"Every child comes to school with a gift. Too often, we focus on what they don't have rather than building on the cultural and linguistic wealth they bring."
- Gloria Ladson-Billings
About My Work
Traditional educational and cognitive assessments systematically underestimate the capabilities and skills of African American children - not because these children lack ability, but because our measurement tools conflate linguistic difference with cognitive deficit. This creates both profound injustice and flawed science.
My research is focused on transforming how we understand academic potential for children who have historically been underestimated.
I develop psychometrically rigorous assessment approaches to accurately capture the capabilities of culturally and linguistically diverse children. My research combines advanced statistical methods with an understanding of how language variation affects educational and cognitive measurement, particularly for African American children who speak African American English dialect.
Dr. Katherine T. Rhodes
Assistant Professor
School of Education
University of California, Irvine
