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No more literacy test...for teachers

Lutherf

Lutherf

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Test meant to screen teachers instead weeded out minorities

New York education officials are poised to scrap a test designed to measure the reading and writing skills of people trying to become teachers, in part because an outsized percentage of black and Hispanic candidates were failing it.
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So let me see if I've got this right...

Black and Hispanic students tend to be victims of the White-centric education system so the New York State Board of Regents has decided to get rid of a literacy test for teaching candidates because Blacks and Hispanics are having a hard time passing it.

Maybe, just maybe the problem isn't that the tests are racially biased and that White society seeks to victimize people of color. Maybe the problem is that we've been institutionalizing lower standards for so damned long that now even the teachers don't have standards!!

Seriously, what the **** is this all about?
 
Excon said:
The downfall of society on the back of good (though stupid) intentions.
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allowing people to be stupid to make them feel better is not good intentions, it is idiotic and highly immoral.
 
Excon said:
The downfall of society on the back of good (though stupid) intentions.
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It's not even good intentions. It's merely further evidence that the moonbat left believes Hispanics and Blacks to be intellectually inferior to Whites. It also shows how that kind of ideology is embedded in the government system and why we need to go to a voucher system. The kids will NEVER have a chance if even their teachers are approved based on reduced or eliminated standards.
 
Lutherf said:
Test meant to screen teachers instead weeded out minorities



So let me see if I've got this right...

Black and Hispanic students tend to be victims of the White-centric education system so the New York State Board of Regents has decided to get rid of a literacy test for teaching candidates because Blacks and Hispanics are having a hard time passing it.

Maybe, just maybe the problem isn't that the tests are racially biased and that White society seeks to victimize people of color. Maybe the problem is that we've been institutionalizing lower standards for so damned long that now even the teachers don't have standards!!

Seriously, what the **** is this all about?
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I bet it didn't weed out Persians and Vietnamese.
 
Koke said:
allowing people to be stupid to make them feel better is not good intentions, it is idiotic and highly immoral.
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Unbelievable.

As stupid as it is, it is still good intentions (to them).
 
Lutherf said:
It's not even good intentions. It's merely further evidence that the moonbat left believes Hispanics and Blacks to be intellectually inferior to Whites. It also shows how that kind of ideology is embedded in the government system and why we need to go to a voucher system. The kids will NEVER have a chance if even their teachers are approved based on reduced or eliminated standards.
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Same reply.
I really shouldn't have to emphasize this.

As stupid as it is, it is still good intentions (to them).
 
Lutherf said:
Test meant to screen teachers instead weeded out minorities



So let me see if I've got this right...

Black and Hispanic students tend to be victims of the White-centric education system so the New York State Board of Regents has decided to get rid of a literacy test for teaching candidates because Blacks and Hispanics are having a hard time passing it.

Maybe, just maybe the problem isn't that the tests are racially biased and that White society seeks to victimize people of color. Maybe the problem is that we've been institutionalizing lower standards for so damned long that now even the teachers don't have standards!!

Seriously, what the **** is this all about?
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That is simply unbelievable. Where's Oprah? Where are other powerful black role models? They should be jumping up and down screaming. I don't even RECOGNIZE the world we live in anymore.
 
Do not teachers in the US have an university degree in education to teach?

Surely that would ensure potential teachers are literate
 
Well, that's definitely the wrong reason to scrap a test. It's interesting that in the article it mentions one young woman still getting through by submitting her college grades. I wonder why the others apparently didn't use that loophole?
 
Lutherf said:
Test meant to screen teachers instead weeded out minorities



So let me see if I've got this right...

Black and Hispanic students tend to be victims of the White-centric education system so the New York State Board of Regents has decided to get rid of a literacy test for teaching candidates because Blacks and Hispanics are having a hard time passing it.

Maybe, just maybe the problem isn't that the tests are racially biased and that White society seeks to victimize people of color. Maybe the problem is that we've been institutionalizing lower standards for so damned long that now even the teachers don't have standards!!

Seriously, what the **** is this all about?
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This is the end result of decades of societal (not social) engineering goals to ensure equal outcomes outweighing education goals for our children to ensure equal opportunity to excel and succeed. In fact, the highlighted are the two fundamental positions at the heart of the fight between progressive policy versus conservative policy.

