowledge and providing validity on that aspect of it.

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Carlos Anguiano: So everybody had a different role.

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Carlos Anguiano: But we had to come to a common, shared understanding of what participatory meant before we can even develop an evaluation that aligned with those goals

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Carlos Anguiano: in line with that, I also think

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Carlos Anguiano: we need to educate people on what assessment is in the purpose of it as with, as I mentioned more than once, I did not. I will be fully transparent. I did not know what assessments were. I knew I took them because I had to. I knew I had to take it to get into college, but I never understood it.

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Carlos Anguiano: I went back to go to school to understand that because they misdiagnosed my daughter with speech and language, disability and head start.

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Carlos Anguiano: My daughter was bilingual. She knew Spanish and English, but they use a monolilingual assessment that really

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Carlos Anguiano: tied into the English language, and how she wasn’t developing that properly.

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Carlos Anguiano: As a parent I was concerned. I stopped promoting

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Carlos Anguiano: bilingualism in there. And I focus specifically on education to get that speech. And that was just really removed. By the time she was in first grade

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Carlos Anguiano: I did not realize how much that would have impacted my daughter and her ability to continue what she’s doing

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Carlos Anguiano: to this day. She coach switches at times, and when we have conversations, and this is information she learned when she was a kid. So I’m now having to battle the conversation of

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Carlos Anguiano: what’s English? What’s Spanish? And how do I get you to understand? Because there’s a middle of both.

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Carlos Anguiano: So

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Carlos Anguiano: it’s important to understand what what the definition is. You need to come to a common understanding of what the purpose of the assessment is, what are we measuring.

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Carlos Anguiano: and who are the stakeholders that are impacted by the assessment?

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Carlos Anguiano: Because, from my opinion, in order for this to be culturally responsive and equitable.

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Carlos Anguiano: everybody who’s impacted by the assessment should have a say, and how, the assessments being developed and utilized. Without that.

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Carlos Anguiano: you’re coming from the top up saying, We know what’s best for you. And we’re gonna do this because that’s what research says

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Carlos Anguiano: when you focus it on a different way by bringing in other people, starting from the beginning, having those discussions? Who’s involved?

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Carlos Anguiano: Who are the stakeholders? How are they involved in this? What impact do they have?

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Carlos Anguiano: Who can provide insight into this information? Who’s really gonna be taking the assessments? And what are they gonna do with it.

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Carlos Anguiano: All that information needs to be thought about in the beginning, as you develop or even develop an Rp at that fact, just to get sure, just to make sure that you emphasize that within your proposal.

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Carlos Anguiano: Also, there needs to be an emphasis on coaching response to practices. I think there is a dominant culture that suggests that everybody has to speak and learn a certain way. And what I’ve learned through my experience is because I have a several learning disabilities that I’ve overcome is that you have to

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Carlos Anguiano: present the material in a way that’s accessible for the person. In addition to that, you also have to meet them where they’re at, and assess them in practices that are relevant for who they are, so that you’re assessing them on the actual information they know as opposed to how to take an American test.

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Carlos Anguiano: And so with that, my

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Carlos Anguiano: emphasis on this whole conversation is really to engage as many stakeholders as possible in the beginning, so that you have an understanding of what it is, but also

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Carlos Anguiano: using the coach response to practice techniques to really get up. What if what are we trying to identify? And how is this relevant to the people that we’re looking into.

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Bruce Johnson: Excellent. I wanna I wanna respond, maybe just a little bit off off track a little bit. I I have great appreciation for you as a researcher, and even as a a practitioner in this realm of evaluation and whatnot. But

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Bruce Johnson: I wanted to take a moment to give you kudos and honor you even for the position that you’ve taken as a parent. In this process your passion is clear. And it’s clear that you’re driven to make an impact particularly where accounts.

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Bruce Johnson: Now, that’s it. You touched on in a very big way how we might be able to include multiple stakeholders in the Re research and evaluation process.

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Bruce Johnson: you know that. Can, you know, kind of help to lead some more equitable outcomes for students. But I’m curious about your thoughts on this going back to that point about parents.

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Bruce Johnson: Do you have any suggestions on how we might be able to get parents more involved in the process, so that collectively their voices can be heard, and they can be advocates for their for their children.

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Carlos Anguiano: Definitely. I think parents are not an under utilized resource, specifically within education.

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Carlos Anguiano: I taught pre service. I taught pre-service teachers assessments on how to develop assessments and how to engage the parents through conferences, and that was for secondary and elementary students. And

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Carlos Anguiano: one of the things that came to my mind was always.

