The Study
Susan Melnick, professor in the Department of Teacher Education and director of the College of Education's Office of Academic Outreach, and Diana Pullin, professor at Boston College, examine the implementation of the controversial Massachusetts Educator Certification Tests (MECT), and the educational, legal, and public policy issues in establishing a teacher testing program.

Discussion
Melnick and Pullin begin their analysis with the headline-making news in 1998 that only 46.9 percent of examinees who took the MECT passed. The low pass rate drew a strong negative reaction among many stakeholders. But the researchers point out that the quality of the teaching force and the credibility of teacher education have long been concerns in America. In the 1990s, the demand for greater student performance and more thoughtful and ambitious instruction coalesced "around a singular goal: high and rigorous standards for teaching and learning." A result has been the emergence of mandated state policies such as teacher competency tests. The stakes for higher education institutions have also increased substantially. The Higher Education Reauthorization Act of 1998 limits access to federally funded student financial aid in teacher education programs whose students perform poorly on state teacher tests. "Now," the researchers wrote, "the high stakes for individuals are shared to some extent with the institutions of higher education that prepared those students." It is in this context that Melnick and Pullin examine the MECT. They find that the test is lacking on a number of technical and other grounds. There is the issue of the test's validity, for example. They not only point out that the Massachusetts testing company, National Evaluation Systems, has had "significant problems in the past in appropriately implementing its validation studies," but also cite a recent independent analysis of the MECT that finds it may not have sufficient validity for certifying teachers. In addition, the researchers find no evidence that the state made any effort to ensure that its own regulatory requirements for teacher education curriculum were matched with the content on the tests. The result is that there is no assurance that the teacher education programs' curricula in which the examinees participated were designed to adequately prepare for the test. In the end, the researchers believe states need to reassess their testing programs and "have the courage" to improve the technical quality of their exams or substitute more accurate and fair measures of teaching competence that would ensure quality. "If teacher tests in Massachusetts or the other 43 states that currently use them continue to serve as surrogate measures of teacher quality, they must truly be several things: reflective of the central tasks of teaching; valid measures of teaching competence, basic skills, or subject matter knowledge; fair to those candidates who fail...; consistent with legal requirements; and instrumental in enhancing, rather than watering down, the teacher education curricula in those public and private institutions more desirous of having their graduates pass the tests than preparing well-qualified teachers."

For More Information
Melnick, S.L. & Pullin, D. (2000). Can you take dictation? Prescribing teacher quality through testing. Journal of Teacher Education, 51(4), 262-275.