Moral Agency and Assessment: What's Our Role?

             When I think about how U.S. policies have shaped the way that the educational complex seeks to measure intelligence and student learning, I am so furious with how our perspectives are rooted in the thinking of Spencer and Comte. The idea that we have never moved past ignoring social, economic, and systemic barriers for students of color, and instead have only reinforced these beliefs by leveraging as many branches of science as possible is disgusting. A Nation At Risk (1983) accelerated the move to standardized testing in regular intervals in public schools with both local and federal tests. As Willis (2008) argued, the multiple choice format, and the selection of the best answer does not allow students to demonstrate their knowledge and understanding. If the only time a student must demonstrate their understanding is to pick an answer written by the test creator, then the test is biased towards the students who most closely resemble the author of the test. Standardized tests were never meant to accurately measure reading proficiency, let alone intelligence, but were meant to be as cheap and quick as possible (Willis, 2008, p. 245). Hegemony creates advantages and disadvantages through what becomes to be thought of as “general knowledge,” which is little more than a surrogate term for what white society has deemed to be valuable and important. Therefore, testing becomes a mechanism for reinforcing hegemonic values.

            I remember when I was in my undergraduate program at Kennesaw State University, we were taught that students needed cultural capital to participate and be successful in our society. All students needed the language of Shakespeare, they said, as well as a knowledge other important historical (white) texts. Their intention was to help all students access power, but their impact was to inculcate a generation of students of color into valuing white culture above all other cultures: they were teaching white supremacy. After spending eight years in the classroom, I believe it is possible instead to create space for students voices to be critical of white supremacy while exploring texts and ideas that support and sustain their cultures (Germán, 2021; Ladson-Billings, 2014; Paris, 2012). I believe that I am showing my students that I value the contributions of people of color to the literary cannon when center contemporary authors of color; I let my students know that I am choosing these texts for the purpose representation instead of using the textbook and the prescribed curriculum.

            As teachers we are “moral agents” for either justice or injustice, and our stance toward and use of classroom curriculum is not only highly visible to students, but also either sustaining student cultures or working to erase them. The system of public school seeks to create a “willingness” in students of color to participate in what is sold as “the greater good” (Willis, 2008, p. 197). During the World War II era, Japanese American students demonstrated willingness for the good of the nation through incarceration. I fear that the forces of neoliberalism and capitalism have created a Hunger Games where students are taught by teachers acting as moral agents that they must be willing to accept white supremacy to be successful. Testing seeks to make students little more than labels of deficiency, especially students of color, by focusing on perceived “gaps” in performance that demonstrate many other variables including how disparate students are from the group who manufactured the test. It is vital that we do not position students as passive, victims, or unable to create pathways that subvert the narratives created for them.

            Willis (2008) brilliantly demonstrates the racist history of traditional standardized assessments, many new authors are providing assessment frameworks that subvert and abolish the white normative assessment complex. Muhammad et al. (2020), and Germán (2021) offer two books that provide examples of curriculum and assessment that are culturally responsive and sustaining. The word agent relates to agency; an agent is someone who does the work for others. Agency is the ability to do the work for yourself (and others) but the ability to have choice. Teachers have a moral obligation to create the space for learning and assessment that represents students and their unique and cultural brilliance.    

 

References

Germán, L. E. (2021). Textured Teaching: A framework for culturally sustaining practices. Heinemann.

Ladson-Billings, G. (2014). Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix. Harvard Educational Review, 84(1), 74-84. http://hepg.metapress.com/link.asp?target=contribution&id=P2RJ131485484751

Muhammad, G., Love, B. L., & Scholastic Inc. (2020). Cultivating genius: An equity framework for culturally and historically responsive literacy  [still image]. Scholastic.

National Commission on Excellence in Education. (1983). A nation at risk: The imperative for educational reform. An open letter to the American people. A report to the nation and the Secretary of Education.

Paris, D. (2012). Culturally sustaining pedagogy: A needed change in stance, terminology, and practice. Educational Researcher, 41(3), 93-97. http://dx.doi.org/10.3102/0013189X12441244

Willis, A. I. (2008). Reading comprehension research and testing in the U.S.: Undercurrents of race, class, and power in the struggle for meaning. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.