Bad Medicine?

By Ezra Bowen

More than 200,000 teachers and school administrators in Texas last week had to swallow a heavy dose of a prescription they have handed out to their pupils for years: a test in language skills. And they did not like it at all, for the results of the two-part exam will determine whether they can go on teaching in the state.

The test, mandated by the Texas legislature in 1984 as part of a broad program to improve the state's public schools, was not terribly difficult. (Sample item: spotting the misspelled word "discused" in a paragraph.) But teachers reacted with outrage. "It's the wrong instrument to measure my ability," said Mary Lee Reyna, a first-grade teacher in San Antonio. "If I am incompetent, you'd think they would have found me out in 23 years. The only way you can tell if I'm a competent teacher is to come see me in my classroom." Harold Massey, executive director of the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals, maintained that the main result of the teacher test will be to "totally and completely demoralize the profession in Texas." The feeling was particularly strong among blacks and Hispanics, who felt the test would discriminate against them.

The Texas State Teachers Association, which represents 55,000 of the state's teachers, had brought suit to block the test, claiming that teacher certification comprised a lifetime contract, which the 1984 act violated ex post facto. In a decision handed down the week before the test date, Travis County District Judge Harley Clark ruled that the test could proceed. The teachers, backed by the National Education Association, the umbrella union for the state association, will appeal to the Texas Supreme Court, which may rule on the exam's validity before the results come out in June.

Though most educators see nothing wrong with a competency exam for new teachers, the objections of the Texas veterans found widespread support. Gregory Anrig, president of Educational Testing Service in Princeton, N.J., refused to let Texas administer his company's National Teachers Examination, which is given to new teachers in 28 other states. Anrig withheld the exam because Texas' "purpose is to use the test as the sole determining criterion of whether a teacher should remain in the profession."

On the other hand, Ernest Boyer, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, argued that "there has to come a time when there are minimum standards, and language is the one criterion that matters most." The American Federation of Teachers, archrival union to the NEA, urged its 15,000 members in Texas to cooperate in the test. Said an AFT spokesman in Washington: "Texas is pumping 3 billion more dollars into education. We'll take a little test if that helps reassure people that teachers are qualified and competent."

That was precisely the purpose, according to Texas Education Commissioner W.N. Kirby. "There never was a question about 95% of the teachers anyway," he said. "The concern was over a very small percentage who didn't have the skills." Kirby expressed pride in the teachers who took the test: "I don't think there is another state in the union that could have pulled this off.

This hopeful bit of chauvinism would come as a surprise in Arkansas, where in the past year 35,000 of the state's 45,000 certified teachers have been subjected to a math, reading and writing exam. Some 10% have flunked, and anger at the testing process has been a major reason that about a third of those eligible have sought early retirement. And there are no signs that the Arkansas teachers will soften their stance on the test. "They have not begun to support it," says Clarence Lovell, a testing and certification officer.

Georgia, the only other state that measures its veteran teachers, does so by testing them not for general language skills but in the specific subjects they teach. So far, 49,000 have taken the Georgia test, and some 12% have failed. Here too the feeling is strong that the Texas approach was misguided. Said Lester Solomon, Georgia's director of teacher assessment: "Nobody in their right mind believes that [the Texas] test can measure a teacher's performance." --By Ezra Bowen. Reported by B. Russell Leavitt/Atlanta

With reporting by B. Russell Leavitt/Atlanta