Challenge to CBEST for Teachers

I applaud your editorial of Feb. 7, “A Hard Line Is the Right Line to Hold on Teacher Standards.”

I am completing my 21st year as a professor of teacher education at California State University, Fullerton. I can assure you that the CBEST requirement has had a marked effect on the basic skills proficiency of students entering our program. Before CBEST, for example, we gave new multiple subject (elementary education) students a basic mathematics proficiency test, assessed their performance and taught the people who were weak in this area needed mathematical knowledge and skills before we could begin to teach them the pedagogy they needed to be successful teachers. Today this is typically not necessary. We can now also be assured that the prospective teacher has the basic reading and writing skills to communicate with students, parents, administrators and other profes- sionals.

Frankly, this test is not difficult. I was on the committee formed immediately after passage of the CBEST legislation to provide advice on the structure of the test and to assist in the selection of the testing agency that would design and administer the test. In that capacity, I had the opportunity to review a large number of the potential test items and to take proposed tests. The items, as your editorial states, are no higher than 10th-grade level, and even that might be stretching it, now that the test has been altered to exclude basic algebra and geometry. Children who enter California’s schools not fluent in English, or who lack the readiness for reading and writing, deserve highly knowledgeable and skilled teachers, not simply a teacher who can fog a mirror! Whether this is the CBEST or another test at least as challenging is the question.

CAROL P. BARNES PhD

Fullerton

Regarding the controversy over the failure of some to pass the test for teaching, let’s take a look at the culprit itself--the California education system.

As a former college professor, I know that many people reach college who probably never should have received high school diplomas, once a sign of mastering basic skills. High school and college diplomas today do not necessarily reflect learning.

One young lady in one of my courses was upset because I based grades on what was done in the classroom. I learned that in high school she took work home for her mother to complete.

To have better standards, we should award diplomas only after a comprehensive examination covering basic skills. Then it wouldn’t be necessary to quiz students to determine if diplomas reflected knowledge.

SPENCER CRUMP

Corona del Mar