Assessing ethnicity - Equity for first-grade male students on a curriculum-embedded performance assessment

The purpose of the study was to determine the extent to which indicators on the language and literacy and mathematical thinking domains of a curriculum-embedded performance assessment functioned differently for urban, African American and White male students. A sample of 852 first-grade male students in a large urban school district, located in the southeastern part of the United States, was included in the study. An ordinal logistic regression procedure was used to investigate differential item functioning for indicators on the domains. Results showed differences in the average ratings of African American and White male students on 25 of the 26 indicators. However, the indicators did not function differently for the ethnicity groups when students were matched on ability level.