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Hawaiian language immersion students won’t be tested in both English and Hawaiian under a one-year federal waiver granted this month.
The state Department of Education applied for a waiver from the federal law requiring states to use the same assessment for all students to measure achievement. In the request, the state said the exception would ensure that students instructed solely in Hawaiian are assessed in their language of instruction.
“This waiver sets a precedent for our Hawaiian language education efforts,” schools Superintendent Kathryn Matayoshi said in a statement. “We’ve been working hard to transform education in Hawaii and Hawaiian education is no exception.”
Annual standardized tests in language arts and math are federally mandated to measure how well students are learning. While Hawaiian is an official language of the state and 20 public schools have immersion programs, the U.S. Department of Education has treated immersion schools as if instruction is delivered in English when it comes to testing.
The state Board of Education a year ago overhauled its policies guiding Hawaiian education, including a commitment to create and implement appropriate standards and performance assessments for the DOE’s immersion program, Ka Papa-hana Kaia-puni, which educates about 2,400 students in Hawaiian in kindergarten through 12th grade.
The state in May will field test standardized assessments developed in Hawaiian for approximately 250 third- and fourth-grade immersion students. These students will not have to take the statewide Smarter Balanced assessment.
Previously, immersion students took a test developed and scored by the language program’s teachers, but it didn’t meet federal testing standards. Students have since been given a straight English-to-Hawaiian translation of the state test, which Hawaiian educators say contains serious grammar and vocabulary errors.
Because English isn’t introduced as a subject typically until the fifth grade, third- and fourth-grade immersion students take the translated version of the assessment, while older students take the English version. Some parents have their children boycott both the translated tests and English tests, which can affect a school’s standing on the state’s accountability system and federal funding.
