Education Week - March 6, 2019 - 9

Most Elementary Teachers Fail Licensing Test on First Try
By Madeline Will
More than half of aspiring elementary teachers fail the most common
licensing exam the first time they
take it, according to a new study.
And passing rates on the Praxis
have some serious implications for
the diversity of the teaching profession. Only 38 percent of black candidates and 57 percent of Hispanic
candidates ever pass the exam, compared with 75 percent of white candidates, says the analysis released
last week by the National Council on
Teacher Quality, a Washington-based
think tank that advocates more rigorous teacher preparation.
The analysis uses never-beforereleased data from the Educational
Testing Service, which administers
the Praxis elementary education
content test. That test is required by
18 states and is optional in five others, making it the most widely used
elementary-content test on the market, according to NCTQ.
Just 46 percent of teacher-candidates pass the test on their first attempt-that's lower than the firsttime pass rates for doctors, nuclear
engineers, and lawyers on their licensing exams. In fact, the only lower
initial passing rate is the multipart
exam for certified public accountants.

Out of the four Praxis sections-
reading/language arts, mathematics,
science, and social studies-science
and social studies had the lowest passing rates. NCTQ studied results from a
three-year window: Ultimately, over a
quarter of test-takers didn't pass.
"Why is teaching the only profession where we tolerate such high
rates of failure?" asked Kate Walsh,
the president of NCTQ.
The organization estimates that
each year about 8,600 candidates of
color are unable to enter the classroom because of the licensing-test
barrier. The teaching profession is
about 80 percent white, while the
majority of the student population
in public schools is nonwhite.

The Preparation Problem
States determine what content
should go on the licensing tests, based
on elementary curricula. Walsh said
the core tenets of elementary curricula-basic chemistry, basic physics
(like pulleys and levers), U.S. history,
world history, children's literature,
among others-are a "reasonable representation of what ought to be happening" in an elementary classroom.
The issue, she said, lies in preparation. Candidates take the exam
when they're college seniors, and they

often take general content courses in
the first two years of college-if they
take them at all. Walsh recommends
teacher-preparation programs give
students a diagnostic test earlier in
their college years to see which content area they struggle in.
NCTQ also studied data from undergraduate elementary-teacher-prep
programs at 817 institutions, in all 50
states and the District of Columbia.
The data were initially collected between 2014 and 2016 as part of the
NCTQ's teacher-prep review-which
has been criticized by many institutions of higher education for its methodology. The review heavily relies on
documents, such as course catalogs
and syllabi. The group found that:
* 3 out of 4 programs do not cover
the necessary mathematics content;
* 2 out of 3 programs don't require
a single course aligned with any of
the science topics from elementary
curricula-biology, chemistry, physics, and earth science;
* One-third of programs don't require relevant history or geography
courses; and
* 10 percent of programs don't
require aligned coursework in English/language arts.
That disconnect between coursework and what's on the licensing
test could be driving the high failure

rates, NCTQ says.
"If you were prepared with the
coursework that aligns with the topics, you'd do fine on this test," Walsh
said. "If you haven't taken a chemistry class since your freshman year
of high school, you're not going to do
so fine on this test."

Supporting Students of Color
A representative from the American
Association of Colleges for Teacher
Education could not be reached for
comment as of press time, but the association recently released a brief urging institutions to better support students of color. The group has clashed
with NCTQ in the past.
Emery Petchauer, an associate professor of English and teacher education at Michigan State University,
said students of color are more likely to
have received poor preparation in their
K-12 schooling. Many students of color
are also acutely aware of the stereotype that African-Americans don't do
well on standardized tests, which creates test anxiety and can lead to poor
performance on the Praxis, he said.
Petchauer, who has also written a
book about teacher-licensure exams,
said while it's important to align
teacher-prep coursework to what elementary teachers need to know, he

worries some of NCTQ's recommendations would lead to a narrowing of the
curriculum. For example, ethnic studies aren't on the Praxis exam-but
Petchauer said prospective teachers
should study that field.
He also noted "the really murky evidence that a score on a paper-pencil
licensure exam has a direct relationship to teaching effectiveness."
The NCTQ report points to research suggesting teachers who have
a higher passing score on licensing
exams tend to see more studentachievement gains in the classroom,
especially for mathematics.
But Petchauer emphasized the academic benefits for students of color
who have a teacher of the same race,
too.
The NCTQ report also recommends that state policymakers
publish first-time and overall licensing-test passing rates for all teachercandidates who are enrolled in a
teacher-prep program. That would
give prospective candidates the information needed to choose a program
where they can succeed.
But now, these data are "completely hidden from public view,"
Walsh said. Even teacher-prep programs don't always know what percentage of their graduates are passing the licensing test, she said.

