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Testing teaching-competency:
Minority teachers' double edge
María del R. Medina
Catedrática Auxiliar fundamentos de la Educación
This paper
discuss two main aspects: the education of the minority
population in the United States and the use of tests for
measuring teaching competency. The author argues that the
interplay between these aspects influences the shortage of
minorities in the teaching profession.
Education of minorities
Since A Nation at Risk (National Commission on
Excellence in Education, 1983) hundreds of report of the
education reform movement recommend that more rigorous
demands and higher expectations must be placed on teachers
in order to improve students' learning and achievement. For
example, A Nation at Risk devotes an entire set of
recommendations for improving the training of teachers and
to make teaching a more rewarded and respected profession
More recently, two reports-Tomorrow's Teacher (Holmes
Group, 1986) a consortium of deans of schools of education
at research universities, and A Nation Prepared: Teachers
for the 21st century (Carnegie Forum on Education and
the Economy, 1986)- prescribe solutions at college and
professional levels for attracting qualify recruitments and
recommend changes for the way that teachers are trained.
Excellence in education has been defined in terms of
measurable students' results, and the students achievement
scores are the single most important criterion of teaching
excellence in the mind of critics, politics and economists.
Responding to this mandate for excellence, state
legislatures and state boards of education have moved to
implement simplistic solutions to the complex maze of
educational problems. A national response is the adoption of
state mandate competency tests for certification of teachers
and of setting more strict criteria for the selection and
training of the future teachers at college and university
levels. As a consequence, teachers have become an object of
scrutiny, and testing has become a mechanism of control over
their professional competencies in order to ensure the
“quality” of teaching.
Demographic figures show that Hispanics represented 8.2% of
all 18-24 year old population but 5% of the college
population in 1985 (American Council on Education [ACE],
1987). Similarly, the black college-age population of 13.7%
translates into 9.7% of the college enrollments, and Native
Americans were 0.5% of the college population compared to
0.7% of the total population in that group. In contrast, the
enrollment of whites at college level was 86%. In addition,
students from all minority groups tend to be concentrated in
two-year public colleges. More than half of all Hispanic and
Native American college students are enrolled in community
colleges, compared with only 39% of Blacks and 33% of
whites. This constitutes a difference in educational
environments and resources, such as libraries, financial aid
and faculty salary available for minority students and
supported by state policies in comparison with four-year
educational institutions.
The critical issue is: where are the minority high school
graduates who are not entering college? Some possibilities
are: in vocational, business and technical schools (32%), in
the armed forces (e.g, Blacks were 19% of active duty forces
in 1984), or unemployed. The last condition seems the most
pervasive: among minority youth, the unemployment rate is
double of the whites, reaching almost 50%, and for
minorities who are dropouts, it climbs to about 65%
(National Coalition of Advocates for Students, 1985). This
data is evidence of the minority groups’ realities in the
job market: low-paying jobs or unemployment are the dead-end
for many minority youth after high school.
Another aspect that should not be missed is the amount of
minority dropouts at the high school and college level. It
is interesting to notice how these figures are not
considered in many of the reports. What will become of the
78% of Blacks who dropout in New York and Chicago, or the
40-50% of Asian Americans who dropout in Boston, or the
48-85% of Native Americans who dropout nation wide? The
cruel reality of the high rate of dropouts among cultural
minorities is another symptom of the degree to which the
educational system does not address and deal effectively
with the needs of cultural and linguistic minority students.
For example, nearly 25% of all public school teachers had
students with limited English proficiency (LEP) in their
classes in 1981, but only 3.2% of those teachers said that
they had academic preparation or language skills to instruct
their LEP students. This lack of teacher preparation in
multicultural facets as well as the lack of support of
bilingual education are indicators of the failure of the
most of the school districts in promoting the diversity of
students’ languages and cultures as potential strength for
the students themselves and as a resource for the community.
Education as a career
Regarding college completion, Blacks were the only minority
group to experience decline in the number of degrees awarded
at nearly all levels of college between 1975- 76 and 1984-85
(ACE, 1987). Hispanics had considerable gains in the number
of degrees earned but they continue to be one of the most
underrepresented populations in higher education. Also,
Native Americans have the least number of graduates at all
college levels during these periods.
