Weighing a pig won’t make it fatter, and racist exams will not increase the number of teachers of color and American Indian teachers in the nation’s classrooms.
The Urban Teacher Program (UTP), housed in the School of Urban Education (UED) at Metropolitan State University in Saint Paul, Minn., is completing its 17th year of preparing diverse teacher candidates to meet the needs of the Twin Cities metro area since its founding was mandated by the Legislature in 2000 with a one-time funding appropriation.
MSU is a Minority Serving Institution (MSI), specifically an Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institution (AANAPISI), which means the majority of its students are students of color (Asian/American) and/or American Indian. The average age of an MSU student is 33, and many students are Muslim and multilingual.
UED is the most ethnically diverse school of education in Minnesota in terms of its faculty and staff, with more candidates and completers who are of color or American Indian than any other teacher preparation program in the state. UED offers several majors that qualify program completers to become licensed educators in the state of Minnesota. And, like other teacher preparation programs across the nation, UED is not immune from having to have its students take and pass high-stakes licensure exams if they wish to become fully licensed teachers.
Teachers in Minnesota are required to demonstrate competency on a series of tests in reading, writing, math, pedagogy and licensure field-specific content knowledge. The Professional Educator Licensing and Standards Board of Minnesota (PELSB) is responsible for overseeing the teacher testing requirements set forth in Minnesota statute and is continually monitoring and analyzing its testing requirements.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2015, passing scores on the ACT Plus Writing or SAT exams have been permitted to be submitted as an alternative to the NES Basic Skills tests in math, reading and writing in order to meet the requirements for “basic skills” in reading, writing, and math.
NES stands for National Evaluation Series. We believe that the NES basic skills exams reinforce manmade structures of social stratification that consist of exalting the worldviews of Whites, English-dominant speakers and economically privileged Christians at the top of the social order. On the bottom of this social order are test-takers who are the first in their families to attend college and test-takers for whom English is their second language.
