For Would-Be Massachusetts Teachers, a Failing Grade

Usually, it’s the teachers doing the testing. But recently, 1,800 aspiring teachers here took a state-mandated certification exam--and more than half of them flunked. The ensuing furor saw grown policy-makers act like parents whose children came home with failing grades.

Some said the Massachusetts Teachers Test, administered by National Evaluation Systems of Amherst, Mass., was way too hard, and demanded that the grading curve be lowered. The Board of Education agreed, and first voted to lower the passing standard, then swiftly reversed itself by reinstating the original grading scale. In a huff on Wednesday, the state’s interim education commissioner, who favored the lower standard, quit his job on the spot. He stomped off without even pausing to clear out his pencils and erasers.

Commissioner Frank Haydu III, a wealthy investment banker, fumed that “the political forces have been unleashed” in a debate that should focus on education. Behind the politics and the snickers, the flap dramatized serious problems of who is going into teaching and how they are being prepared.

Critics said the test proved that the state’s would-be educators are ill-prepared to teach children anything. Thomas M. Finneran, speaker of the state House of Representatives, denounced the prospective teachers as “idiots.” Board of Education member Abigail Thernstrom noted, with some sadness, “They can’t teach what they don’t know.”

Seizing on polls that show that education is a top issue for Massachusetts voters, Acting Gov. Paul Cellucci filed a bill to require all current teachers to take the certification test. His chief Democratic opponent, seeking to replace him in November’s gubernatorial race, Atty. Gen. Scott Harshbarger, promptly blasted Cellucci for using “the issue of teacher testing to scapegoat teachers and score cheap political points.”

Another Democratic candidate for governor, former state Sen. Pat McGovern, challenged the Republican incumbent to take the test himself.

“I call on Paul Cellucci to take the test and see if he can pass it,” McGovern proposed, adding that she would gladly take it as well.

“We’ll just have to study hard, that’s all,” McGovern quipped.

Perhaps inadvertently, the comment reflected the underlying controversy raised by the imposition of teacher certification standards. Evaluation of prospective teachers from the kindergarten to 12-grade levels was a key component of a 1993 educational reform act.

Implementation of the reforms took place in stages, and the first Massachusetts Teachers Test was administered in April. The test includes an essay question as well as math and grammar sections.

Forty-four states currently require teacher certification tests. The most commonly used exam is the Praxis, developed by Educational Testing Systems of Princeton, N.J., and used in 36 states--including California--and the District of Columbia. Because each state is free to set its own pass-fail score, there is no single national standard.

A spokesman for National Evaluation Systems said the organization had no comment about the results of the first Massachusetts Teacher Test. But the poor showing by 59% of the state’s aspiring teachers quickly became a rallying point for public outrage over the quality of public education in the state. The dismal results also prompted inquiries into the preparation teachers receive here. Those findings were not heartening, either.

A 1996 study by the state Board of Education found teacher education programs accepting students with combined SAT scores as low as 642, out of a possible total of 1600. Board of Education Chairman John R. Silber, the chancellor of Boston University, described teacher-training programs in this state as “basically open admissions.”

In another recent study, Harvard education professor Richard Murnane looked at 11,000 10th-grade students nationally. He found that those with the strongest academic skills were the least likely to become teachers.

Nationally, the number of college students seeking careers as teachers also has dropped. In the 1960s, 30% of college students planned to teach. By the 1980s, the figure was 10%.

Paul Reville, a professor at the Pew Forum at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, said that along with the notion that “standards-based reform is a serious business,” the current contentiousness captures “a sense of alarm that there are this many people coming into teaching that are this poorly qualified. We simply are not attracting the best and the brightest.”

Reville called the results of the certification exam here “a wake-up call.” To which Board of Education member Thernstrom, herself a veteran educator, rejoined, “Some of us have been awake for a long time.”

Teacher-candidates here can take the exam repeatedly until they pass it, with no penalty. The test will be offered again next week.

David Dickinson, a senior research scientist at the Educational Development Center in Newton, said the results of the next round of testing may be more telling. “Everyone knows from standardized tests that people do better when they know what to expect,” he said.

Dickinson also decried the “highly political process” that has been used to determine passing levels on the evaluation. “Legislators can sit back and take potshots,” he said. “But maybe if they took the test themselves they’d have a little more sympathy.”