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Carlos Anguiano: what is the purpose?

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Carlos Anguiano: Everybody I talked to has a common purpose. When it’s with kids, we wanna help them. We wanna make things better for them. We wanna give them opportunities. We wanna make things equitable that’s unified across teachers, parents, cultures. I’ve made it a point to ask people many times. What is your role as a parent? Because I’m curious about that.

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Carlos Anguiano: and unifying across every culture that I have is that every parent wants the best for the children, and they do everything they can within their power to do. That.

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Carlos Anguiano: One of the things that people often misunderstand and don’t realize is, parents can be your best friend

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Carlos Anguiano: or your worst enemy, and that’s in both ways that’s being done. Another, a parent who’s not educated, but is dictated by a goal that they want that may hurt others

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Carlos Anguiano: is gonna follow the steps and make life hard for everybody else.

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Carlos Anguiano: But if you educate parents and tell them the benefit of it, and how we’re trying to help you and really develop partnerships with them as opposed to

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Carlos Anguiano: these

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Carlos Anguiano: and authentic partnerships, where they ask for parent involvement, but in head start. My only role as a parent to be involved in was to either participate on filters because kids listen to a male teacher. They also had me load. They also had me load the bus, because as a mail, I had the strength to do that, and they also had me clean. They also had me clean the backyard and the and the thing.

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Carlos Anguiano: Just so I can be involved. Now, head start requires you to volunteer. It’s a requirement for a parent to be participated. But the program I was into decided to

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Carlos Anguiano: say that parental vomit was

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Carlos Anguiano: actually just doing those things.

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Carlos Anguiano: I went to school, learned about how parents can be involved. And I went to another head start that my kids are going. And I asked them, Hey, can I be involved. And this is how I would like to be involved.

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Carlos Anguiano: With that I developed a curriculum, the mini curriculum to where we learned about dinosaurs and escalating. And so we had a sandbox. I bought little eggs. We did an excavating where the kids learned everything. The teachers and parents said the kids learned more language than they’ve ever learned than they’ve had than they had, because they were using big words to describe it as was done because I’ve always met. I’ve always

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Carlos Anguiano: focused on talking to them at a level that they understand, not lowering the level to make them in a slow. So I always talk to that level.

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Carlos Anguiano: What that started was

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Carlos Anguiano: parents, hey? Can I help?

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Carlos Anguiano: What can I do?

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Carlos Anguiano: What that turned into a development of a pair of a head start Parent Council, where now we’re a council that meets and talks about what’s being done, and actually has decision making power within that, because we’re one leg of their organization of a 3 day group. So without everybody being there, it can’t be done. So with that we develop parents. But I also

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Carlos Anguiano: change the narrative within the teachers as well. I showed them that if you get parents educate, if you educate parents on how they can support their children, they will be involved and what that translated into kids who are learning the topics better, because now the parents understood how to support them, they were doing more engagement at home activities. They were doing more activities with each other so that they can learn more. So develop better bonds and relationships

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Carlos Anguiano: that all translated just from one thing of me wanting to help, but then agreeing to meet me at where I can support them at so a lot of the times. It’s really having those conversations, and really talking about the narratives

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Carlos Anguiano: and assumptions we have about parent involvement and parent education, and really creating authentic ways for them, be for them to be involved. I’ve also worked for parents to assess students

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Carlos Anguiano: and so teaching them how to assess doing an observation tool to see whether or not they’re seeing specific behaviors in their kid has been instrumental to the success of most of the kids within that organization. They

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Carlos Anguiano: excelled in their ability to do rational thinking they use manipulative as well, all because of that hands-on training. So

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Carlos Anguiano: it’s a lot.

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Carlos Anguiano: And I know a lot of times. It seems very daunting to get parents involved because parents.

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Carlos Anguiano: they’re scared. And I’ve talked to teachers a lot of times. They’re scared because the teacher to 2425, and they have a parent who’s very demanding and want things a certain way.

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Carlos Anguiano: I tell them let’s put that aside.

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Carlos Anguiano: What’s the purpose? Our goal is to really help the child. How can we do that? And once you get to that common understanding of look, and I understand you’re upset. I understand you don’t like this. But what can we do to improve?

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Carlos Anguiano: That’s the conversation you need to have in order to get people involved, because once you have that conversation, people have solutions.

