The Promise of Assessments That Advance Social Justice: An Indigenous Example

ABSTRACT In the United States, systemic racism against people of color was brought to the forefront of discourse throughout 2020, and highlighted the on-going inequities faced by intentionally marginalized groups in policing, health and education. No community of color is immune from these inequities, and the activism in 2020 and the consequences of the pandemic have made systemic inequities impossible to ignore. In the Hawaiʻi context, social and racial injustice has resulted in cultural and language loss (among other markers of colonization), but it is within this loss that we can see the potential for the most significant evolution of assessment practices that champion self determination and social justice. We illustrate how injustices can be addressed through the development of assessments centered in advocacy of and accountability to our communities of color. It is time for us to reimagine what self-determination and social justice in all assessment systems can and should look like.