Blog # 7: Cultural Diversity and Evaluation

Says Who?

Investigations addressing the issue of cultural diversity in the world of evaluation, school based, have been prevalent since the advent of IQ testing. Reeves 1997 article “an evaluator looks at cultural diversity” identifies intricate differences and issues, which can compound results of evaluatory assessments dramatically. Western phrasing and symbols so prevalent in common assessment tools hold different meanings in many cultures.

The Reading Eagle, a local Berks County paper, recently headlined an article relating to the PSSA’s and proficiency levels for seniors in the Reading School district, Reading, Pennsylvania. The Reading District is comprised of over 50% “minority” designated students with nearly 25% in some category of language remediation. In an attempt to address poor PSSA performance has imposed a requirement for all seniors to attain proficiency in the tested areas or they will not graduate. Students who do not attain the appropriate score are required to complete extra work, a packet of about 250 pages of content and worksheets. At this time based on this criteria only 34% of nearly 700 students have attained “proficiency” in both math and English; the remainder must complete the extra work to graduate.

Why are students in Reading having such problems? Could the issue be merely a local cultural issue? Schools in surrounding areas have much higher rates of proficiency. Locally there has been a good deal of pointing fingers, specifically targeting minority families and students. I contest these innuendos and point out the fact that the percentage below proficiency well exceeds the number of minority students even if every minority student did not test successfully, which is certainly not the case! Are these failures to be attributed to the school system and curricular designs, the students or the standardized test structure? Jost et al (2005) have identified core issues of educational inequality such as race, social justice, and diversity curriculum. Many educators only marginally understand the impacts of these issues, and those who claim to be enlightened also blind to the resultant impacts. Students are to be provided appropriate access to educational resources within reason; should not the assessments also be presented in the same spirit.

Many educators think they can create evaluations using the concepts of Universal Design, which embrace the need to recognize different physical needs and adapting tools and materials to be inclusive. In ‘parallel” testing issues for bilingual students we see the overwhelming compounds of dialect just in the Spanish language thus, applying the now simple concepts driving universal design may be impossible (Huempfner, 2004). With this acknowledgement the question arises- “How do we address unique societal complexities, cultural and historical experiences and at the same time evaluate students’ knowledge-base on “western based” content which is not necessarily inclusive?” How do we accommodate differences in lifestyle and responsibilities in these generalized testing situations?




References:
Huempfner, Lisa (2004). Can One Size Fit All? The Imperfect Assumptions of Parallel Achievement Tests for Bilingual Students. Bilingual Research Journal, 28(3), 379-399,494. Retrieved , from Research Library database. (Document ID: 911821441).

Jost, Muktha, Whitfield, Edward L, Jost, Mark. (2005). When the rules are fair, but the game isn't. Multicultural Education, 13(1), 14-21. Retrieved , from Research Library database. (Document ID: 898561911).