Hawaiian Schools Threaten To Boycott State Test
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Some Hawaiian language immersion schools are threatening to boycott a federally mandated state assessment this year, saying that its Hawaiian translation is inaccurate and unfair.
The threats come after early results indicate that immersion students are getting significantly lower scores, educators say, now that they take the same assessment as their peers — only translated into Hawaiian.
At issue is the test given to 290 of the state’s third- and fourth-graders in programs. For the last six years, they’ve taken the , a test that had been developed especially for them and scored by their own teachers. But the HAPA doesn’t meet federal standards.
A potential boycott of the new test — which does comply with federal standards — could affect entire schools, which are required to take the test.
The state has more than 20 Hawaiian immersion schools enrolling 1,500 K-12 students, who learn traditional academic subjects along with Hawaiian culture and language. The schools are a politically sensitive topic — as educators struggle to balance teaching core requirements alongside language and culture.
The younger immersion students take a special test because they do not receive formal English instruction until the fifth grade, after which they take the same English Hawaii State Assessment their peers take.
But this year the immersion third- and fourth-graders began taking a of the same Hawaii State Assessment their mainstream peers are taking in English.
(Take a practice version of the Hawaiian Language Hawaii State Assessment by clicking . Login and password are both “GUEST.” Note: The practice test site appears to work only in Firefox.)
Immersion school advocates and even the Hawaii State Board of Education chairman believe the new test puts the students at a disadvantage because of errors and problems inherent in translating test items. Some school leaders worry that the students’ lower scores on it will have a negative impact on their standing under requirements. But Department of Education administrators say the new test more accurately measures what content the students are learning than the old one did.
The HAPA was replaced because it did not meet federal standards outlined in the , said Cara Tanimura, director of the Department of Education’s systems accountability office. Test results indicate the HAPA also overstated the students’ proficiency, Tanimura said.
Testing Curriculum, Not Culture
Of the fourth-graders who took the HAPA in 2007, 88 percent were proficient in reading and 59 percent proficient in math. When those same students took the regular English assessment the following year as fifth-graders, less than half passed: only 32 percent were proficient in reading and 30 percent were proficient in math.
Comparatively, mainstream students that year were 54 percent and 48 percent proficient in reading and math, respectively. The initial disparity between the two groups was predictable, as the immersion students were making a leap from a Hawaiian to an English test, educators said. But that same group of immersion students — most of whom speak English as their primary language — could not close the gap with their mainstream counterparts by 2009 and 2010.
Source: American Institutes of Research, distributed by Hawaii Department of Education
Source: American Institutes of Research, distributed by Hawaii Department of Education
When Tanimura shared this information with the school board’s in February, she said, the committee and community members didn’t seem surprised.
“I want to make it clear that our whole point is that we have to test the state curriculum standards,” Tanimura told Civil Beat. “We are not testing the culture and we are not testing whether or not (the students) are acquiring Hawaiian as a language. We test to the Hawaii Content and Performance Standards, which the (Board of Education) approved.”
“The HSA does not test whether or not they are learning English,” Tanimura said. “We just want to make sure they are learning the things that will make them college- and career-ready when they graduate.”
And the four-year trends, along with early results on the new test, indicate they may not be learning those things — at least not as well as their peers.
“There was a difference in proficiencies, for the schools that already began administering the test,” said Charles Naumu, principal of , an immersion school in Palolo. He emphasized that early results on the new test cannot be fairly compared with last year’s HAPA results. “I haven’t really given this thing a chance to play itself out yet, but I can tell you it’s way off, the results are bad and the HAPA was much better.”
Threats of Boycotts and Lawsuits
Board of Education Chairman Garrett Toguchi believes the Hawaiian version of the test puts immersion students at an unfair disadvantage.
“I am convinced of two things,” he wrote in to the Department of Education on February 28. “First, the translated HSA is not a valid and fair test. Second, if the Department does not satisfactorily resolve this issue, it could lead to the dismantling of Ka Papahana Kaiapuni Hawaii or to a federal lawsuit.”
Toguchi told Civil Beat that although the test material may be valid, its presentation for Hawaiian students isn’t equitable with the one that English students receive. Word-for-word translation of English test items produce extraordinarily long sentences in Hawaiian, for example. And the assessment’s tutorial videos for students are available only in English, he said.
Tanimura pointed out that most immersion students are English speakers at home.
The principal at Anuenue said he and others believe the new translated assessment does not meet national test-making standards for reliability and validity. The test also has some language and technical problems, he said. One technical issue is that the online assessment requires the use of an English keyboard, which many immersion students are not formally introduced to until fifth grade.
The Hawaiian immersion community’s language concerns are driving some schools to threaten both lawsuits and a boycott of the assessment.
“There are a good number of Hawaiian charter schools that are opting out and not taking the test,” Naumu said. “There are some people in the Hawaiian language immersion community talking about lawsuits.”
Anuenue students, along with most of the students in immersion programs at non-charter public schools, will still be taking the test this year, even though Naumu believes it is an unfair and inaccurate representation of their academic success.
Immersion Community Didn’t Participate In New Translation
Many of the issues with the test arose because the Hawaiian immersion community did not participate much in its development, he explained. The department enlisted translators from the University of Hawaii, among other places. Naumu said only a few people from the school were invited — none were classroom teachers — but he wouldn’t say why none participated.
“Part of the difficulty was they tried to get non-speakers — or speakers not involved with schools or teaching Hawaiian in elementary schools,” he said. “There are very few people that can do that or understand it. When they had the translated test before, the Hawaiian translations were beautiful, but they were not appropriate. They were too complex for elementary school students.”
But the department invited educators from the immersion community to help develop, translate and review the test items, Tanimura said, but few responded, and even fewer followed through.
The department says it has already addressed some concerns about inaccuracies in the translation by the test and giving it an additional editorial review. But educators believe that review was insufficient, and it shortchanged immersion students by giving them three fewer months to take the assessment.
“The way the test is right now, it is unacceptable and unfair,” Naumu said. “If I had my druthers, we would go back to a culturally based test.”
Civil Beat was not able to confirm which schools plan to boycott, but the administrator for Hawaiian Education Programs said he had heard similar rumblings from the field. Keoni Inciong said he has heard that even in schools that plan to proceed with the federally mandated test, some parents are planning to boycott the assessment as individuals.
Avoiding A Boycott
A boycott could have devastating effects on immersion schools, as Toguchi alluded in his letter to the department. If schools do not administer the test, they will not meet federal benchmarks and could face severe state and federal interventions at a time when political and education leaders are putting pressure on schools to prove their success.
“The federal government requires that all students participate in the assessment,” Tanimura said. “We want to make the test as appropriate and accurate and valid as possible, so we are trying to balance all of that and we are trying to find a solution that works for the community and complies with the law. (The state assessment) is used to calculate (which schools are meeting requirements), and I have to be able to prove to federal government that we were being consistent in what we test and how.”
Toguchi said it is outside the board’s range of authority to tell the department what to do, but he has requested department administrators keep the board abreast of how they plan to handle the controversy.
Two of the options, according to his memo, are:
- Continue administering the HAPA until the issues are resolved.
- Request a temporary waiver from the U.S. Department of Education until another test is approved.
“We are just trying to make sure the principals’ concerns are addressed, and ensure that the Department of Education continues to communicate with them about the options, which right now are interim options and will require some work,” he said.
