Towards justice-oriented classroom assessment: extending a framework for equity commentary on Van Orman, Riley-Lepo, & McMillan’s (2026) principles for effective, equitable classroom assessment

Van Orman et al. (2026) offer a framework of principles for equitable classroom assessment. They describe an important contribution to the field’s ongoing shift towards more learner-centred, contextually responsive assessment practices. I argue that although the framework represents a meaningful advance towards equity, particularly in its attention to sociocultural responsiveness, multiple forms of evidence, and student involvement in assessment, it operates largely within existing paradigms of classroom assessment and stops short of interrogating the historical and structural functions of grading itself. I offer three extensions: (a) reconsidering grading as a mechanism of ranking and sorting, (b) historicising assessment within longer trajectories of exclusion, and (c) interrogating the distribution of power in classroom assessment. These extensions suggest directions for a justice-oriented framework that does not replace the authors’ contribution but extends it into territory their framework leaves unmapped-territory that will require changes in individual teacher practice and institutional/structural formation to enact.