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 exemption 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 for grades three through eight and must be given once in high school to measure how well students are learning.
Hawaiian is an official language of the state, and 20 public schools have immersion programs. Even so, when it comes to testing, the U.S. Department of Education has treated immersion schools as if instruction is delivered in English.
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 Papahana Kaiapuni, 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. The waiver allows these students to take the pilot Hawaiian test for language arts and math instead of the statewide Smarter Balanced assessment.
"We’re confident that Kaiapuni students are up to the challenge of rigorous assessments in the Hawaiian language," said Kalehua Krug, chairman of the Aha Kauleo Hawaiian Immersion Advisory Council and a faculty member of the University of Hawaii-Manoa’s College of Education, which helped develop the pilot tests.
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.
In granting the waiver, the federal Education Department said the state will need to submit the Hawaiian tests for peer review.
