Discriminatory Writing Assessment Practices in First-Year Composition

Abstract

Discriminatory writing assessment practices in first-year composition are rampant across academic institutions in the U.S. These practices have helped perpetuate standard language ideology that serves the interests of the institutionalized racism and done a disservice to Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC), whose writing practices fail to abide by the conventions of standard English. This chapter holds implicit biases and stereotypical perceptions engendered by instructors and academia chiefly responsible for these discriminatory assessment practices and argues that these go against the spirit of social justice in writing classrooms, particularly impacting academic trajectories and other life chances of BIPOC students. Finally, it offers some recommendations on how these unfair assessment practices that rest on implicit biases can be checked using culturally relevant pedagogy, which incorporates translingualism and multimodality, and the roles different stakeholders can play in this process.