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Carlos Anguiano: They have ideas. They’ve been thinking about things for a while, and how to fix their stuff. They also know how to better approach their child in assessments.

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Carlos Anguiano: Why are they not involved in the conversation?

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Bruce Johnson: Excellent. Thank you again. Kudos again to you, and thank you for being that example. That’s that’s awesome.

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Bruce Johnson: Erica. I wanna expound on something that Carlos even touched on just a little bit. He hit on some points related to partnerships.

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Bruce Johnson: As we talked about engagement. What role I wanna speak about strategic partnerships. That is what role might you say that strategic partnerships can play

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Bruce Johnson: in reforming, how assessments are used and perceived in education systems.

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Ereka Williams: Yeah, absolutely. You know, if we’re thinking about to Carlos’s point of why families matter? Why, S, why, it’s so significant that families are embedded as a critical stakeholder for all purposes. When it comes to learning and assessment, the same goes for

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Ereka Williams: community partners, and why it is absolutely essential if we’re talking about being culturally responsive inside of institutions that we are embedding and connecting and linking community partners that are living among and holding space

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Ereka Williams: for our learners outside of the academic settings, so to speak.

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Ereka Williams: So you know, I think about some of the programs that are in our communities. We serve 18 Western most counties here in North Carolina, dogwood, Health trust, and primarily rural. Asville is among those but doesn’t tend to qualify. You’d be considered as rural. But

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Ereka Williams: When I think about the success that a lot of our learners have found those that have been living in abject poverty, those that are linguistically and ethnically diverse, those that have that show up as learners with disabilities.

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Ereka Williams: no matter what kind of successes or not. They’ve had before the last school bill of the day.

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Ereka Williams: most of them that are fortunate because we also have deserts, but if they’re not in a desert and they have access. They have access to some of the most incredible after school out of school time partners and places within their communities. These partners know those families.

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Ereka Williams: These partners know those kids. They are the ones that the schools call. When the schools have been unsuccessful, they are the ones that the schools call when absenteeism is taking up. They are the ones we we have one partner here.

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Ereka Williams: Ytl, you’ve transformed for for living, living, learning. There’s one particular school where, when the teachers or the administration has kinda exhausted all their ways of reaching a kid that’s become very disregulated, they can call that kids mentor from the Yto program.

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Ereka Williams: and that mentor can step in, intersee, be the mediator, get the kid refocus academically, and then be ready to receive that kid, that child when they come after 3 Pm. And kinda like debrief on all that went on, that’s a partnership that we cannot afford to embed and involve to Carlos’s point from the beginning.

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Ereka Williams: you see, because here’s the other reason, too, that parents can put hands up. Families can put hands up in community. We can’t wait to turn families and community into emergency response situations because institutions have not received and responded and in enveloped our students. The way that they need to.

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Ereka Williams: We need critical stakeholders, partners, community leaders after school time. Yeah, you know, faith community. Whomever whoever is in service to that child, we need them to be at the table from the beginning. What’s the why to Carlos’s Point? What’s the end game? What’s the goal? I’ve never met a family, and I’ve worked with families from early care and education. My first job was as a van monitor at a rural early childcare center. I spent 2 HA day on a van, unbuckling, buckling babies.

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Ereka Williams: wiping noses, handing bottles from there to teaching doctoral students. I’ve never met a family, and I meet families of 40 some year Olds on Graduation day, or whatever that said that they didn’t want the best for their their their child, their teenager, their 20 something their husband, their wife. Whenever I meet a family member, and you watch them look at their learner.

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Ereka Williams: get their whole face in their disposition. They’ve given you everything they’ve got the least we can do is give everything we have from the beginning and invent people from the beginning. And so these partnerships I am so thankful that in this role

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Ereka Williams: in philanthropy. I’ve had the opportunity to help make sure that we invest in those spaces and those partners that have really shown up for communities and families and kids over time. It’s critical. It’s absolutely critical.

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Bruce Johnson: Excellent. Thank you. And so to that point about your your current seat within that realm of philanthropy, I’m gonna ask you to boldly. I’m gonna put you on a hot seat and to create. If you had a call to action for your your peers within the the realm of philanthropy.

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Bruce Johnson: What might it be, or what what type of suggestion might you have that might prompt them to

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Bruce Johnson: structure their efforts? So that they could be more supportive of

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Bruce Johnson: These type of efforts, particularly black and indigenous people of color. In the realm of educational equity. What type of guidance or suggestions might you give for them, so that they could have a stronger footprint in that realm?

