Hawaiian Translation Of State Test Failed Before
Editor’s Note: Read today’s related coverage:
Controversy about the Hawaii State Assessment‘s Hawaiian translation seems to have come full circle — a previous attempt to translate the test less than a decade ago also failed.
When the federal required states to develop their own assessments to measure how well students were learning, the Hawaii Department of Education had to develop two: the Hawaii State Assessment and a translation of it for Hawaiian Language Immersion Program students, who do not receive formal English instruction until the fifth grade.
The translated test was administered to third- and fourth-graders in 2003-2004.
“But it didn’t go very well because of problems with the wording and the length of the questions when you translated them from English into Hawaiian,” said Charles Naumu, principal of Anuenue School, a Hawaiian language immersion school.
It also didn’t pass snuff with federal peer reviewers, said Systems Accountability Office Director Cara Tanimura. The reviewers recommended that Hawaii replace the translated test with a constructive-response assessment in Hawaiian.
Enter the , which was administered to students beginning in 2005, through last year. But it did not include all of the components required under No Child Left Behind. Federal reviewers and state administrators began trying to change it in 2008.
The next iteration was delivered this year in the form of a new translated version of the English assessment. And again the Hawaiian version of the test has provoked criticism from teachers, administrators and even the Hawaii State Board of Education chairman, who say the test is unfair and inaccurate. Read the full story here.
