Culturally Relevant Performance Assessments: Lessons From Hawaiian-Focused Charter Schools

• In Event: Manifesting the Mana (Power) of Culturally Responsive Education: A Collaborative Assessment Validation Project

Abstract

Hawaiian-focused Charter Schools (HFCS) were created in the early 2000s to offer families in Hawaiʻi learning environments that emphasize Hawaiian language, culture, and values. Reflective of the national conversation around equity and the need to support each student to meet his or her full potential, HFCS promote culture-based education by grounding instruction and learning in shared ways of being, knowing, and doing to respond to the needs of indigenous youths. Students apply research-informed literacy, mathematics, science, and social studies content and skills through curricula that focus on reclaiming Hawaiian rights and practices directly tied to traditional and ancestral knowledge. Sadly, much of that knowledge and learning process has been marginalized over years of colonization. HFCS curricula focus on reclaiming Hawaiian rights and practices directly tied to traditional and ancestral knowledge. Place- and land-based education, self-determination, genealogical connections, and noninstrument wayfinding navigation are critical components of HFCS. Currently in 2019, the Hawaiʻi public school system includes a total of 17 HFCS. Collectively, HFCS serve over 4,000 students, 81 percent of whom are part Native Hawaiian.

Authors

• Chelsea Nicole Kiele Keehne, Kamehameha Schools
  Presenting Author

• Denise Espania, Mālama Honua Public Charter School
  Presenting Author