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This is Part Two of the Chicago Sun-Times study into teacher competency.
Passing Hurdle No. 1
The first test toward earning an initial teaching certificate in Illinois--the Basic Skills test--is so easy, several experts say, an eighth- or ninth-grader should be able to pass it. McGee had no quarrel with that assessment.
Yet one of every 10 Chicago Public Schools teachers tested since 1988 have flunked the Basic Skills test at least once.
The Sun-Times gave a sample version of the old Basic Skills test to four experts after state Board of Education officials said the sample was at the same difficulty level as the real test. Those experts were: Patte Barth, who has examined teacher subject matter tests across the nation for the Education Trust, a Washington, D.C., research and advocacy group; Bryk, a University of Chicago education professor and nationally known school researcher; Barbara Radner, an expert partner to two dozen struggling Chicago public schools and director of DePaul University's Center for Urban Education, and Tom Loveless, director of the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution.
''This is a test designed to screen out completely illiterate teaching candidates, so the fact that someone passes this test is not something to throw a party over,"Loveless said. "It doesn't mean they are a good candidate. It simply means they are not illiterates.''
Radner said she could understand if someone flunked the test once or twice because of nervousness or personal strain or a ''math phobia,'' because candidates must get 70 percent of answers correct in each of four sections--grammar, reading, writing and math.
Others noted that teachers may do poorly if the test is the second of two they take in one day. One or even two failures could be explained for a variety of reasons that would not impact teaching, most experts agreed.
But how college graduates could flunk a basic skills test puzzles Mary James, a parent of three Chicago public school children and an organizer for ACORN, a community group.
''God, that's basic skills,'' James said. ''It's like the teachers are learning at the same time the children are learning. Something there is wrong."
Many Illinois colleges in recent years have begun giving the test as a requirement for admission to their colleges of education, which means some relatively new teachers may have taken the test as early as their sophomore year in college.
That could be one reason why the failure rate jumped in 1997--from 5 percent in April of that year to 9 percent in July. The rate has moved upward ever since and now hovers around 15 percent.
Efforts to add more minority educators and to recruit teachers from foreign shores may also have contributed to the spike in test flunks, experts said.
But because the Basic Skills test is so easy, Bryk said, ''an individual who flunks this kind of exam part way through college--it really raises some questions. . . . If you couldn't pass this at the end of high school, you probably shouldn't get out of high school.''
Attorney Elaine Siegel said she represented 25 bilingual teachers in the 1990s who flunked the Basic Skills tests multiple times, yet won "superior" or "excellent" ratings from their principals. The test, she said, just didn't capture "what those teachers were able to do in the classroom."
Many of the state's biggest teacher-test flunkers held either a transitional bilingual education certificate, which waives the two certification tests for up to eight years, or a Chicago substitute teacher certificate, which waives all tests indefinitely. Despite the waiver, many take the tests to attain full certification and the job and pay improvements it would bring.
One former bilingual certificate holder racked up some of the lowest scores examined by the Chicago Sun-Times. The teacher flunked five of five Basic Skills tests and three of three elementary subject matter tests while working on a transitional bilingual certificate.
After that certificate expired, the teacher continued to teach for at least two more years on a Chicago substitute certificate and flunked eight more Basic Skills tests and three more elementary tests.
Grand total: failure in 19 of 19 tests.
After teaching for nearly eight years, this teacher scored as low as a 12 out of a possible 100 in math, followed by a 23 three months later. Both scores were lower than the statistical guess level of 25. Other scores included a 27 in grammar; a 32, a 33 and a 35 in reading, and three 40s in writing.
The identity of this teacher and others cited by the Sun-Times is protected under state law. The data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, did not name flunking teachers.
That teacher who scored as low as 12 in math, Bryk said, should not be teaching. Period.
''It takes a lot of things to become a good teacher,'' Bryk said. ''But it's hard to imagine anyone being a good teacher without passing this test.
''Anyone can have a bad day. . . . But when you have that kind of record, you'd have to say this person has such weak basic skills that they should not be teaching children, regardless of what other positive attributes this person might have,'' Bryk said. ''You can fail it once, you can fail it twice, but if you consistently fail these tests, these are people who probably shouldn't be teachers.''
Other professions allow candidates to flunk a test multiple times before passing. Even Mayor Daley and John F. Kennedy Jr. each flunked the bar exam twice. But you can't practice law until you've passed.
Barth said the bar for passing the Illinois Basic Skills tests--and that of most state subject matter tests examined by the Education Trust--is "low-level."
"If it takes somebody a couple times to pass a good test, like a CPA exam [to become a certified public accountant] . . . there's no shame in it.''
But, Barth said, "When a test is a low-level test, as yours seems to be . . . a good performance doesn't really tell you anything, but a poor performance should raise some flags."
To read Part Three of this research, “Teachers’ Comments,” click HERE
To read Part Four of this research, “The Results,”click HERE
To return to Part One of this research, “Background,” click HERE
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