Testing Teachers: Analysis and Recommendations

Followingthe lead of legislative bodies and school boards nationwide, the Illinois Association of School Boards (IASB) recently recommended that &dquo;all applicants for a teaching, administrative, and school personnel certi- ficate issued by the State Teacher Certification Board satisfactorily pass (1) a proficiency examination on basic communication and mathematics skills and (2) a proficiency examination in the major field of the desired teaching or administrative assignment, where appropri-ate&dquo; (Illinois Association of School Boards, 1980, pp.15- 16).A companion resolution called for a major study of the competence of Illinois school personnel and the even- tual adoption of procedures to guarantee their professional competence.Illinois, then, is one of a number of states currently facing the issue of teacher testing.As of this writing, at least 18 states now require teacher testing for certification (Vlaanderen, 1982) and the trend seems clear.The Ameri- can Association of Colleges for Teacher Education is also weighing in on this issue.In a draft policy statement presented to AACTE at the annual meeting in Houston in 1982, an AACTE Task Force argued that &dquo;competency assessment is a vital and essential part of any effort to strengthen teacher education programs&dquo; (AACTE, 1982, p. 2).This paper investigates aspects of the teacher testing issue in an effort to assist teacher educators in clarifying their thinking on this significant question.Our analysis addresses two central aspects of the teacher testing move- ment.The first deals with the assumptions that appear to form the basis of the prescription that teachers ought to be tested.The second examines the various domains in which testing might take place.Several recommendations are then advanced which seem justified given this analysis. Assumptions of the Testing TrendThere is, of course, some risk in attributing assumptions to a movement such as the teacher testing trend, since advocates may have different assumptions in mind than those we have elected to highlight.However, the following list seems to contain both the explicit and im- plicit assumptions which undergird the movement.We have been guided in part in fashioning the assumptions by the arguments that advocates of teacher testing have advanced and by seeking out those assumptions that appear to be &dquo;needed&dquo; to support the conclusion that teacher testing is a policy that should be adopted (Ennis, 1982).1. Teachers who pass the tests are more effective in their roles than teachers who do not.This assumption is reflected most clearly in the way the tests are characterizedas competency testsregardless of the domain which the tests assess.Tests in the area of basic skills, in subject matter mastery, or in teaching performance are often termed measures of &dquo;teacher competency.&dquo;The assumption seems to rest on an appeal to common sense: If a teacher does not know how to do long division, it is difficult to understand how that teacher might be able to teach long division to child- ren.Also, advocates of testing in the basic skills domain may argue their position by asserting that teachers who cannot do the elementary algorithms of arithmetic probably are poorly educated and/or have minds which are less than adequate for the complex tasks of teaching (Brophy, 1982).As appealing as the common sense argu- ment may appear, there is scant evidence to support the