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Tough tests for teachers, with question of bias (quotes Thomas Dee and Linda Darling-Hammond)

June 17, 2015
The New York Times
While minorities account for over 50 percent of the nation's students, they represent only 20 percent of the teachers in the United States. Thomas Dee maintains that the presence of minority teachers is important to minority students and Linda Darling-Hammond asserts that tests should focus on skills teachers need to succeed in the classroom.
By 
Elizabeth A. Harris

On a common licensing exam called Praxis Core, a new test given in 31 states or jurisdictions that was created to be more rigorous than its predecessor, 55 percent of white candidates taking the test since October 2013 passed the math portion on their first try, according to the preliminary data from the Educational Testing Service, which designed the exam. The passing rate for first-time African-American test takers was 21.5 percent, and for Hispanic test takers, 35 percent. A similar gap was seen on the reading and writing portions.

In New York, which now has four separate licensing tests that candidates must pass, an analysis last year of the most difficult exam found that during a six-month period, only 41 percent of black and 46 percent of Hispanic candidates passed the test their first time, compared with 64 percent of their white counterparts.

A federal judge is now weighing whether the test is discriminatory. Because of complaints from education schools that students have not had enough time to adjust, as well as concern about the impact on minorities, at least two states — New York and Illinois — have already postponed or loosened some of their new requirements.

Israel Ramos, who graduated from the education school at Lehman College in the Bronx, failed New York’s toughest exam three times, once, he said, by just a few points. While working as a substitute, Mr. Ramos said, he was asked if he would be interested in staying on for at least six permanent teaching positions.

“And on all those occasions, I had to turn them down because I lacked certification,” he said.

On the fourth try, he passed the test, and he is interviewing for several teaching positions.

Racial disparities have been seen on teacher licensing exams for years. They have become more pressing as states add tests or make them harder to pass, part of a national effort to weed out the least able candidates, who often wind up teaching the poorest students.

“Teachers who are not themselves well educated are not going to go on to educate their future students to the levels that we need,” said Kate Walsh, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality.

But while the number of minority teachers has doubled since the late 1980s, according to an analysis of federal data by Richard M. Ingersoll, a professor of education and sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, the teaching force remains almost monochromatic: The federal Education Department has said that more than 80 percent of public school teachers are white.

For the first time, minorities accounted for more than 50 percent of the nation’s public school student population this academic year, according to government estimates. Though evidence is still sparse, some studies suggest that having a teacher of the same race may be beneficial for students.

Thomas S. Dee, a professor of education at Stanford who has studied the issue, said such advantages might come because students perceived teachers who looked like themselves, or who came from their own communities, as role models. There may also be unintentional racial bias at play in how teachers perceive students who are different from themselves, Dr. Dee said.

Linda Darling-Hammond, who is also a professor of education at Stanford, said that in devising new tests, “we need to be clear about what skills are necessary, rather than just trying to eliminate people from the pool.” Dr. Darling-Hammond helped design a new performance-based test for teachers, called the edTPA, which requires a portfolio of work including a video of the candidate in front of a classroom, but she is skeptical of the increase in testing over all.

“We’re kind of in a testing era in the United States,” she said. “If you have a problem, throw a test at it.”

Read the entire story in The New York Times. 

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