Ka Wai Ola - Office of Hawaiian Affairs, Volume 27, Number 12, 1 December 2010 — Advocates push for assessment tests in Hawaiian under No Child Left Behind [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Advocates push for assessment tests in Hawaiian under No Child Left Behind

Some Hawaiian-immersion parents refuse to let their children take the test in English

By Kathy Muneno

Puerto Rico has what some Hawaiianimmersion advocates want - the blessings of the U.S. Department of Education to test students in their language of instruction, and have it count under the law of No Child Left Behind, or NCLB. "In short, what is required is equality with Puerto Rico," says Dr. William H. (Pila) Wilson, Professor and Division Chair at the University of Hawai'i-Hilo's Ka Haka 'Ula O Ke'elikōlani Hawaiian Language College, and co-founder of 'Aha Pūnana Leo. NCLB requires assessment tests to be in English, with a eouple of exceptions. One is Puerto Rico. The U.S. DOE recognizes both official languages of Puerto Rico - English and Span-

ish - allowing testing in both. Hawai'i also has two offieial languages - English and Hawaiian, but the U.S. DOE does not recognize Hawaiian as an official language. Dr. Wilson says that is in conllict with Section 105 of the Native American Languages Act (NALA). whieh SDecificallv

recognizes the right of Hawaiian speakers to use the language to express themselves in publicly supported education. Dr. Wilson says this includes testing through Hawaiian. At Ke Kula 'O Nāwahlokalani'ōpu'u (Nāwahl), a Hawaiian-immersion laboratory school under UH-Hilo, English is introduced as a second language subject in the fifth grade, but Hawaiian is the language of instruction in all subjects through to grade 12. Therefore, many feel Eng-lish-language tests are unfair and not an accurate reflection of what the child is learning and knows. To be truly fair tests, or as the NCLB says, "valid and reliable" tests, it's argued the tests must be

in Hawaiian. Wilson says: "No exemption is being requested - only valid and reliable testing. . . . Testing students through a language that is not the medium of instruction does not produce 'valid and reliable' results." Among what's at stake is the right to edueahon through the state's official language. "It reflects poorly on us as a school itself and us personally," says Kaipolani Kim, who has four children attending Nāwahī, where, Wilson says, the graduation rate is 100 percent and eollege attendance is 80 percent. Wilson's children graduated from Nāwahī and his wife is Nāwahī Director Dr. Kauanoe Kamanā. Kim is one of a majority of parents at Nāwahī who say they are not against testing but have refused to have their children take the assessment test in protest against the federal government for treating the Hawaiian language as less than an official language. Kim says she understands there may be consequences to breaking a federal mandate and she's "a little bit nervous about it because in general, if this is a rule I follow it." "I'm not a rule breaker, but in the end I felt it was unfair," she said, and she wanted to support the school "because it's family." When NCLB heeame law, the state translated its assessment test into Hawaiian for grades SEE NGLB ON PAGE 14

Dr. William H. (Pilū) Wilson

NCLB Continued from page 04 three and four. However, the test was later deemed unsatisfactory so the state implemented the Hawai'i Aligned Portfolio Assessment, or HAPA, whieh was originally written in Hawaiian and was a eollection of a student's work. The state stopped using HAPA this year because it put the assessment test online, becoming the third state in the country to do so. That meant going back to a Hawaiian translation of the English-language test because, the state says, it's not possible to have a largely constructive collection of work, such as HAPA, in an online test. However, Kent Hinton, Administrator for the Student Assessments section of the state Department of Education, points out that the online test is not a direct translation, rather it translates the concept of the question and what it's trying to assess. And, he says, the test, whieh ean only be done at school, is "adaptive" rather than one test for all. It adapts to a harder or easier question depending on the student's previous answers. Also, the test is not timed and a student ean take it up to three times within the window of Oct. 18, 2010, to May 20, 2011, so a teacher ean work with students to improve. The state will accept the best of the three scores. Hinton said the department is starting to develop questions originally written in Hawaiian but that may take another 18 months as they need to go through "numerous reviews and quality checks." Wilson questions the validity of translation in testing, especially in testing reading in two very different languages. He also notes that the translation of the online test was done by a company whose main office is in Portland, Oregon. But Hinton says the state had to go with a bonded company, whieh means it must have employees who are proficient in Hawaiian, and it has previously used the company to translate documents into 13 other languages. He says loeal Hawaiianlanguage experts also looked at the translation. "We're confident" in the translation, Hinton says. "Again, like any new assessment you have,

you might have a glitch, but when they eome up, we address them." Charles Nāumu, Principal of the Hawaiian-immersion school Ke Kula Kaiapuni 'O Ānuenue, said he has not had parents refuse to have their children tested and students did well with H APA. As for the new online version, he said, "In spite of the unfairness and unreliability of it, we still take it," but he does "fear that iī'll be a problem or bias for us this year." Still, the online test is only for third and fourth graders, leaving Hawaiian-immersion students in the fifth grade and up testing in English. Hinton said extending a Hawaiianlanguage version of the test beyond fourth grade has "been talked about" but no decision has been made. Both Wilson and Nāumu agree that the only answer is to change the NCLB law - to get the U.S. DOE to acknowledge Hawaiian as an official language and allow testing in Hawaiian for Hawaiian-immersion students. Wilson said he has been in touch with U.S. DOE attorney DonaldYu and says he indicated that the Ohama administration was sympathetic regarding the problem and wished to see it resolved in a new NCLB. But he says, Yu also indicated that there was no certainty as to when that law might be written and passed. A request by Ka Wai Ola to speak to U.S. DOE attorneys was not immediately granted. A U.S. DOE Communications Specialist, Jo Ann Webb, said she could not address why the U.S. DOE does not recognize Hawaiian as an official language and only pointed to the section in the No Child Left Behind Act that allows state DOE testing in a non-English language for children who have been in U.S. schools no longer than five consecutive years, "on a case-by-case individual basis." It is a section pertaining to immigrant children in the U.S., whieh, next to Puerto Rico, is the second exception to NCLB's requirement of English-only testing. To this Dr. Wilson replies, "Hawaiians are not immigrants. Both the federal and state DOE are in violation of the Native American Languages Act." ■ Kathy Muneno is a Contributing Writerfor Ka Wai Ola She is a weekend weather anchor at KHON2.

Students of Ke Kula '0 Nāwahīokalaniōpu'u, a Hawaiianimmersion laboratory school in Kea'au, where a majority of parents say they are not against testing but have refused to have their children take the assessment test to protest the federal government's treatment of the Hawaiian language as less than an official language. - Photo: Courtesy of Nāwahī