Teacher Testing

Lead: Teachers in Massachusetts are failing the Massachusetts Educator Certification Tests (MECT) at a rate of 43%. What does this mean?

All teachers desiring certification to teach in Massachusetts are required to pass the Massachusetts Educator Certification Tests (MECT) before they can be hired. But there is considerable controversy over this statewide assessment tool.

The Massachusetts Department of Education says that the test is critical to the welfare of our children--that the test is working to ensure that the level of teachers in the state is as high as possible. But the state does not even claim that the MECT measures teaching skills; rather the MECT allegedly measures the skills necessary to be a good teacher. That is, the MECT does not test the ability to teach a topic - it tests the teacher’s basic skills and knowledge about the topic to be taught.

But the Ad HOC Committee to Test the Teacher Test, formed by concerned educators in response to the high failure rate of prospective teachers, has investigated whether the MECT is a good measure of what it purports to test--and has found that it is not. For instance, a summa cum laude graduate of one of New England’s top colleges with a major in physics, who took the test in 1998, said that the MECT subject matter test in physics had questions on information that was never taught in college, let alone high school. "The last 25%" of the test," he reported, had content I had never seen before - in 14 college courses." There are also questions about how reliable the test is; MECT scores tend to vary significantly each time the same person takes it.

Furthermore, there are allegations that the MECT is flunking women and minorities at a much higher rate than white males. Interestingly, the company that designed the MECT has been sued in the past in both Alabama and New York for creating racist and sexist tests in the past.

In sum, though the MECT is compulsory for all new teachers, there is considerable question about how fair and/or useful the MECT actually is.

Ad HOC Committee to Test the Teacher Test
Contact Person: Walt Haney
C/o Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation, and Educational Policy
Campion Hall, Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA 02167
(617)552-4521 phone
(617)552-8419 fax
http://wwwcsteep.bc.edu/

Story Contact

Clarke Fowler
Salem State College
352 Lafayette Street
Salem, MA 01970
(978) 542-7041
Clarke.fowler@salem.mass.edu

Expert Contacts

Clarke Fowler
Salem State College
352 Lafayette Street
Salem, MA 01970
(978) 542-7041
Clarke.fowler@salem.mass.edu

Walt Haney
Senior Research Associate
Center for the Study of Testing, Evaluation and Educational Policy
Campion Hall, Boston College
Chestnut Hill, MA 02167
(617)552-4521 phone
(617)552-8419 fax
http://wwwcsteep.bc.edu/
haney@bc.edu

Vito Perrone
Harvard Graduate School of Education
35 Longfellow Hall
Cambridge, MA 02138
(617) 495-7748
vito_perrone@harvard.edu

Background

There is no evidence that any standardized test has accurately been able to predict who will be a good teacher. (FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing342 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02139 (617)864-4810 (617) 497-2224 (fax)Website: www.FairTest.org, e-mail: FairTest@aol.com)

Retest scores on the MTT have been found to be two or three times more unreliable than on well-established tests such as the SAT’s or GRE’s. This large margin of error means that someone who received a score of 72 on the MTT writing test could have scored an 89 or a 55 simply because of the unreliability of the test. (Haney, W., Fowler, C., Wheelock, A., Bebell, D., & Malec, N. (1999) Less truth than error?: An independent study of the Massachusetts Teacher Tests. Education Policy Analysis Archives,7(4).)

In well-established tests, it is generally found that someone who scores high on her or his reading ability also scores high on her or his writing ability. The MIT scores for reading and writing for each individual do not correlate closely. (Haney, W., Fowler, C., Wheelock, A., Bebell, D., & Malec, N. (1999) Less truth than error?: An independent study of the Massachusetts Teacher Tests. Education Policy Analysis Archives,7(4).)

In general, teacher testing has, on average, flunked African-Americans, Hispanics, and women at a much higher rate than white men. Studies of the National Teacher Exam showed African-Americans and Hispanics passed on average 40% to 50% of the time, while Whites passed 80% of the time. The General Knowledge portion of the NTE failed 16% of the men while it flunked a third of all the women. This trend may be contributing to a great decline in the nation’s minority teachers (from around 12% in 1980 to a projected 5% by the year 2000). This decline is occurring at the some time that minority students have increased to a solid third of all students. (Schaeffer, B. (Fall, 1996). Standardized tests and teacher competence. Found at http://fairtest.org/empl/ttcomp.htm. Bob Schaeffer is the Public Education Director of FairTest: The National Center for Fair & Open Testing. 342 Broadway Cambridge, MA 02139 (617)864-4810 (617) 497-2224 (fax)Website: www.FairTest.org, e-mail: FairTest@aol.com)

National Evaluation Systems (NES), the company who designed the MTT, has been sued in both Alabama and New York. In New York, NES was found by a federal court to have "violated the minimum requirements for professional test development." And in Alabama, NES was ordered to pay $500,000 for racial discrimination. (Haney, W., Fowler, C., Wheelock, A., Bebell, D., & Malec, N. (1999) Less truth than error?: An independent study of the Massachusetts Teacher Tests. Education Policy Analysis Archives,7(4).)

Dybdahl, C. S, Shaw, D. G., & Edwards, D. (1997). Teacher testing: Reason or rhetoric? Journal of Research & Development in Education, 30(4). 248-254.

Gorth, W.P. (1998). Tests for teachers are right for Massachusetts. Boston Globe, Dec. 13, 1998. President of the company that designed the MTT defends the test.

Hambleton, R. K. (1998). Politicians fail, not the teachers. Education Connection, Winter Issue, 19-22.

Hart, J. The teachers test: Madison, via Silber. Boston Globe, August 5, 1998, A1 and A20.

Hill, D. Dumb struck: Finneran slams "idiots" who failed teacher tests. Boston Herald, June 26, 1998, 1 and 28.

Mason, E. Good teachers need a good test. November 22, 1998. The chair of Northeastern University Department of counseling Psychology, Rehabilitation, and Special Education argues that the MTT has to be proven to be valid in its results before using it as a basis for licensing teachers.

Compiled by Audrey Shulman