Court Orders Murphy’s Commissioner to Solve Lakewood’s Math Problem. One Problem With That.
November 30, 2023
NEW: NJ’s Reading Teachers Aren’t Prepared to Teach Reading. Here’s How We Fix That.
November 30, 2023Elimination of NJ’s Basic Skills Test for Teachers? Not So Fast
On Monday, as reported here, Gov. Murphy signed a bill eliminating the basic skills test for prospective teachers called Praxis 1. In the interim, numerous readers have pointed out the bill-signing was merely a photo-op because nothing happens until the Department of Education issues guidance. Some take issue with the leaders of the state teachers union, NJEA, who put out a statement Monday saying, “this is a good day for New Jersey students because there is now one less obstacle in the way of getting highly qualified educators into every New Jersey public school classroom.”
“What you have to get,” said Murphy at the bill signing, “is a balance between de-bureaucratizing (the system), and we’ve got the No. 1 education system in America, and we want to keep it that way.”
Ironically, it is the bureaucracy of the system that will impede the bill from taking effect. While the bill itself says the elimination of Praxis 1 will “take effect immediately,” it only takes effect after the Department of Education takes action. Says one reader, “according to the state, [Murphy] might have signed the bill but there is NO DATE to grant these exemptions to possible candidates.”
In a letter to the editor, Professor Tabitha Dell’Angelo from the College Of New Jersey’s School of Education writes,
“The legislation, while a promising development, operates at a governance level, outlining broad strokes rather than actionable changes. Despite language such as, ‘This act shall take effect immediately,’ practical implementation lies with the state Department of Education. Colleges and universities that prepare teachers find themselves in a holding pattern, awaiting the department’s interpretation of the legislation and the issuance of policies that will guide programs.”
It’s also worth noting that some readers have decried the bill. One reader suggests we check out the free practice Praxis Basic Skill tests “to assess for yourself if you think any teacher should be in a NJ public school who can’t pass this test. I certainly don’t want that for my children who both attend NJ public schools. Again, I’d expect every NJ high school graduate (not just college) to be able to pass this test as part of receiving a ‘thorough and efficient’ K-12 education.”
Meanwhile, aspiring teachers wait for action from the Murphy Administration’s bureaucratic Department of Education.
5 Comments
Removing the requirement to pass the BASIC SKILLS test not only lowers NJ standards for employing exceptional teachers, but also eliminates an important skill: test taking. If teachers are no longer implementing this skill themselves how can they possibly teach their students strategies necessary when taking a test, which is a practice that is a part of life in many areas of education as well as various occupational careers?where is the logic in this decision?
(Edited version)
Removing the requirement to pass the BASIC SKILLS test not only lowers NJ standards for employing exceptional teachers, but also eliminates an important skill: test taking. If teachers are no longer implementing this skill themselves how can they possibly teach their students strategies necessary when taking a test, which is a practice that is a part of life in many areas of education as well as various occupational careers? Where is the logic in this decision?
I agree with Ms. Stanzione’s perspective. Test taking is part of life. It’s part of education and a means with which one can determine knowledge mastery. Not all tests are perfect or to one’s liking, but they are essential all the same. They promote studying and perseverance. To excise test taking, particularly in the teaching field, is plain wrong.
As an education from Europe and the Caribbean, I believe that the skills tests are absolute, redundant and are of zero importance. It is a waste of time and is a money making venture. The skills that the test are said to be measuring are skills that are already obtained in teachers colleges at the preliminary or first stage of teacher training. These tests does not measure teachers’ abilities or prove that individuals are good or excellent teachers. If fact, good teaching practices are developed inside the classrooms via practical skills. One has to know that teaching is the only profession that takes on all other disciplines. Hence, there must be multiple avenues through which teachers are trained and admitted into the profession. There are multiple ways to test and measure abilities, which the US educational system is lacking. Some other ways that must be taken into consideration are: observation, demonstration of practical skills, testing of competence, just to name a few. The teachers colleges and training providers are to be allowed to do their jobs effectively using practical Technical Vocational Education and Skills (TVET) and lifelong learning methods that are suitable to enhance the teachers and the teaching profession.
You can’t study for the Reading portion of the Praxis Core test, which is not in fact a basic skills test but rather a test of a particular kind of decontextualized analytical reading that no teacher or other human being honestly needs to master. There is vrtually no evidence that people with high Praxis Core Reading scores are better than teachers than people with relatively low ones (I suspect that people in the bottom 10% might struggle) and to conflate test scores with intelligence or ability is wrong-headed. The sooner the state gets rid of this bureaucratic obstacle to prospective teachers, the better.