Teacher tests can right past wrongs - or can they?

According to Emery Patchauer in the Detroit News:

In 2013, the State Board of Education attempted to increase the readiness of new teachers by revising the exams they have to pass in order to earn a license. The results were a disaster. In the first round of testing, pass rates for the history exam fell from 71 percent to 25 percent. Social studies fell from 65 percent to 22 percent. Elementary education fell from 83 percent to 49 percent

Does this mean that teachers are less ready, that the new tests showed that teachers needed more education before they walked into the classroom?

Don't be silly.

First, we must resist the logic that says pass rates drop because teachers today are less prepared compared to years past. This is wrong. A sudden drop in scores like we saw in 2013 happens when exams are hastily adopted or not properly piloted. This sudden drop also happens when the exams are made by a company with little connection to the deep work of teaching.

It's all the new test's fault.

Truthfully, I don't know the difference between the pre and post 2013 tests. I do know that it's way too easy to blame a test for a person's shortcomings. I also know that teachers need a knowledge base before they step into that classroom. They can't teach what they don't know, and staying one day ahead of the students you are teaching is not a sound strategy. Later in the article, Patchauer takes race and gender into account. The stats aren't given, but we're made to understand that there are some testing discrepancies between races and genders. Assuming that each class of prospective teachers is made up of students of various races and genders, one should look at students' previous education to discover why this is. Study habits and reading skills might also be issues here.

It seems to me that Patchauer wants a dumbed down test that anyone can pass.

Students can find sample questions on the Michigan Test for Teacher Certification website. There is also an option to buy practice tests. Other options would include studying harder and longer and even getting together with colleagues to study together.

The issue here is that these future teachers attended public schools that did not prepare them to succeed academically. I've already ranted in previous posts about the lack of phonetic reading instruction crippling students' reading abilities. Those skills not learned as a child, will most likely never be learned, and if these teachers someday do pass the test and do enter a classroom, they will do so without the skills needed (because they were never taught them) to truly teach their students.

And that is not the fault of any test.

Diversity First—Education, Whenever

Over the past few generations, school has become less and less about education, and more about all kinds of other things. Even so, teachers, administrators, government officials, schools of education, and parents all insisted that no, children are in school to learn. When they graduate, they're supposed to be able to function as intelligent adults in an increasingly complex society. Graduates are supposed to have the tools they need to earn a living, vote intelligently, raise a family, and entertain themselves. They should be able to read, write understandable prose, and know enough math to shop, manage their finances, read a graph, and know when their being snowed by government officials or other shysters trying to part them from their hard earned money. It also doesn't hurt if they know enough science and history to catch a glimpse of how the world works.

That's what everyone pretended. Now, in New York, they've stopped even pretending.

Mayor Bill de Blasio’s school-integration task force just dropped its initial report—a multilayer cake of mostly impenetrable social-justice jargon, interspersed with a dangerous idea or two, and with a dismaying lack of emphasis on the enduring value of teaching children to read, write, and do numbers. In fact, the report represents a significant victory of show over substance, establishing “diversity” as the principal goal of public education in New York City while exiling accountability—teacher accountability, parent accountability, student accountability—to the ash heap.

In its willingness to sacrifice function to form, the School Diversity Advisory Group’s initial report (a second is expected later in this school year) is a classic example of an old trope—to a hammer, the world looks like a nail. As panel member Matt Gonzales told the New York Times: “The idea of a good school versus a bad school is based on narrow assumptions [including tests and attendance].  We wanted to shift the narrative about how we measure school quality. Good schools are integrated schools.”

Or, as the report itself puts it at one point, “the use of exclusionary admissions screens . . . which judge . . . kids on behavior, test scores, and other biased metrics, is the biggest contributor to . . . segregation.” Get rid of “biased metrics,” in other words, and— presto—the problem is solved. But good luck educating children in an environment where behavior and other quantifiable performance standards are deemed an objective impediment to progress.

That's what it's come to. The best and brightest will no longer be allowed to excel. Everyone must be equal, even if that equality leads to a Harrison Bergeron society.