High stakes testing, bilingual education and language endangerment: a Yup'ik example

Abstract

A growing body of research documents how educational policies and accountability systems can open or close ‘ideological and implementational spaces’ for bilingual education, shaping the language planning efforts of Indigenous communities. Using collaborative research, Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers investigated the intersection of policy, schooling, and language maintenance/shift within a school district serving 22 Yup'ik villages in Alaska. This article demonstrates how, as multiple communities are witnessing emerging signs of a language shift to English, high stakes testing practices accompanying No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation are simultaneously weakening support for bilingual programs in village schools. Yet the article also illuminates the ways in which Yup'ik educators are acting as local language planners, negotiating language maintenance/shift/revitalization, and testing regimes in contested school spaces. Authors discuss the urgent need for, and the promise within, spaces for locally directed language investigation and language planning in national contexts of educational standardization and high stakes assessments.