Women, minorities struggle on Missouri teaching exams

ST. LOUIS -- Woman and minorities are failing Missouri exams to enter teaching programs and to gain certification at higher rates, raising concerns about bias.

The gender gap is problematic because the tests are cutting off the very people most driven to the profession, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported. The racial disparity also is troubling because while classrooms are becoming more diverse, the pool of available teachers is not.

In a survey of 10 Missouri colleges, women scored lower than men on four of five of the tests that make up the Missouri General Education Assessment, the tests required to be accepted into a teaching program.

Jeff Edmonds, a middle school math teacher in Chicago, conducted the survey between 2013 and 2014 when he was a doctoral candidate at the University of Missouri-Columbia. Edmonds found men scored better than women in English, math, science and social studies, while women scored slightly better than men on the writing portion of the test.

The same kind of gap is present on exams taken by teaching school graduates who are seeking state teacher certification. Missouri is revamping the tests, reflecting a national push for more rigorous teacher preparation programs. Failure rates have risen.

Of the tests required to teach in Missouri's elementary schools, the state reported that 42 percent of white students passed all four of the tests at the same time compared with only 6 percent of black students.

Both the Pearson education company that designed the tests and the state department of education that endorses them say they are a fair way to assess teacher competency.

"The question of why do certain groups score higher or lower is a bigger conversation," said Paul Katnick, an assistant commissioner with Missouri's department of education. "We need to continue to think about the root causes of the gaps, but we are confident that it's not bias."

He added, however, the bias committee was set to look at the tests again this summer out of an abundance of caution.

But Alexander Cuenca, an assistant professor of education at St. Louis University, said reconvening the same committee was not a worthwhile exercise.

Cuenca, who also serves on the Missouri Advisory Board for Educator Preparation, said neither the state nor Pearson had provided enough information on the people who make up the bias committee, their backgrounds, their methods or how they were trained to spot bias.

Cuenca said overreliance on biased standardized tests could lead to the closure of different teacher preparation programs around the state, particularly the ones that serve minority populations.

"No one is saying we should lower the bar," he said. "What we need is a process that's fair."

Information from: St. Louis Post-Dispatch, http://www.stltoday.com