The Civil Rights Act of 1964 has served as an influential legal framework for addressing intentional (disparate treatment) and unintentional (disparate impact) discrimination. While philosophical and methodological discussions of Title VI and Title VII are well articulated in the legal scholarship, the disparate impact approach--a method for evaluating unintended racialized differences in outcomes resulting from facially neutral policies or practices--remains an underutilized conceptual and methodological framework in assessment literature. In this article, we argue that the burden-shifting heuristic used by entities such as the Office for Civil Rights to redress disparate impact is a valuable approach in evaluating fairness of writing assessment practices. In demonstrating an application of the burden-shifting approach at one university writing program, we discuss the value of the proposed integrative framework and point to remaining questions regarding sampling concerns--group identification, group stability, and intersectionality.

Keywords: credit-bearing courses, developmental education, fairness, two-year colleges, writing placement

We hope this special issue adds to the body of knowledge created by the writing studies community with respect to the opportunities that can be created when assessment is seen in terms of the creation of opportunity structure. This hope is accompanied by a reminder of our strength as we annually encounter approximately 48.9 million students in public elementary and secondary schools 20.6 million students in postsecondary institutions (Snyder & Dillow, 2015). Our influence is remarkable as we touch the lives of many, one student at a time.