During 2009, while undertaking a collaborative study with U.S.-based teachers, I witnessed academic violence in the form of a high-stakes examination. This manuscript distinguishes my experience with this assessment tool in a nearly all-black public high school from two extracurricular educational programs for African American youth: a Philadelphia Freedom School and the National Rites of Passage Institute. In both of the latter programs, students’ inner growth and positive contributions to their surrounding communities, not just their performance on standardized external measures, indicated the programs’ and students’ success. I thus argue that educational evaluations for social justice must attend not only to academic achievement but also to the cultivation of a social fabric that alleviates human suffering and environmental degradation. Such evaluations can come from looking outward, at the observable and felt effects of our actions in the world, as well as inward, at the growth of our inner lives.

Qualitative inquiry, social justice, culturally responsible curriculum.