In 1975-76, education was the most frequently chosen field
by minorities but by 1984-85 it had slipped to the third
most popular degree field at the undergraduate and master’s
levels. Business/management was the most popular area of
concentration in 1985 for all minority degree recipients, at
both baccalaureate and master’s levels. In contrast,
education and social sciences revealed a decline of 50% and
28% respectively, in the baccalaureate degrees awarded from
1975-76 to 1984-85. At the doctoral level, the most
frequently chosen field of all students was education
between 1975-76 and 1984-85. In 1985, the number of
doctorate degrees in education conferred to minorities was
819 of 7,032 (11%): 521 to Blacks, 163 to Hispanics, 84 to
Asians, and 51 to Native Americans. Under representation of
minorities is most severe at all levels in engineering,
natural sciences and mathematics.
Education as an intended career field has become less
attractive to many college-bound high school seniors. In
general, there is a slight increase in the number of
students planning to major in education (7% to 11%) but this
group constitutes mostly White. At the same time the figures
of Black colleges reveal a decrease in education major from
13% to 8%; while, Hispanics have been the only group that
has showed an increased interest in teaching.
In summary, these figures related to minorities’ college
enrollment and degrees awarded reveal that the proportion of
college minority population has declined as well as the
number of them that chose education as a major. In addition,
factors such as high rates of school dropout, unemployment,
lack of support of multicultural and bilingual programs,
differences in educational treatment due to cultural and
gender biases, and lack of equality in the allocation of
human and budget resources are some of the barriers that
influence minorities’ low representation in higher
education. Consequently, these factors account for their
virtual absence from education or other professional
careers. In simple words, the shortage of minority teachers
is not an isolated phenomenon.
Besides the issue of the under representation of minorities
in teacher education programs at the college level, it is
relevant to ask whether in-service and future White teachers
are prepared to deal with the increasing diversity of class,
race and language of the minority of population. Moreover,
it must be asked if the Schools of Education in colleges and
universities, themselves predominantly White and male, are
preparing for this challenge.
Minorities in the teaching force
By 1985, racial/ethnic minorities represented 23% of the
total United States population, and 29% of the public
elementary-and-secondary school population, with Hispanics
registering the greater gains. In the country’s 20 largest
school districts, about 70% of the student enrollment was
minority (Center for Educational Statistics, 1987). In the
same period, the elementary and secondary public school
teaching force was 8% Black and 2% Hispanic. Sixty-seven
percent of public school teachers in the United States were
women; and 89%, 6%, and 3% of the bachelor’s degree in the
education were awarded to White, Black, and Hispanic women,
respectively (Apple, 1988). Also, graduate degrees conferred
in education showed the same trend: more women received
master's degree than men during 1984-85 particularly White
females (84%), Hispanics (3%) and Blacks (8%).
By the next century, estimates are that more than one-third,
perhaps 40%, of the total school enrollment will be
non-White: the Black population will expand from 12% to 14%
of the population will expand from 6% to 15%; the Native
American population will expand from 0.6% to 1%; and Asian
American as group will expand from 2% to 5% of the
population (ACE, 1987). In contrast to this increase in
minority population, this nation’s teaching force remains
homogeneous, and it is projected to become more homogeneous
in the next century. Though the current school population is
29% non- White, only 12 to 14% of the teachers are
non-White; and it is 67% female (CES, 1987). Also, as
teachers go to retirement, and less percentage of new
minority teachers are hired, a greater decline of minority
teachers appears imminent (Gehrke & Sheffield, 1985). This
implies that minority and White students will see fewer
minority teachers throughout their educational experience.
This is particularly important for minority teachers as role
models. Also, cross cultural exposure for children of the
majority population is an important factor in their
development of a healthy social attitude. Besides, testing
policies for teaching-competency seems to be another
variable that contributes to minority teachers shortage.
Teaching-competency testing
The initiative for testing teaching comes from state
legislature and boards of education rather than from
teachers organizations or colleges and universities schools
of education. The mandatory statewide testing program can
have three levels: for entry into a teacher training
program; for exit from that program; and as a condition for
receiving a standard certification renewal. Since the
testing teaching-competency movement began in 1964, when
North Carolina required entering teachers to take the
National Teachers Examination (NTE) for certification prior
to entering teaching profession, then followed by Louisiana
in 1977, and Georgia and Florida in 1978, this movement has
spread around the country. At present, there are 45 states
which have implemented or will soon implement testing
requirements for certification (ACE, 1987). Twenty-three
states required students to pass a test before entering a
teacher education program and eight had attached assessment
requirements for continuing employment and/or certification
renewal (Flippo, 1986).