Striking Teachers
Broaden Their Demands
narrative in place: Teachers are underpaid, asked to do more with less,
and fed up.
These strikes are not independent
and isolated efforts, said Rebecca
Tarlau, an assistant professor of education and labor and employment
relations at Pennsylvania State University's College of Education.
"It's a wave of different activists
who are in conversation and connection and trying to transform their
unions in really interesting and important ways," she said.
So far this year, teachers in Los
Angeles went on a six-day strike
that ended with a host of union victories, including smaller class sizes,
more support staff, and other socially minded initiatives, like legal
support for immigrant students.
Teachers in Denver went on a
three-day strike last month over
the district's performance-based
compensation model. Then, West
Virginia teachers walked out in protest of a bill that would have established charter schools in the state,
along with up to 1,000 education
savings accounts that allow certain
parents to use public money to pay
for private school. Teachers in Oakland, Calif., went on strike Feb. 21
over pay, class sizes, and the cashstrapped district's proposal to close
schools. They remained on strike as
of press time.
As the teacher-activism movement

spreads, it emphasizes the "point
that teachers' concerns are national
and not simply a product of big-city
unions," said Jeffrey Henig, the director of the politics and education
program at Teachers College, Columbia University.
Now, he said, "we're seeing that
played back in places like West Virginia, where the local actors without
the strong historical unions ... are
now breathing the fumes of national
issues like privatization and school
choice and are broadening their
scope as a result."

A Fight for Public Education
In some ways, the strike in Oakland embodies what the movement
has become, experts say.
At the center of the contract dispute is the union's demand for a 12
percent pay raise. But Oakland Education Association President Keith
Brown has framed the strike as a
"fight for the soul of public education" in the city. In addition to pushing for student supports, teachers
are fighting against the proposed
closures of up to 24 regular public
schools and the growth of charter
schools.
"No one thinks of the Oakland
strike as a strike that's about salary," Tarlau said. "It is part of the
big picture: What is the future of our
schools? What is the future of public
education?"
Seeing teachers in California pro-

John Raby/AP

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

Protesting teachers
wave at passing cars
outside Poca High
School in Poca, W.Va.,
last month. Teachers
across the Mountain
State held their second
strike in a year.

test the growth of charter schools encouraged teachers in West Virginia
to walk out again last month, said
Jay O'Neal, a teacher in Charleston
who has been involved in organizing.
And just as West Virginia activists
shared strategies with others last
year, they were learning from activists elsewhere this year.
"The national narrative has come
full circle here now," O'Neal said.
Through it all, public support remained widespread in both of the
state's strikes, said Erin McHenrySorber, an assistant professor of
higher education at West Virginia
University. This time, teachers were
protesting a bill that included a 5
percent pay raise-a powerful narrative about teachers' priorities.
"While they would like a pay raise
and they need a pay raise, they
were working to protect community
schools," McHenry-Sorber said.
In fact, the Denver strike was
an outlier this year, in that it was

mainly focused on teacher pay.
Lois Weiner, a New York-based researcher and consultant on teachers' union transformation, pointed
out that according to district tallies,
just over half the city's 5,000 teachers went on strike.
"When strikes are only about
economic issues, they undercut the
building of social support," she said.
Meanwhile, West Virginia teachers
have given their union leaders the
power to call for another statewide
labor action if legislators continue to
pursue school choice measures.
There might be a round two in
other places, as well, that had a
statewide protest last year. In Kentucky, several districts were forced
to close one day last week as thousands of teachers participated in a
"sickout" to protest a bill that would
restructure the board that oversees
the state's teacher-pension system.
And in Oklahoma, a grassroots Facebook group recently conducted a

MULTIMEDIA:
Teachers have
launched a
widespread activism
movement. See where
they've protested.
www.edweek.org/go/
strikes-map

survey of its members to gauge their
interest in continued activism after
last year's nine-day walkout for a
pay raise and more school funding.
Out of the nearly 2,200 educators
who responded to the survey, about
55 percent said they would support
another teacher walkout this year if
there isn't an investment made to
school funding. If the public was on
board, 73 percent of educators would
support a walkout.
"I think there's a chance there
might be more mobilization and
walkouts in places like Oklahoma
where people felt for a moment what
it was like to have power with their
colleagues," said Penn State's Tarlau.
"From what I can tell, they want to
keep feeling that way."
She has also heard conversations
among activists about organizing
a national teacher strike, or day of
action-but such a massive effort
would take a lot of coordination and
force, Tarlau said.

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