But the mistakes that the NTE and other similar tests make are not mistakes whose impact is spread across the board. They are racist and sexist in much the same way that the tests used to find out who were witches in the colonial era in Massachusetts decided that only women were witches. The tests are skewed in ways that result in huge numbers of people of color failing as compared to whites and a larger percentage of women flunking the test than males. The latter really shocks people, even conservative white guys, because they assume, whatever they think about racial equality, that their daugh ters and wives are probably as capable as their sons. To see that women, who are the preponderance of the teaching force, actually score lower on the test su prises them.
Women score lower on the same sections of the test as African.
This has been thoroughly documented so that it is no longer even an issue. There was a huge report done for the National Education Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers back in 1987, which looked at the effects of entry-level licensing on the teaching profession. The study concluded that testing resulted in tens of thousands of Blacks and Latinos being excluded from the teaching force. Declining percentage of Teachers of Color Today, it is interesting that some of the people who construct the tests that eliminate teachers of color simultaneously bemoan the declining percentage of teachers of color in the nation's classrooms. One of my favorite quotes comes from the former president of the Educational Testing Service, Dr. Gregory Anrig who died tragically a couple of years ago from brain cancer.