English Education - Volume 34, Issue 2, 2002

Investigates the Praxis II, the standardized teacher examination required for teacher certification in Georgia. Considers why African American teacher candidates were less successful than their white colleagues in passing this exit exam for teacher licensure. Concludes that assessment must account for the cultural realities that teacher candidates bring to teacher testing.

Discusses how in Connecticut, all teachers must be certified for the position they hold. Outlines the specific certification levels in Connecticut for English Language Arts.

Discusses the Praxis II exam, “English Language, Literature, and Composition: Content Knowledge,” a two-hour multiple-choice exam with questions on American, British, and world literature, literary terms, grammar and usage, and teaching. Suggests that nowledge of subject matter seems to be related to successful teaching, but whether certification exams can adequately and fairly assess that knowledge has not been established.

Discusses how members of the Iowa Legislature, the Iowa State Department of Education, and the Iowa Association of Colleges of Teacher Education have been in heated conversation in the last year about the legislature’s push to institute teacher testing as a way of improving the quality of Iowa’s teaching force.

Notes that policy makers would like to “guarantee” that candidates from teacher education programs are content and pedagogy certified. Discusses how accountability assessment plays out in teacher education programs. Focuses on the tests required in Georgia, the Praxis Series of Professional Assessments for Beginning Teachers, developed and marketed by Educational Testing Service.

Considers how Illinois has always tested teachers for certification, but now state officials are holding teacher education programs at colleges and universities accountable for “passing rates” on these examinations as part of the Federal Title II initiative which is intended to identify and make public “bad quality” teacher education programs.

Notes that within the past five years, the national standards movement has prompted many states to turn to the use of test scores to hold students and teachers accountable to higher standards in academic achievement. Discusses the unintended consequences: pervasive emotional pressure, reductionist views of literacy, conflicted views of teaching and learning, and stratification of schools and districts.

Considers how many teacher educators feel caught between the need to comply with state and federal laws governing the approval of their teacher education programs and the desire to resist what many feel to be another example of “testing gone wild.” Presents a conversation with Alfie Kohn on high stakes tests for teachers and for students. Full text available in print version only.