Can the Search for “Fairness” Be Taken Too Far?

Abstract

The many works devoted to the issue of fairness in language testing (e.g., Kunnan, 1999, 2000; Shohamy, 2001; Spolsky, 1981) testify to the field’s recognition of the importance of this issue. Brown (1996) defines fairness as “the degree to which a test treats every student the same or the degree to which it is impartial” (p. 31). The goal of language tests is to impartially measure individual test-takers’ language ability. If, however, performance on those tests is influenced by factors other than language ability, then bias is introduced into the measurement.