Assessment

In his article, “Language, Culture, and the Assessment of African American Children,” Asa G. Hilliard III argues that assessment must accurately reflect the educational philosophy of the teacher, the goals and objectives of that teacher for his/her students. This being the case, how can this be fair to those students who find themselves growing up outside ‘the culture of power,’ outside the culture of people who grow up fluent in “Standard English”?
Hilliard argues that assessment often does not reflect the ideals of educators, and that educators must be prepared to consider and perhaps even teach about a system that assesses students not on their ability but “the words they speak” (Hilliard, 2002). When one culture and language is set as the basis for all worthy knowledge, vocabulary, pronunciation, grammar and by default, even intelligence, it will inevitably create the self-fulfilling prophesy of poor results on standardized assessments found in many areas where Standard English is not the standard. I wonder in how many other cultures of the world this dynamic of subtle oppression has played out. And once again, I wonder what is to be done? Supporting the notion that grammar is grammar regardless of the dialect, Rebecca Wheeler writes, "We know that the most effective way to teach Standard English to speakers of a non-mainstream, stigmatized dialect is to use an ESL technique - Contrastive Analysis. In Contrastive Analysis, the practitioner contrasts the grammatical structure of one variety with the grammatical structure of another variety (presumably the Standard) in order to add the Standard dialect to the students' linguistic toolbox (Fogel & Ehri 2000; Rickford 1999; Taylor, 1991; Rickford, Sweetland, Rickford 2004; Sweetland, ms.; Wheeler & Swords, 2006). This approach, as I have suggested in previous posts, is an ideal way to bridge from a students prior knowledge as well as validate a student’s home language. Indeed, the research is robustly clear: "teaching methods which DO take vernacular dialects into account in teaching the Standard work better than those which DO NOT" (Rickford, 1996)" (Wheeler, 2006). Isn't this approach possible in other areas? How much ‘non-standard’ English can be brought into the English Language Arts class? I suppose the emphasis of the class should lean toward Standard English as a 'common language,’ but, getting back to the original question, how should assessment be addressed so as to address a ‘child’s aptitude and not the words she speaks’? Beyond explicitly teaching ‘the big picture,’ as Hilliard calls it, of historic denigration of non-standard forms of English, I am not sure what else should be done. Thoughts from the blogosphere?

Hilliard, Asa. "Language, Culture, and the Assessment of African American
Children." The Skin We Speak. Edited. Lisa Delpit and Joanne Kilgour
Dowdy. New York: The New Press, 2002. Print.

Wheeler, Rebecca. "“What do we do about student grammar – all those missing –
ed’s and -s’s?” Using comparison and contrast to teach Standard English
in dialectally diverse classrooms ." English Teaching: Practice and
Critique . 5.1 (2006): 16-33. Print.