These statewide testing policies have been the target of
criticisms regarding content, linguistic and cultural
biases, and the lack of relation to teacher effectiveness.
Almost all of the tests administered measure general
knowledge and certain skills as reading, writing and
mathematics. Some of the tests administered are
Pre-professional Skills Test (PPST), American College Test
(ACT), Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT) and National
Evaluation Systems (NES) shich includes the Core Battery
Test (CBEST). They do not measure teacher’s skills such as
performance, classroom control, motivation, application of
knowledge in teaching situations, personality or social
skills. Also, they do not have predictive validity, i.e.,
there is low correlation between test scores, and teacher
evaluations. In short, teaching-competency tests do not
assess such critical skills related to classroom teaching
practices.
Implications for minority teachers
There is not conclusive evidence about the impact of testing
requirements on minority teachers due to the variation among
states testing policies, the lack of a mandatory policy that
states collect and release test results by racial/ethnic
composition, and the lack of a state-by-state profile of
minority performance at least on widely-used tests such as
NTE and Pre-Professional Skills Test (PPST). However, we can
take note of two tendencies: (a) that a disproportionate
number of minority teacher candidates are being screened
from the teaching profession, and (b) that the passing rate
for these groups is far below that of Whites.
Despite the rise in the number of baccalaureate degrees
awarded, the proportion of graduates who became eligible or
certificated to teach declined by 42% between 1975-76 and
1984-85. Of the 1983-84 colleges graduates with bachelor’s
degree who were certified to teach, 90% were White, 6% were
Blacks, 2% were Hispanics, 1.2% were Asians, and 0.5% were
Native Americans. Blacks had the lowest certification rate
for the newly employed teachers (78%) and approximately 82%
of newly recent Hispanic college graduates were certified.
States in southeastern and western regions of the country
required passing competency test for initial certification
more than did the states in other regions (National
Education Association, 1987). Since minorities are a higher
proportion of the population in these regions than in the
rest of the country, they are more likely to have been
subject to certification testing than Whites. For example,
nineteen southern states--were, historically, Black colleges
have provided more than half of the bachelor’s degrees
awarded to Blacks-- have led the way in instituting
examinations that prospective teachers must pass to be
licensed. This is an additional requirement beyond
completing an approved curriculum and being recommended by
colleges authorities to state certification. White graduates
in these states pass tests at rates ranging from 62% to 90%,
while Blacks graduates are passing at rates from 10% to 70%.
Louisiana has a pass rate for White teachers candidates of
78%, and a pass rate for prospective Black teachers of 15%.
Georgia has a pass rate of 87% for Whites but a pass rate of
only 34% for Blacks (Graham, 1987).
Reports in minority performance on teacher competency
examinations in Florida, California and Texas are equally
discouraging. Florida tests results in 1983 showed a
first-time pass rate of 90% for White teacher candidates,
35% for Blacks, 51% for Hispanics, 63% for Asians, and 100%
for four Native Americans (Smith, 1984). In California,
where approximately two-thirds of all the candidates passed
all three sections of the CBEST -reading, writing and
mathematics- only 26% of the Blacks candidates and 38% of
the Hispanics passed. The case of Texas is more dramatic: it
is likely that around 96% of Blacks and 84% of Hispanics
applicants may be denied admission to teacher education on
the basis of the reading test alone (PPST).
Another fact is that a significant number of the states that
have adopted competency tests are also states that are under
federal mandates to desegregate their institutions of higher
education. This picture of the teachers’ tests in the
southern states illustrates a problem that is common in
sections of the nation that have high concentrations of poor
families, particularly when racial differences affect that
concentration. The fact that children of poor and of
minority families are receiving distinct educational
treatment to that of White children have influenced the
tests results in the long run. To exacerbate the situation
even further Blacks consistently score lower than Whites on
all sections of the NTE. When minority students, especially
those contemplating teaching careers, learn that many
prospective minority teachers are judged not to good enough
to teach, they may lose confidence in their own abilities
and conclude that the teaching profession is “off limits” to
minorities.
By the same token, the recruitment procedure for entering a
given program seems to be biased against minorities as well.
