ABSTRACT
The requirement to social distance due to the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in increased demand for remote or at-home testing. This chapter addresses the fundamental considerations of equity, fairness, and social justice when delivering technology mediated testing to young multilingual learners in US K–12 public schools. In this context, annual English language proficiency testing of multilingual learners is mandated by the federal government, entailing the assessment of over five million students every year across the United States. Many of these students and their families come from socioeconomically challenged populations, for whom access to technology can be limited. In addition, these students are characterized by emerging levels of literacy in English and frequently may have limited digital literacy. If testing is to be perceived as socially just, concerns for the fairness of the testing experience from the student perspective must be paramount. In this new era of remotely delivered technology mediated tests, we propose the need for a framework to help prioritize equity considerations, especially for young learner test populations.
