Minority scores lag on teaching test

 
This is the lamest thing I've read in quite some time:

Education school deans in the last year began  expressing concerns about the minority teachers' high failure rates to state  officials and asked the state to evaluate the validity of the test and  consider other ways of judging prospective teachers. They and others say the  minority teachers' results raise questions about whether the design of the  Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure is culturally biased and whether  the quality of education that minority teaching applicants receive is good  enough.

The education schools in Massachusetts are failing to prepare teachers, esp. minority ones, to pass a basic skills test, so what do they do?  BLAME THE TEST FOR BEING "CULTURALLY BIASED"!  GRRR!!!  This underscores a more general problem in education: when tests show that schools are failing to educate their students, the people responsible for this failure blame the tests!

In contrast, successful schools embrace tests as a valuable tool to measure their own and their students' performance and make improvements.  For example, this is from KIPP's core set of operating principles known as The Five Pillars -- here's Pillar #5:

Focus on Results. KIPP Schools relentlessly focus on high student  performance on standardized tests and other objective measures. Just as there  are no shortcuts, there are no excuses. Students are expected to achieve a level of academic performance  that will enable them to succeed at the nation's best high schools and  colleges.

And this is lesson #6 of Achievement First's 12 Lesssons About School Reform:

An Unwavering Focus on Student  Achievement.  Before No Child Left Behind, the  discussion about equity in schools most  often focused on inputs: per pupil funding, class size, student to teacher  ratios and others.  The urban schools that have closed the achievement gap  have all spent the same or less than their host districts and almost always have larger class sizes  and less experienced teachers than the other schools in the city where they are located. However, by focusing  exclusively on one output, student achievement, these schools have test scores that often double or  triple the average scores of other students in the district.   Our name, Achievement First, was consciously selected to constantly  reinforce our unwavering focus on  producing dramatic, life-changing student achievement, chiefly as measured by  statewide, criterion-referenced tests.  Furthermore, the entire focus of Achievement First teachers and leaders will  be on outputs.  Each school will create a "Yearly  School Report Card" that highlights key output metrics, which will be mailed to all parents and posted on the  Achievement First website.

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Minority scores lag on teaching test
Panel to study failure rate, bias complaints
By Tracy Jan, Globe Staff  |  August 19, 2007

http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2007/08/19/minority_scores_lag_on_teaching_test/

More than half the black and Hispanic applicants for teaching jobs in Massachusetts fail a state licensing exam, a trend that has created a major obstacle to greater diversity among public school faculty and stirred controversy over the fairness of the test.