Asa G. Hilliard

Excellence in Education versus High-Stakes Standardized Testing.

The evidence is missing for high-stakes standardized testing of either intelligence or achievement as a reform tool, a tool for producing higher student achievement. The focus on invalid testing allows us to ignore the well-documented importance of the quality of teaching as a key factor in student achievement. There is no doubt that teachers can become powerful agents in raising the academic performance of children to high levels, regardless of common impediments such as poverty, bilingualism, and so forth. With the extreme and almost exclusive focus on high-stakes testing, we lose the opportunity to support valid staff development that would make all of our teachers powerful.

The Pitfalls and Promises of Special Education Practice

It is imperative that special education enable children with disabilities to achieve at high levels. Problems of equity and pedagogical validity have hindered our efforts thus far, and many children of minority cultures are far overrepresented in classrooms for students with learning disabilities and mild mental retardation. Studies have shown the importance of culturally and linguistically inclusive programs and of heterogenous groupings, as well as more effective diagnostic, remedial, and assessment practices. This article discusses a model and basic principles for such techniques to ensure that the educational outcomes of all children are improved.

Psychological Factors Associated with Language in the Education of the African-American Child.

In June, 1976, in southwest township (Soweto), a suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa, a student rebellion broke out. The immediate trigger for this rebellion was the requirement by the white minority (Dutch) government of South Africa that the Black majority be required to use Afrikaans, the language of the Dutch, as the language for learning in school. In the view of Blacks in South Africa, this would be tantamount to the extension of existing physical enslavement to include mental control as well. Changing the language of nearly 20 million people for the benefit of three million or so slave masters meant much more than adding a new skill to a repertoire. It would mean ultimately the loss of access to ones own cultural heritage, including history, religion, proverbs, humor, conceptual relationships, world view, and even alienation from ones elders and ancestors. It would mean enduring immediately the shame and guilt that goes with yielding to coercion and domination as well as supporting the legitimacy of a permanent and enduring symbol of complete slavery, the oppressors language. In one bold stroke, the cultural heritage of thousands of years would be threatened with extinction.1 The Boer of South Africa were themselves an oppressed group initially, being forced to use English as their language, being referred to as stupid, and being made to feel ashamed of speaking their own language.2 With the rise of the Broederbond, and the

IQ Testing as the Emperor’s New Clothes

I, for one, was very happy to see the publication by Arthur Jensen, Bias in Mental Testing (1980), not for the reason, as some have suggested, that it provides a “final definitive answer” to the critics of standardized IQ tests. I am happy because Bias in Mental Testing, as Jensen’s attempt to be comprehensive, actually covers so much territory that the soft underbelly of key arguments in support of IQ testing in general and IQ testing for “minority populations” in particular is easily exposed. Presumably, this book is Arthur Jensen’s tour de force. He has done a distinct service to education measurement by his articulation of common practice in test construction, experimental design, and statistical methodology. I can think of few references that treat these topics quite so clearly and comprehensively. On the other hand, Arthur Jensen has listed most of the major criticisms in the IQ-testing controversy but has failed to deal with the data that are presented in support of the criticisms by others. Jensen has claimed that he has made an exhaustive review of all the literature that pertains to the IQ argument. In this critique, we will look precisely at that claim.I, for one, was very happy to see the publication by Arthur Jensen, Bias in Mental Testing (1980), not for the reason, as some have suggested, that it provides a “final definitive answer” to the critics of standardized IQ tests. I am happy because Bias in Mental Testing, as Jensen’s attempt to be comprehensive, actually covers so much territory that the soft underbelly of key arguments in support of IQ testing in general and IQ testing for “minority populations” in particular is easily exposed. Presumably, this book is Arthur Jensen’s tour de force. He has done a distinct service to education measurement by his articulation of common practice in test construction, experimental design, and statistical methodology. I can think of few references that treat these topics quite so clearly and comprehensively. On the other hand, Arthur Jensen has listed most of the major criticisms in the IQ-testing controversy but has failed to deal with the data that are presented in support of the criticisms by others. Jensen has claimed that he has made an exhaustive review of all the literature that pertains to the IQ argument. In this critique, we will look precisely at that claim.

From Hurdles to Standards of Quality in Teacher Testing.

In 1983 Floridas state legislators proposed adoption of a merit-pay plan for its public-school teachers. One requirement in the plan that met with strong opposition, and was later dropped, was that applicants for merit pay must possess a masters degree in the subject they teach. The ramifications of this requirement are exemplified in the following excerpt from a 1984 Education Week article. Only 36 percent of the teachers of the year are eligible to apply for merit pay. ... The obstacle for most teachers of the year is the 1983 legislatures decision that only teachers with certain masters degrees-those specifically pertaining to the subject they teach-would be eligible for merit pay.

Kemetic (Egyptian) Historical Revision: Implications for Cross-Cultural Evaluation and Research in Education.

Feature articles should deal with topics applicable to the broad field of program evaluation. Implications for practicing evaluators should be clearly identified. Examples of contributions include ...

Back to Binet: The Case against the Use of IQ Tests in the Schools.

1. The scores are a practical device; they do not buttress any theoryof intellect. They do not define anything innate or permanent. We may not designate what they measure as “intelligence” or any other reified entii. 2. The scde is a rough, empirical guide for identifying mildly retarded and learningdisabled children who need special help. It is not a device for ranking normal children. 3. What ever the cause of dmhy in children identified for help, emphasis shall be placed upon impravement thfwgh special training. Low scores shall not be used to mark children as innately incapable. (Gould, 1981, p. 155)

The Teachers of the World

I have a very short time to tell a very long story. When I went to high school and to college the things that I was taught about African people were mostly very negative. Without going into all those things, the worst part of it was that we had no history. In fact, what they told me was that our history began in slavery. And so all the books that I studied in history at college, if I picked up a book in philosophy or mathematics, or if I picked up a book in art or music, there were no African people there before slavery. And if you raised the question of Africa or African people, or, as we were called in the United States in those days, Negroes or colored people, if you raised that question people would immediately say that yes, slaves were brought over here around the time of Columbus. But there was nothing said about us before that time. I always wondered about that as a child. I always identified very strongly with Africa. In fact, my wife and I were in an African dance group when we were in junior high school. I just didn’t know enough then to know why we were doing what we were doing. Happily, I have had the opportunity to learn to think about African people since then.

The Schools' Response to Youth Unemployyment:

The key to understanding of relief-giving is in the functions it serves for the larger economic and political order, for relief is a secondary and supportive institution. Historical evidence suggests that relief arrangements are initiated or expanded during the occasional out-breaks of civil disorder produced by mass unemployment, and are then abolished or contracted when political stability is restored. We shall argue that expansive relief policies are cyclical - liberal or restrictive depending on the problems of regulation in the larger society with which government must contend [Piven and Cloward, 1971]. It is about a search too, for daily meaning as well as daily bread, for recogniton as well as cash, for astonishment rather than a torpor; in short, for a sort of life rather than a Monday through Friday sort of dying. Perhaps immortality, too, is part of the quest. To be remembered was the wish, spoken and unspoken, of the heroes and heroines of this book [Terkel, 1972: xiii].