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Tuesday, March 11, 1986AThe Battalion/Page 5
Teacher Testing
Local teacher disagrees
with use of literacy test
ome teachers
r take excuses
followH
ozzles a ) avoid test
ceded t f
i I
: ■:
STIN — A case of the hic-
conflict with a golfing tee
nd an old reliable — car
bk- — were just a few of the
s given by teachers and ad-
three wistrators trying to get their
folio (ointments changed to take
te’s literacy test.
Jan Wood, director of tea-
ssessment for the Texas
tion Agency in Austin, said,
ad one woman call in who
at she gets the hiccups ev-
|ay at 3:30 p.m., so she
’ttake the afternoon test.”
er than 100 of the more
1200,000 teachers and ad-
orators statewide have actu-
^ed to get out of taking the
ood said.
said one of his favorites,
portsax! actually one of the most valid,
given!* jives the number of teachers
Tare expected to give birth
“ PostOa
n was
'■ Scott
at hu
un not
ems in
:ood in
one
in tht
awer
for
N’85A.\i
xpe
allegt
Mike
oking t
he repot
ay.
ilationsJo matter what the excuse,
5 werek 0 ^ sa *d the TEA considered
hange request and moved
schedule if the educator had a
octor’s excuse.
By BRIAN PEARSON
Senior Staff Writer
Those who took the Texas Exami
nation of Current Administrators
and Teachers Monday probably
found the exam to be less than chal
lenging to the intelligence, says the
president of the College Station Ed
ucation Association.
Ann Heuberger, also a librarian at
Oakwood Middle School in College
Station, says the test doesn’t meet its
purpose of testing the competency
and literacy of teachers and adminis
trators.
Heuberger took the exam along
with about 1,000 teachers and ad
ministrators in the area.
“It (TECAT) doesn’t even begin
to test to see if you’re a competent
teacher or not,” Heuberger says. “It
just tests to see if you’re able to take
this type of test.”
The TECAT, she says, which was
given Monday to about 210,000 tea
chers in Texas, would not be helpful
in weeding out the illiterate and in
competent teachers in state’s public
schools.
“Anybody who doesn’t
pass that test does not
need to be teaching. ”
— Scott Laws, literature
teacher at AScM Consol
idated High School.
According to state education offi
cials, about 10,000 are expected to
fail the exam.
Heuberger says the competency
and literacy of a teacher should be
determined by school principals and
not by the TECAT. She added that
the test should never have been
given.
“Apparently the principals have
not been doing a good job with eval
uations if there are 10,000 incompe
tent or illiterate teachers in Texas,”
she says. “If there is an incompetent
teacher, there’s a principal that
needs to be fired.”
Heuberger says a majority of tea
chers in the area share the same
opinion about the TECAT.
Scott Laws, a literature teacher at
A&M Consolidated High School,
says the test was “ridiculously easy.”
Laws says the TECAT barely
tested for literacy and didn’t test for
competency at all.
“Anybody who doesn’t pass that
test does not need to be teaching,”
Laws says. “I think it was a waste of
taxpayers’ money.”
Steve Allen, a special education
teacher at A&M Consolidated High
School, also says the TECAT was
easy.
Allen says he felt the TECAT was
necessary because it could expose
some teacher illiteracy in Texas
schools.
“I think the test should have been
given,” Allen says. “But I think the
test should be much more difficult
than it is.”
Texas teachers and educators who
don’t pass the test by June 30 will
lose their jobs and teaching certifi
cates.
xas teachers claim tests easy but unfair
i A Ttiij
on was
Associated Press
PASO — As teachers across
• Scoit-tas completed the state-man-
:d a ft: d competency test Monday,
: a faut tof them said the same thing: “It
oage pc easy, but we shouldn’t have had
id a w ft it.”
?n fonfany grumbled aloud that it was
ome c« air and some illustrated their dis-
)red on tent with stickers signs that read
lints wider Protest.’ A few admitted be-
t fortnehand they were nervous,
astic baiiut although officials had antic-
12,000 failures among the
than 200,000 educators tested
ay, no one voiced any fears of
n g-
dy Benton, a chemistry and bi
instructor at Andress High
1 in El Paso, completed the
hour test in 2‘A hours at
one-poc]
ing:
s and
led; leal
n; broil
landles
uched ik
Thomas Jefferson High School in
the border city. She wore a T-shirt
emblazoned with a red apple and the
words “I’m a Teacher and I’m Com
petent.’ A sticker on her arm read
‘Under Protest.’ _ —
“I resent it very much,” Benton
said. “First, I don’t understand how
they can give you a lifetime certifi
cate and then on the basis of one test
tell you it’s invalid.
“Secondly, I don’t feel this test
measures your competency as a tea
cher in the classroom. All it does is
measure your competency in read
ing and writing.”
Students in Texas had the day off
so their teachers could take the Tea
chers Examination of Current Ad-
CAT. The 1984 public school
reforms passed by the Legislature
mandated the test in an effort to im
prove the quality of education in
Texas public schools.
Jon Heike said, “If the Legislature
wants to pass a law, it’s legal. Even if
the majority thinks it’s unfair, it’s the
law.”
Heike was a student-teacher in the
fall and started teaching science this
semester at Andrews High School.
But Maxine Johnson of Austin, a
Travis High School English teacher
with 30 years of experience, dis
agreed.
“I think it’s unfair because it puts
to shame my having earned a per-
ministrators and Teachers, or TE- manent teacher certificate,” she said.
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“That was supposed to have been my
ticket to being qualified.”
In Houston, Linda Saveli said the
test was so simple that she resented
having to take it.
“After graduating from college
and taking all those tests, why go
back and take an eighth-grade
test?” said Saveli, who teaches at
Worthing High School.
“It was so easy,” said Joanne
Stemple, a second-grade teacher in
the Houston Independent school
district. “If they (other teachers)
can’t pass it, they shouldn’t be teach
ing. I can read and write, and that’s
what it tested.”
Lorene Patneaude, an English
teacher in El Paso for 1 1 years, said
it was not a hard test, “but it’s not a
baby test, either.”
o to Aggieuon
17
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