First-year teacher Jenny Miller conducts her fifth-grade class on the first day of school at Anderson Intermediate School. Fresh out of college, Miller said she always wanted to be an educator. Staff file photo by John P. Cleary
ANDERSON — Indiana Rep. Terri Austin, D-Anderson, a former school administrator and former member of the Indiana House of Representatives’ Education Committee, has heard quite a few complaints about the teacher licensing exam since 2014, when the contract was given to Pearson.
“I’ve heard it from perspective of students, I’ve heard it from the perspective of teachers and I’ve heard it from the perspective of superintendents,” she said.“I do have to question why all of a sudden so many teachers have such a difficult time passing the test.”
In 2016, Austin said, pre-service middle school English teachers had only a 36% pass rate, and pre-service middle school math teachers had a 32% pass rate.
“Some of these are kids with a 4.0 GPA, a 3.5 GPA,” she said.
And that’s after some licensure candidates have paid as much as $1,200 to take a test prep course and passed a practice test at 99 percent but fail the actual test, Austin said.
“That is a problem. Is that test really formulated to what pre-service teachers actually are learning?” she asked.“If they are about to enter into college, they think twice about becoming a teacher, in addition to all the other things they hear about becoming a teacher nowadays.”
That’s why Austin believes it might be a good idea to transfer the licensure testing contract to Educational Testing Service in 2021.
“There have been complaints about Pearson for a long time,” she said. “Pearson has lost some contracts at the state level, even for student testing. It’s going to be interesting to see if there is any effort to intervene.”
It may be easy to place the blame with the colleges and universities charged with preparing pre-service teachers for the test. But Austin said she believes most are doing a good job.
“Having taught at Anderson University, I think our colleges and universities take their curricula and requirements very seriously,” she said.
Though Austin and some other others believe the challenges of licensure and the test to achieve may be partially to blame for Indiana’s teacher shortage, Anderson Community Schools Superintendent Timothy Smith and South Madison Community Schools Superintendent Joe Buck said they don’t believe it plays a major role.
“I believe that most students who prepare to become teachers will continue to take steps to pass the exam, even if it takes a couple of times,” Smith said.
Still, the test is a hurdle for many educators, he admitted.
“I have heard from a number of candidates that it takes two and three times of taking the test to get everything passed,” he said.
But it’s the universities that are responsible for ensuring the preparedness of the candidates, Smith said.
“Re-evaluating the test and making sure it is appropriately written would be beneficial as well,” he said.
Buck said though some districts have experienced a teacher shortage, his hasn’t.
He said more likely than the ability to pass the licensure test, it’s salary and working conditions that influence whether teacher candidates actually ever make it into the classroom.
Smith and Buck also are among many superintendents throughout the state who are vocal about the use of standardized testing as a means of judging the capabilities of students. Buck said that also applies to evaluating teachers.
“Similar to K-12 students, no single test should make a determination on a student’s ability,” he said.
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