Review of Collaborative Assessment for Multilingual Learners and Teachers Lund, K. E. (2025, August 13). Review of Collaborative assessment for multilingual learners and teachers: Pathways to partnerships by M. Gottlieb & A. Honigsfeld. Education Review, 32. https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v32.4155 August 13, 2025 ISSN 1094-5296 Gottlieb, M. & Honigsfeld, A. (2025). Collaborative assessment for multilingual learners and teachers: Pathways to partnerships. Corwin Press. 169 pp. ISBN: 9781071930861 Reviewed by Kyrsten E. Lund Utah State University United States “Are you ready to join us on an extraordinary trip?” With these words, the authors of Collaborative Assessment for Multilingual Learners and Teachers invite you to join them on a journey to explore how schools around the world have brought collaboration to the forefront of their assessment practices. These schools have developed partnerships between teachers, students, families, and administrators that honor and value the perspectives of each stakeholder. With a shared well of knowledge to pull from, teachers are empowered to design assessments that are equitable and responsive to individual students. This book is built on a foundation of multilingual education research and written by experts in the field. Authors Margo Gottlieb and Andrea Honigsfeld serve as tour guides as they take you to schools across the globe implementing collaborative assessment practices in support of multilingual students. Dr. Gottlieb is an expert in multilingual education with more than 90 publications to her name. She served as both the co-founder and lead developer of World-class Instructional Design and Assessment (WIDA) and in 2025 was inducted into the Multilingual Education Hall of Fame. Dr. Honigsfeld has served as a coauthor or coeditor of 27 book publications and presented at conferences globally. She has international teaching experience and currently is a Professor of Education at Molloy College in New York. Throughout the book, the authors describe activities and practices present in schools that have adopted a collaborative framework for assessment. While the descriptions are illuminative, I see the real value of the book as being the roadmap each chapter provides for schools looking to make the change. The authors do a masterful job anticipating and answering the reader’s questions, such as when, how, https://doi.org/10.14507/er.v32.4155 Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas 2 and why collaboration should be implemented. The authors provide a rich context for learning by including conceptual and functional resources, such as “educator promises” that support mindful implementation, suggestions on how to avoid common obstacles, and practical guides that promote strategic collaboration. Each chapter is structured with meaningful considerations—embedded in travel motifs, of course—and signpost illustrations drawn by Claribel González. The authors envision assessment as operating inside the instructional cycle and separated into three types: assessment as, for, and of learning. Each type of assessment provides unique opportunities for stakeholders in multilingual education to reflect on individual students, their strengths, and their goals. When using assessment as learning, a teacher might instruct students to graph their progress toward a learning goal over time. Assessment for learning might include conferencing with students to discuss how work samples compare with mutually agreed on learning outcomes, especially with the intention of identifying areas for instruction. Finally, assessment of learning usually takes place at the end of a unit and may involve parents or teacher collaboration teams. Each type of assessment is an opportunity for stakeholders to work together in support of a variety of goals (e.g., improving metacognition, designing culturally responsive assessments, making instructional decisions, setting learning goals). While this book would be an insightful addition to the bookshelf of any teacher who works with multilingual students, it is school administrators who will find themselves at the center of an initiative for collaborative assessment. Without administrator support, efforts to prioritize collaboration at a school level may not be feasible. Indeed, Gottlieb and Honigsfeld suggest that “schoolwide commitments to collaboration” are necessary luggage that must be ‘packed’ on a journey to collaborative assessment (p. 35). This is not to say that educators cannot implement collaborative assessment practices without a school-wide framework and administrative support. Many practices included in this book can be implemented in individual classrooms to cultivate a more comprehensive understanding of student learning. The individual teacher will still learn strategies to support students through multimodal assessments, but the focus may be limited to collaborating with students and families. Even so, such partnerships provide educators with the ability to empower multilingual students through practices such as cultural responsiveness and student choice. In a world where standardized testing has become synonymous with learning outcomes, Gottlieb and Honigsfeld offer a supplement with the potential to advance equitable schooling for multilingual learners. Educators utilizing this framework of collaboration will have a rich collection of assessments with which to evaluate student learning. Armed with a diverse portfolio of strategies, teachers will gain unique insights into how students approach their learning goals as individuals. While standardized testing is outside the purview of both teachers and administrators, all educators can commit to using multiple forms of assessment to shed light on the learning that takes place in schools yet has been rendered invisible by standardized testing. Students are individuals, and it is imperative that they be provided individualized assessment and instruction to support everyone who is seeking an education. Review of Collaborative Assessment for Multilingual Learners and Teachers 3 About the Reviewer Kyrsten Lund is a Ph.D. student studying curriculum and instruction with a concentration in literacy at Utah State University’s School of Teacher Education and Leadership. She has six years of experience working with high school students and currently serves as a graduate research assistant. Kyrsten's research interests include literacy instruction and intervention in secondary schools, critical media literacy, and functional literacy in the modern world. Education Review/Reseñas Educativas/Resenhas Educativas is supported by the Scholarly Communications Group at the Mary Lou Fulton College for Teaching and Learning Innovation, Arizona State University. Copyright is retained by the first or sole author, who grants right of first publication to the Education Review. 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