Missing Girls on the Margins? Equity, Assessment, and Evaluation in India's New Education Policy

A notable change in the Indian National Education Policy, 2020 pertains to assessment with the proposed establishment of PARAKH (Performance Assessment, Review, and Analysis of Knowledge for Holistic Development) and a promised well-defined assessment architecture for a National Assessment Strategy. This policy reorientation aligns with Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4.7.1 on Quality Education that advocates gender equality and human rights be mainstreamed at all levels in (a) national education policies, (b) curricula, (c) teacher education, and (d) student assessment. However, the consistent underrepresentation of marginalized sections in India's educational assessment and monitoring data has posed issues in gauging quality and equity; one estimate is that national testing in schools omits roughly 26% of school-age children across rural India (Goodnight Bobde, Comparative Education, 54(2), 225--249, 2018). Omitted children are among the most deprived with the lowest learning levels, in part, because special schools like Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalayas (KGBVs) are not included. Established in 2004, KGBVs are government-run, residential schools with the mission of providing quality education to girls from scheduled castes and tribes, other backward castes, and minorities in difficult areas (NITI Aayog, Evaluation study on Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV). Retrieved August 9, 2022, from https://www.niti.gov.in/writereaddata/files/documentpublication/KGBV-report.pdf, 2015). KGBV girls' valid representation in educational data is crucial to evaluating India's success in reaching SDG 4.7.1 via its new policy. This chapter addresses the representation of KGBV girls' learning and interests in India's new policy, particularly its educational assessment and monitoring provisions. Our conceptual framework is informed by concepts from the field of evaluation: democratic evaluation (e.g., Greene, American Journal of Evaluation, 18(1), 25--35, 1997; Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000) and multicultural validity (e.g., Kirkhart, Evaluation Practice, 16(1), 1--12, 1995). Through document analysis and literature review, we examine (1) how KGBV girls' educational interests are served under this new policy's assessment strategies and (2) whether the policy facilitates the generation of credible and useful evidence for equitable reform.