What is going on?
In the United States, all public schools are required by federal and state law to administer some type of state standardized testing to their students. Standardized tests are used to hold schools and teachers accountable. Standardized tests were made to evaluate student’s knowledge, skills, and abilities. However, due to the cultural bias standardized tests favor certain racial groups over others. I became interested in this topic when I found out my 6-year-old brother had a difficult time with the current standardized testing in his first-grade class. These tests can not accurately reflect all student’s knowledge, skills, and abilities fairly. This racial and cultural bias hurts many schools because it affects their ranking, funding, and ability to stay open. For my case study, I am going to focus on how standardized testing poorly affects Native American students and schools in New Mexico. New Mexico has a high population of Native American students who come from the Pueblo, Apache, and Navajo Tribes. Since there are few research articles and data on Native American students, I am going to also analyze articles and research that talk about how racial and cultural bias in standardized testing hurt African American students and First Nation student’s ability to do well on standardized tests. I am also going to talk about how Ella Baker and Saul Alinsky’s methods of community organizing are similar to the types of organizing that the Southwest Organizing Project and the National Indian Education Association used in the past and present time.
