The Promise of Assessments That Advance Social Justice: An Indigenous Example

• In Event: Racial Justice in Educational Assessment

Abstract

In the United States, systemic racism against people of color was brought to the forefront of discourse throughout 2020 and highlighted the ongoing inequities faced by intentionally marginalized groups in policing, health, and education. No community of color is immune from these inequities, particularly indigenous communities. The events of 2020 and the pandemic have made these systemic inequities impossible to ignore, and the field of educational assessments is not immune. This is apparent in the Hawaiʻi context where social, and racial injustice has resulted in cultural genocide and language loss (among other markers of colonization). It is within this loss that we can see the potential for the most significant evolution of assessment practices that champion self-determination and social justice.
As Trumbull and Nelson Barber (2019) have articulated, nowhere is the disconnect from a native worldview and the disregard of culturally sustaining pedagogy more blatant than in the development of large-scale assessments. However, nowhere holds more promise in dismantling the structures of injustice, colonization, and racism than in the assessment realm. We intend to illustrate how systemic racism and colonization can be addressed through the development of assessments that prioritize Native culture and knowledge, and privilege the advocacy of and accountability to our communities of color. We will highlight how the statewide Hawaiian language assessment program has been tackling these issues over the last 8 years as an example of how others might consider their own assessment systems. It is time for us to reimagine what self-determination and social justice in all educational and assessment systems can and should look like.

Authors

• Pohai Kukea Shultz, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa
  Presenting Author

• Kerry Englert, Seneca Consulting
  Presenting Author