When the test fails: Testing and educational equity for emergent bilinguals A response to: Peggy Hickman and Shernaz B. García’s “elementary principal leadership for equitable learning environments for diverse Latina/o students”

Abstract

In the decade and a half since the passage of No Child Left Behind, there has been a massive
proliferation of testing in public schools. The overreliance on testing as a measure of “accountability” has
distorted our understanding of learning, narrowing it to what can be measured by a #2 pencil on a bubble
test. Peggy Hickman and Shernaz B. García’s “Elementary Principal Leadership for Equitable Learning
Environments for Diverse Latina/o Students” (NYS TESOL Journal 1[2], 2014) is an important reminder of
“the problematic nature of such a narrow view of schooling” (p. 61). For emergent bilinguals, the use of
test scores as a measure of learning is all the more problematic because of the myriad cultural biases
implicit in standardized tests.