Raising Standards for Teachers
Raising Standards for Teachers: Is Standardized Testing Effective? Right now there is a current push to raise the standards for teachers. ... It is extremely important for our teachers to be fluent in these areas to help raise the academic standards of students. ... We will look at standardized tests and the relation to teacher competence, along with the pros and cons of raising these standards. ... The National Council on Teacher Quality takes a strong stance on the testing of teachers, however feel that these tests are undemanding and passing scores are set too low, which limits the opportunity to separate those who lack the basic skills or knowledge to be good teachers. ... By setting these expectations, prospective teachers are challenged to reach their teaching goal. This is a perfect reason why the standards are being raised. ... Shaeffer goes on to say that “Even if there were incompetent teachers in large numbers, there’s no evidence whatsoever that any test ever devised by human beings could identify who’s going to be a bad teacher” (2). ... There is then no reason to expect that future use of teacher competency tests will have any impact whatsoever on the quality of teachers in the public school.