The exclusive use of tests scores, such as the SAT, to
single out successful teacher candidates is a highly suspect
and discriminatory process. It seems that across the nation,
multiple criteria are being used for admission into teacher
education programs. García (1986) reported that in 1986
sixteen states sampled out of the nation included data on
admission failure rates of ethnic minorities. One apparent
reason for this incidence is that the use of cut scores on
state-mandatory tests prevents entry into or continuation in
teacher education programs. Each state determines cut
scores, and this policy has meant that scores have been sat
at high enough levels to eliminate a disproportionate number
of minority candidates. Although, multiple criteria are used
in the selection process, single cut off scores are a
powerful factor because the applicants are not considered on
the remaining criteria.
In the cases in which single test score such as the SAT are
considered as entry criterion, scores have not predicted
successful teachers. It is well know that the SAT scores are
valid predictors only for the first years of college in
terms of academic achievement, and hence they are not valid
predictors for either performance at higher levels or for
successful teaching. The experience of Black students is
insightful in this regard: Blacks intending to major in
education score at the bottom of the SAT scores, and the
dropping rate of Blacks majoring in education is twice the
rate of decline for Whites.
Furthermore, in evaluating biases of the tests we have to
consider factors external to the structure of the test
itself that can yield biased results. The family income
level of the examinee is a variable that undeniable affects
aptitude test scores such as the SAT and the Graduate Record
Examination (GRE). Thus, it is reasonable, to argue that
some of the teaching-competency tests are biased regarding
the income level of the prospective teachers. These tests in
principle-- “de jure”, according to their psychometric
properties might not biased but in practice-- “de facto”,
promote unfair and discriminatory procedures of selection.
In the same way, the use of grade-point average as another
criterion for selection involves a great amount of
variability and subjective weight.
In short, the realities of testing-teaching competencies are
evidence of the vulnerable position that minority prospects
and in-service teachers have in the school systems. In many
cases their contracts or professional status are at risk.
Test results can bring contracts terminations, mobility, and
in extremes cases, unemployment. Moreover, to deny the
opportunity to teacher candidates to enter or continue in a
teacher education program constitutes a negation of the
right of education and free choice of a professional career.
This is another example of how career decisions and job
opportunities of many minorities are controlled by the hands
of political and bureaucratic policies.
Finally, what to do with the teachers that do not pass the
tests? Some alternatives are: remediative courses for “test-wiseness”,
prepackaged materials for preparing to take the exam, and so
on. Eventually, these strategies results in higher costs and
more frustration for teachers. Isn’t this more proof of
“deskilling” teachers? I think that it is, and for various
reasons: in the way that the teachers’ skills and knowledge
are segmented, and how the teachers’ training as well as
students’ learning are guided by test scores--they are
“curriculum-test-oriented”.
Conclusions
My attempt in this essay has been not to propose solutions
or remedies to the chaos of the practices of testing
teaching -competency. Several authors have done this work
for us. Rather, I prefer to finish this paper with a
skeptical position about the future of this particular seed
of educational reform.
So far, we see how excellence in teaching has been
operationalized in a narrow sense, i.e., a score on a test.
Issues related to accountability have taken precedence over
more fundamental educational and humans concerns. Important
educational issues such as equity, distribution of
resources, students’ economic and social needs, educational
conditions of minority and poor children, cultural
differences and the attention paid to them in educational
settings, and teachers’ working conditions have been
obscured in favor of issues concerning standards and
students’ achievement. The testing movement seems to be
another political artifact-- “a smoke curtain”, of state
officials and professional organisms for distracting the
public from focusing on more critical educational issues.
Tests and tests scores have become a powerful weapon in the
hands of politicians. For instance, in the way that they
play with the test results in their attempts to promote a
favorable public image that they are concerned and working
toward a better education. Education for whom?
Any educational reform should attend to the educational
attainment of minorities. Minorities are overrepresented in
the ranks of low achievers, dropouts and those failing in
standardized tests. Increasing their achievement and
expectancies will be possible when their economic, social
and educational conditions improve. In order to attract
able, well prepared, and compassionate minorities to
teaching, we must first focus on their social and economic
circumstances in the United States. If more than one
-quarter of all Hispanics and more than one -third of all
Afro-American live below the poverty line, then poverty
constitutes a wide barrier for the academic success of the
minority and poor children.
Since income level of a child’s family is a major
determinant of the quality of education that child receives;
it is hard for poor and minority children as well for their
teachers to believe that their educational situation will
change dramatically in the next ten years. Schools will
remain essentially the same. The lesson that minority and
poor children are learning today is that schools are not the
best place to learn, and that their teachers’ professional
and working conditions are terrible. Thus, if we have a
shortage of minority teachers today, tomorrow we may have
none.
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