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Ereka Williams: Thank you for that, and I don’t mind the hot seat first. I say, name it, speak it, call it out.

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Ereka Williams: Let’s not run away. To Stacey Abrams example, she wrote a very powerful piece in the Chronicle Chronicle of Philanthropy, a while back

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Ereka Williams: entitled It’s Open Season on Civil Rights, and she and another colleague of her who serves on the board of another Philan philanthropic organization, challenge philanthropy to not retreat right now

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Ereka Williams: to not retreat. And so I would say, Don’t retreat.

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Ereka Williams: Don’t start changing your language and commitment to equity.

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Ereka Williams: This now is not the time.

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Ereka Williams: and we have a lot of classic. We have decades, old literature and research on what happens when you have very effective mentoring programs, very effective community based programs, very effective out of school time programs, very effective bridge programs. You know, I sit here as a former Ford foundation student, Honoree, I was in a summer bridge program

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Ereka Williams: for individuals. So get this Carlos for individuals, for African Americans and indigenous learners at minority serving institutions who are trying to become teachers because guess what? In the 19 nineties. Yes, back in the Dark Ages there were groups of us who were black and brown and linguistically diverse, that couldn’t get through teacher exams.

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Ereka Williams: We used to call it the National teacher. Exam. Now, Carlos, get this. I really didn’t qualify, because I had already passed all of my exams, but they still needed their numbers, and I was black, and I was rural. And so my 2 mentors, Dr. Zoe Locklear, at what was known as Pembroke State University, now known as University of Pembroke, and then Fable State, Dr. Sandra Shorter. May she rest in power. They were the African American and the indigenous

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Ereka Williams: scholars that petitioned the Ford Foundation to give them some resources, to do, some above and beyond outreach. With this group of students they had that were strong and powerful and eager to be teachers. But we’re finding these pitfalls. What I didn’t know was that out that I was an outlier I didn’t realize honestly, I was 19 I didn’t realize that people were struggling to get through the Nte.

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Ereka Williams: And all of my classmates in that cohort, and they were able to run it. For 5 years we were given X

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Ereka Williams: extra help in the summers. We were doing a lot of test prep. They also are working with our soft skills that we now know our power skills because a lot of us, because of us being truly first generation being from rural America, being black, being indigenous being. All these things. We hadn’t had the types of exposure that some of the things we’re really kinda asking us forward to test, and that they knew that we were gonna run up against us, beginning teachers and all the settings that we went into.

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Ereka Williams: So we had etiquette classes. We had affirmation classes. We had classes on what does it mean to be culturally responsive? We called it multicultural, edited and nineties. But now is, you know. So I think, about bridge programs, because out of that it was called teaching excellence out among minorities. Out of that effort. For 5 cohorts

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Ereka Williams: they had us. We passed our test those of us. They hadn’t before they had principals, superintendents. We have community college leaders. We have university presidents that all came through and found success because a foundation, made an investment and a black and brown institution in the South to help them help their students get over that hurdle. Don’t back away. Philanthropy now is not the time. It’s time to go deeper.

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Carlos Anguiano: Can I add something on that, Bruce?

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Ereka Williams: Sure, no excellent.

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Bruce Johnson: Actually, Carlos, if if you don’t mind, I I wanna we have just a few minutes remaining, and we this been such a rich conversation again. I wanna thank you both for contributing to it in a in a very big way. But we have a a question in here, and it’s a a from the from our from our audience today. And

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Bruce Johnson: gonna ask Dante, I’m not sure. Can we share this?

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Bruce Johnson: Live with the group.

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Dontarious Cowans |he\him| Community Science: Like share, like the the whole question. One.

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Bruce Johnson: Yeah.

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Dontarious Cowans |he\him| Community Science: I just.

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Bruce Johnson: Want them to have an opportunity to to see it, anyway.

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Dontarious Cowans |he\him| Community Science: I’m not able to, but I could put it in the chat.

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Bruce Johnson: Okay, excellent. Thank you.

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Bruce Johnson: So I’ll read the question to you, and I’d I’d be very interested in hearing both of your responses keeping in mind that we just have a few minutes remaining as a parent of a child who has been labeled as intellectually disabled, based on IQ testing. I’m deeply concerned about the implications of such assessments, particularly when they lead to placement and special education and potentially limited opportunities.

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Bruce Johnson: Given the growing recognition that assessments can be misused and may not fully capture a child’s capabilities. How can we, as parents, educators, and policy policy makers, ensure that our assessment methods are more equitable.

