State Certification: Necessity or Delusion?
By. Kevin Fitton

This has been an idea that I have been kicking around for a while and I think that eventually it would be worthy of some master or doctoral degree research. I know at first it seems like a silly suggestion, but I ask that you hold your skepticism while I lay out this theory – ‘what is the value of testing teachers in content?’

For anyone that is a teacher, your already familiar with what I am about to speak about, the eventual requirement of shelling out hundreds of dollars to sit down to several hours of tests that ask some of the most inane questions known to mankind. Now, I will give test writers some credit, it is genuinely hard to write an exceptionally good multiple-choice test…but honestly, I wonder if they have ever taken their own tests to see how terrible the standardized tests are? When I was in college, I always heard rumblings that the MI history test had one of the lower pass rates out of the tests that were offered…once I took the test I finally understood why – it had some of the worst questions I have ever encountered! Some of the questions were so bad, I finally asked the test proctor what to do about such a bad question and the only response I got was that I could fill out a complain form for the question that would be submitted to ETS (writer of the test). I told them to just forget it because I would spend more time filling out complaints than it would just take me to work my way through the test. Ok, so that being said…the first question I would guess that someone would ask would be, “are you just bitter because you barely passed?” Well, it is hard to say because ETS will not give out the maximum score for the test, only the minimum passing score is given along with your personal score. For that particular test, the minimum score was 220 (100 test questions). I would think that a logical assumption would be that the maximum score is 300; I scored in the 270s…so it was not that bad of a score. I am convinced that the problem with people testing bad is that the test itself is horrible, not the knowledge of those taking the test (usually). Therefore, even if I believed in standardized testing, there is, strike one against it.

Another problem is with the inherent structure of the certification system and its relationship to testing. This has particularly become an issue since No Child Left Behind and the need to have ‘highly qualified’ teachers. Each state determines its own requirements for being considered ‘highly qualified’ but a good percentage of the states use certification tests as a component. In a ‘what if’ scenario…what would happen if someone who is well rounded and educated were to take all of the certification tests? Assuming things like time and fees not being an issue and that the person passed a large portion of the tests…would that mean that they are certified to teach in all those areas? Honestly, if the emphasis is being placed so tightly on testing…by following that thinking, they should be certified? Therefore, by proxy, are these tests something that should be considered so important to the process? Personally, I do not see the value of standardized tests as professional licensure…strike two.

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My last issue surrounds the historical origins of testing. Standardized tests have been around for ages in one form or another; whether it is an I.Q. test, a Standford-Binet, or a Wechsler Inventory there have been all kinds of available tests but their origins have always come from research and diagnosis instead of accountability and high-stakes. Putting these kind of parameters on standardized tests perverts the reasoning behind them and in the +30 years we have been pushing standardized testing on to kids, have we seen any reasonable improvement in the education system? This is part of the idea that Alfie Kohn proposes in his books and articles in that we have been going about this all wrong. However, instead of getting the word out as to this problem, the political realm continues to push a course of action that research is showing to be useless. From studying history/politics, my own personal conclusions point to pandering to a narrow political base and deflecting attention from real issues in education (not funding programs already in place and excessive emphasis on athletics over academics). So why should this perversion continue? Strike three.

Going back to the original question, what value is there to testing teachers in content? Well, it reminds me of a story regarding one of the best history professors I have had in a class; he told me that realistically, content knowledge is vastly secondary to methodology and thinking skills. It is easy to read content before a class but it terribly difficult to think properly on short notice. With this in mind…if we are going to test something shouldn’t it be something that is much more meaningful than the memorization of facts? It is a topic that I find fascinating to examine and I hope that there are others out there that are willing to question the conventional thinking out there, because as we have seen conventional is not cutting it.