Can You Take Dictation? Prescribing Teacher Quality through Testing.

In 1998, the site of Horace Mann's original system of public teacher education in this country (Herbst, 1989) became known nationally as the home of the "idiot" future teachers. In April of that year, only 46.9% of the examinees who took the first administration of Massachusetts's new teacher tests passed. The results were at best disappointing and at worst shocking to all stakeholders. Subsequent administrations of the Massachusetts Educator Certification Tests (MECT) yielded results that show some improvement since the first testing. The January 2000 administration of the tests resulted in the highest pass rates: 56% of the test takers passed all three parts. For persons of color, test results were especially discouraging; for example, among the 29 African Americans taking the tests, none passed all sections on the first administration (Massachusetts Department of Education, 1998d). The state has not publicly reported demographic rates since. Immediately after the April 1998 results were announced, the media documented a wide range of responses to the test scores, almost all of them criticizing aspiring teachers and condemning the abilities of teacher educators and the quality of teacher education programs in the state (Ebbert, 1998). A number of press releases and editorials captured the predominantly negative views of some state officials and State Board of Education members. In a Boston Globe editorial, the speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives "denounced would-be teachers who failed the state's first certification tests as `idiots'" ("Progress on Teachers," 1998, p. A14). One college president noted that the public reaction to the test results was causing future teachers to feel that they were regarded as "stupid, abysmally ignorant and dumdums" (Zernike, 1998, p. A1). Teacher education programs also came under public attack. John Silber, then chairman of the Board of Education and Boston University chancellor, "placed the blame even more on the institutions, describing their curriculums as filled with `mindless education courses' and `cockeyed theories'" (Kornblut, 1998, pp. A1, A16). After leaving the State Board of Education, Silber continued his harsh rhetoric about those who failed the tests, referring to their performance as work that "does not indicate ignorance, it indicates sheer stupidity. Do you want people like that in the classroom teaching your children?" (Trudeau, 1999, p. 1). The strong rhetoric certainly drew the attention of many citizens of Massachusetts, most of whom had previously given teacher education little thought. Teacher qualifications and the quality of higher education's teacher education programs, however, have now become a national issue. A panel of presidents of colleges and universities convened by the American Council on Education (1999) has concluded that "the education that colleges and universities provide to teachers is crucial in determining the quality of America's schools" and that they "can do more--much more--to strengthen the performance of teachers" (p.4). The Association of Governing Boards, which represents boards of trustees of colleges and universities across the country, identified teacher preparation as the top higher education issue for 1999-2000 (Hauptmann, 2000). Since the first administrations of the tests, the rhetoric against teacher education and future teachers has subsided slightly in Massachusetts. And, although the public rhetoric is less heated, the tests have become only one of a series of efforts to dramatically change the education profession in the state. The state is proceeding to open up more alternative routes to teaching careers, to pay individuals without teacher preparation large bonuses to take teaching positions, and to approve local school districts and private elementary schools to deliver educator preparation programs. Most recently, the state announced a new system of proposed routes to the education professions that could dismantle traditional teacher education substantially (Massachusetts Department of Education, 1999b). …