Testing, Standards and Culturally Responsive Schooling

The thing in Part two that perplexed me was the creation of the IQ tests, which were used to determine student’s ability to pursue academic or vocational career tracts in the Progressive Era 1900-1950.   After reading Paul Tough’s book and realizing that character is the factor that determines success in life it is sad to me that students were identified by this measure, even at the ages of 5 and 6 years old.  This issue engages me because it makes me think of the ISAT tests that our students today take.  There is so much pressure to perform well on this standardized test that may not accurately measure what a child knows.  Who created these tests?  What background knowledge is assumed?  The Mexican students who maybe did not yet know English were forced to take these tests and their future was charted by their results, or even worse, because they were Mexican, they automatically were put in industrial schools and not allowed to take the AP college prep courses.    What matters here is an equal education and it continues to be a struggle today.  I teach on a reservation.   Do the tests that my Native students are expected to get a proficient score on reflect their values beliefs and the wealth of background knowledge they bring to school? 

The national Common Core Standards are an attempt to help our students gain the skills they need to be able to think as John Dewey prophesied about the world of the future

“The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think—rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with the thoughts of other men.”  I love this quote and aspire to be a teacher who does this, but finds it challenging especially in the primary grades to build this kind of learning in my classroom.  I think having our students share their learning and thinking process and how they arrived at their answers is a great learning opportunity.  The writer’s workshop model encourages the process and not a cookie cutter result, so I guess to some degree I am achieving a degree of this.  Any more suggestions with primary students?

It is amazing to me that even after Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954 that segregation was not resolved.  “The South defied it.” p.142 It wasn’t until federal money was given to schools who were integrated that change actually occurred.  It required bravery on the part of the students who attended different schools.  Even then in a way they took a step backwards because the African American Students who had been taught by African American Teachers were now being taught by white teachers because the African American Teachers lost their jobs.  Teaching on the Nez Perce Reservation I realize the importance of our students having Native American Teachers that they can see as role models who know where they are coming from and can relate with them.  It is much harder as a “white” teacher to learn their culture and try to create culturally responsive curriculum to value their culture.  The Mexican students were told that they did not need to go to college.  The students who insisted on breaking the stereotypical mold became some of the future leaders to enact change.  Thinking that these things occurred when I was born and while my parents were going to school is amazing to me.  I did not experience this way of thinking or witness discrimination.