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Carlos Anguiano: I personally love that question.

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Carlos Anguiano: so I’ll take a step.

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Carlos Anguiano: I’ll take a stab at that at the at that time, at

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Carlos Anguiano: as a pan. This is important to me, because the whole goal is that I want my kids to be assessed properly.

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Carlos Anguiano: I think one thing we can do is

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Carlos Anguiano: be involved in our children’s education. So, as an active parent.

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Carlos Anguiano: I meet the kids at what they want me to participate in. So as a parent, I’m also aware that as a researcher I don’t want to cross that line of coming off as being the expert that needs to be done, and I prefer to be

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Carlos Anguiano: brought into conversation as opposed to forced into the conversation. So I’m always engaging with my kids about how they’re being assessed and what they’re doing

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Carlos Anguiano: when they use assessment practices that are invalid.

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Carlos Anguiano: I tend to have that and bring that up as a as a concern during a parent meeting. One example of that is, my daughter was questioned on her ability to speak Spanish because they ran her conversation through a Google translate. And it said, and and an AI detector, and it said that it was a I. My daughter, did that in front of me. We talked about it. We’re bilingual, so it’s what we can be done. I went to the school, talked to the Board of Districts. I emailed everyone I could to understand what’s being done.

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Carlos Anguiano: The solution was, they let my daughter pass.

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Carlos Anguiano: I didn’t end there.

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Carlos Anguiano: and the reason why I didn’t in there, because that wasn’t the concern. My concern was that they were inaccurately assessing my child. So I’m still pursuing that conversation and now working with them to partially develop

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Carlos Anguiano: training training programs to help support them in that area

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Carlos Anguiano: so they can be better at what they’re doing. And so, as a parent, I tend to be as bald as I can. But I’m also aware of how it impacts my children. And so I just encourage you guys to also have that conversation with your kids and really being open and transparent about the overall goal and purpose of it.

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Ereka Williams: And it does change as they age. I am the parent of a a student that has been identified with actually as a birth defect, and it started presenting processing challenges for him. Once he hit middle school and the hormones started flying, and so for the first time we had to have an accommodations plan and that was beginning to covid. So Mama handled all the accommodations at home right? But then, when he started phasing back into day to day school.

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Ereka Williams: Particularly for adolescents, for males. There’s a lot of things to negotiate. So to your point, Carlos, constantly in conversation with my son, about? What? Where is it that you want to advocate for yourself? And where is it that you want me to intercede? And like you too? I also recognize that it. There’s some weight in the room with Dr. Williams comes in right? So I always try to remain humble, and I’ll also make it abundantly clear that I’m his number one advocate.

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Ereka Williams: And I do wanna make sure that they are getting the literature that they need current literature on where he is and what he needs. I bring his assessments. I actually handle his assessments away from the institution. I never let them be handled by the school. I hadn’t done privately. I can do that. All parents can’t. I recognize that it’s a privilege? But I I exercise that privilege. I brought in my own assessments. I had assessments done with

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Ereka Williams: an outside assessor. And so we I manage it. Control that. Just like I’m always having that air traffic control. Accommodations are accommodations being handled where you invited to step out. Did you make sure you advocate for this? It’s exhausting.

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Ereka Williams: It’s absolutely exhausting.

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Ereka Williams: I I’m not gonna speak for Carlos, but it’s absolutely exhausting. But I don’t think there’s another way for me to ensure that this kid gets a fair shake

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Ereka Williams: moving through the system. I have to be engaged. I have to be involved. I have to ask questions, and I have to hold folks accountable.

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Bruce Johnson: Excellent, excellent! And on that note I’m gonna we are at the top of the hour. And so I just wanna thank you both again for your transparency and the richness of this dialogue as someone shared in the comments in one of the Q. A’s. They they talked about your transparency being very relatable, and that more of this type of dialogue is needed. And so I appreciate the 2 of you for taking your time to share and to invest in this type of energy.

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Bruce Johnson: And to our webinar participants. Thank you for taking the time to come out and join us into to listen to these dialogues, and I encourage you to pay. Pay close attention to the future opportunities that community science will share as we’re deeply invested in this realm of equity, and I’m sure that we’ll have more topics and presentations that you’ll be interested in. So again, Carlos, Dr. Williams. Thank you very much for your time and your your your willingness to grace us today.

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Carlos Anguiano: Thank you.

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Ereka Williams: Thank you all.

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Bruce Johnson: Goodbye, everyone. Thank you.