Sad, and maddening for anyone that cares about the future of the American culture of equal opportunity, freedom, and liberty.
 
Lord Tammerlain said:
Do not teachers in the US have an university degree in education to teach?

Surely that would ensure potential teachers are literate
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You'd think.

In this country, however, the education undergraduate degree takes the students with some of the lowest standardized test scores, teaches them the least while they are in college, gives them the most inflated grades, and then graduates them to "Teach" children all that they have "Learned."



Of all the things our government does stupidly, education probably features the greatest overlap between "This is really critical for our long-term health" and "We do this in a self-destructive manner"
 
These "literacy tests" aren't much different than the racist "literacy tests" that kept African-Americans from voting. There is a well-known racist bias in these tests. This is a victory for teacher diversity in NYC.
 
MaggieD said:
That is simply unbelievable. Where's Oprah? Where are other powerful black role models? They should be jumping up and down screaming. I don't even RECOGNIZE the world we live in anymore.
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She became irrelevant quite a few years ago.
 
Why how would get their degree without being able to pass a literacy test?
 
cpwill said:
You'd think.

In this country, however, the education undergraduate degree takes the students with some of the lowest standardized test scores, teaches them the least while they are in college, gives them the most inflated grades, and then graduates them to "Teach" children all that they have "Learned."



Of all the things our government does stupidly, education probably features the greatest overlap between "This is really critical for our long-term health" and "We do this in a self-destructive manner"
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You know me, I really, really agree with the above statements.

It may depend on if it is a crappy test. Indications are that it is, indeed, a crappy test. Then considering that the test may be both redundant and unnecessarily expensive ($130 is nothing to scoff at, given the ridiculous litany of fees teacher preparation programs charge students for merely being present in them and needing to graduate), ditch the stupid thing.

Michael Middleton, dean of the Hunter College School of Education in Manhattan, said that of the battery of assessments, "It's the one that looks like it's the least related to the actual work that teachers do day to day."

Charles Sahm, the director of education policy at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank, is a strong supporter of raising the bar for teachers but not a fan of this particular literacy test.

Sahm took the $20 practice exam and thought it was a poorly designed test with multiple-choice questions that seemed to have more than one correct answer.

"I do agree that it's not a great test," Sahm said. "I found the reading comprehension section to be kind of infuriating. I only got 21 out of 40 right."
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However, this caught me off guard.

But Pace University student Tabitha Colon took the test last year and failed to get a passing score. She likened it to the English portion of the SAT and said it was "pretty difficult." Plus, she said, she was thrown off by the fact that the test was given online, rather than on paper.
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My first thought was: "don't you mean the Praxis?"
 
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Lutherf said:
Here's a sample question from the test - https://www.nystce.nesinc.com/Content/STUDYGUIDE/NY_SG_SRI_202.htm

It's not rocket science.
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Have you taken good look at the sample?

It is a lot closer to rocket science than any mere "literacy" test!

Rather, it is at least AP skill level, and on top of that it is damn poorly composed, as noted by the cite in reply #20 to this thread.

I will have more to say after I take the entire sample test myself, but the first question is a flagrant example of a question having two plausibly correct answers with no reason to pick one over the other.
 
USViking said:
Have you taken good look at the sample?

It is a lot closer to rocket science than any mere "literacy" test!

Rather, it is at least AP skill level, and on top of that it is damn poorly composed, as noted by the cite in reply #20 to this thread.

I will have more to say after I take the entire sample test myself, but the first question is a flagrant example of a question having two plausibly correct answers with no reason to pick one over the other.
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This is a perfect example of standardized testing school kids are taking. We had a room full of teachers doing a practice MCAS 2.0 fighting over which answer they think should be the correct one and then their reasoning. Unfortunately, on a multiple choice type test there is only one answer. Anyone that knows how multiply test are designed know there are always two plausible answers in a multiple choice test. If you give a good enough argument, either of those two answers would be reasonable. It's all in the argument. That is why multiple choice test are inferior to open response. Multiple choice test allow those that over think and reason things, to get wrong answers. Many times it is the most simple answer that the test takers expect. How do you explain that to a deep thinkers? I question the validity of that kind of test.
 
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