By Paul Moreno 

January 28 -- Governor Cellucci has reintroduced his bill to require incumbent teachers in Massachusetts schools to pass a test of basic academic skills. 

The governor first proposed the legislation last summer, after graduates of teacher education programs were given a tenth-grade competency exam and most of them failed.  On Beacon Hill, the bill was laughed out of committee due to the influence of the Massachusetts Teacher Association. 

The MTA has kept a close watch on the issue.  They led the charge against Cellucci’s  bill last year and continue to mobilize to prevent testing. 

The union’s standard refrain is that the tests are not an accurate measure of teacher quality.  “Educational experts maintain that the best and most effective way to evaluate teachers is through classroom observation and evaluation.” 

But nobody claims that the tests are a measure of teacher quality.  They are only meant to measure the thing without which nobody can be an effective teacher—knowledge. 

The MTA and “educational experts” have long denied that what teachers teach is important.  All they talk about is how they teach.  This is the reason that over half of prospective teachers could not pass a tenth-grade exam last year—they haven’t learned anything, and they have nothing to teach. 

It is true that a person can know everything and be a rotten teacher, but the opposite is not true:  No magic “methods” can compensate for a lack of knowledge, which is exactly what these tests measure. 

The "Observation" Ruse 
Classroom observation—perhaps by an observer as bereft of knowledge as the teacher being observed—is no substitute for the tests.  Nor is it a reliable measure of teacher quality even when used to evaluate those who have demonstrated their knowledge.  In most cases, the observer has not mastered the field of the teacher being observed—a qualified biologist cannot well evaluate a French lesson.  But more important, the use of  “observation” as a measurement misses a crucial point about teaching and learning. 

Teaching and learning cannot really be "observed" at all.  “The futility of observing a classroom reflects the fact that that is not where education takes place,” writes Thomas Sowell in Inside American Education.  It is what goes on in the teacher’s mind before class and the student’s mind after class that matters.  “This would be obvious in almost any other field,” he continues.  “No one would expect to acquire any real grasp of military operations by sitting around a field headquarters watching a general handing out sealed orders to officers going out on their assignments.  It is what happened before those orders were conceived and written up that constitutes military strategy and it is what those officers do later, in battle, that determines whether it will work.  Observing the transfer point tells you nothing substantive, no matter how long you observe it.” 

MTA president Stephen Gorrie said, "Widescale testing may scare good people away from the profession.”  This is the opposite of the truth.  The fact is, talented people avoid the teaching profession because it has such dismally low professional standards.  The “educational experts” who set the standards and control the entry into the profession are the ones who scare talented college students away.  In respected professions, “high qualifications attract the highly qualified,” as Reginald Damerell noted in Education’s Smoking Gun:  How Teachers Colleges Have Destroyed Education in America. 

Janet Dufault, a sixth-grade teacher, told the Worcester Telegram & Gazette, "I'm not threatened by taking a test, I am insulted.  I don't think there is any other profession that is being asked to take a qualifying test or be thrown out of work."  Ms. Dufault should consider the reasons for this disparity:  The public doubts the qualifications of teachers because of the schools' failure to educate children and because recent graduates of teacher education programs have tested so poorly.  Unlike law schools or medical schools, the teaching professionals have never shown that they have a body of knowledge to impart or that their training produces better teachers.  Rather, they are regarded as blithely handing out certificates to mediocre students. 

It is precisely the most talented teachers like Ms. Dufault who should press for tests to disprove that Massachusetts teachers are ignorant of what they teach.  Unfortunately, the most vocal teachers and their union leaders object to any proposal that will distinguish among teachers, such as merit pay or salary differentials based on subject matter taught.  This common tactic of organized labor protects mediocrity. 

Cellucci’s proposal has a substantial amount of support in the press, and he may be able to persuade the legislature to agree to his bill.  He should go out of his way to explain why testing is necessary and integral to improving schools in Massachusetts. 
 

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