Being required to demonstrate competency in liberal arts to teach is racially discriminatory, a federal judge has ruled.
NYT (“Judge Rules Second Version of New York Teachers’ Exam Is Also Racially Biased“):
A federal judge on Friday found that an exam for New York teaching candidates was racially discriminatory because it did not measure skills necessary to do the job, the latest step in a court battle over teacher qualifications that has spanned nearly 20 years.
The exam, the second incarnation of the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, called the LAST-2, was administered from 2004 through 2012 and was designed to test an applicant’s knowledge of liberal arts and science.
But the test was found to fail minority teaching candidates at a higher rate than white candidates. According to Friday’s decision, written by Judge Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan, the pass rate for African-American and Latino candidates was between 54 percent and 75 percent of the pass rate for white candidates. Once it was established that minority applicants were failing at a disproportionately high rate, the burden shifted to education officials to prove that the skills being tested were necessary to do the job; otherwise, the test would be ruled discriminatory.
One would think that, to be ruled racially discriminatory would require affirmative proof of either discriminatory intent or specific discriminatory content. But, no: mere differential results along racial line apparently puts the burden of proof on the state.
In creating the test, the company, National Evaluation Systems, sent surveys to educators around New York State to determine if the test’s “content objectives” were relevant and important to teaching. The samples for both surveys were small, however, Judge Wood said.
The judge found that National Evaluation Systems, now called Evaluation Systems, part of Pearson Education, went about the process backward.
“Instead of beginning with ascertaining the job tasks of New York teachers, the two LAST examinations began with the premise that all New York teachers should be required to demonstrate an understanding of the liberal arts,” Judge Wood wrote.
Joshua Sohn, a partner at the firm Mishcon de Reya, who represents the prospective teachers in the case, echoed the that sentiment.
“They started with the conclusion, without any support, that this is what you actually needed to know to be an effective teacher,” Mr. Sohn said.
Now, I agree that it makes sense to ascertain what skills are related to the job before devising a test for those skills. But it strikes me as a priori obvious that, to be an effective teacher, it would be exceedingly helpful to know the things required of a college graduate, much less possess the knowledge base we expect students to come away with. How can you impart knowledge you don’t have?
It’s actually a bit more complicated than that, though. An earlier NYT report provides some background:
The judge, Kimba M. Wood of Federal District Court in Manhattan, has asked the state for extensive documentation on the development of the test, which was first given during the 2013-14 school year.
The request came as part of a long-running case brought in 1996 by black and Hispanic teachers against New York City. In 2012, Judge Wood ruled that an older state-certification test, which was intended to measure teachers’ knowledge of the liberal arts and science, was racially discriminatory.
Although compensation has not yet been awarded, the city is expected to have to pay back wages to several thousand teachers who were demoted to being substitutes from the early 1990s to 2004, or were never hired as full-time teachers because they did not pass the older test.
[…]
The literacy test is the most challenging of four exams introduced in the 2013-14 school year, as part of an effort to raise the caliber of teachers and teacher training programs. Over all, the number of aspiring teachers passing the four required tests dropped by 20 percent from previous years. Students may retake tests they failed.
Under a provision in the new state budget, any graduate-level teacher training program that has fewer than 50 percent of its students pass each certification exam for three consecutive years will not be able to admit new students.
The earlier test that Judge Wood ruled was discriminatory, the Liberal Arts and Sciences Test, was used until 2004. She said that because the minority candidates were failing that test in greater numbers, the burden was on public officials to prove the test served a valid purpose. In similar rulings, judges around the country have thrown out written exams for firefighters and police officers, ruling they were not relevant to the tasks they would perform.
Judge Wood ruled that officials had not shown that the material on the test “accurately measured the minimum knowledge about the liberal arts and sciences that teachers need to be competent.”
She is also expected to rule soon on whether a replacement test with the same name, which was in use from 2004 to 2013, was also discriminatory. If she decides that it was, thousands of additional people who failed the test during that time and thus were barred from full-time teaching positions could make claims against the city for back pay and other benefits. A testing expert appointed by the court submitted a report in February that concluded the state had not proved the test was relevant.
The test is, in fact, more about reasoning ability than factual knowledge:
The new literacy test that is now under scrutiny by Judge Wood “requires the teacher to demonstrate an understanding of evidence found in texts and uses cogent reasoning to analyze and synthesize ideas,” according to the State Education Department. “The teacher produces complex and nuanced writing by choosing words, information, and structure deliberately for a given task, purpose, and audience.”
Sample questions provided by the state include a passage about Gertrude Stein’s life in Paris, followed by questions about the passage, and two passages about federal energy policy that the test-taker is asked to analyze in short written responses.
This skill set strikes me as perfectly reasonable as a minimum standard for classroom teachers. The blogospheric commenters on the case are mostly echoing versions of this theme:
Kate Walsh, the president of the National Council on Teacher Quality, which advocates tougher certification requirements, said the judge’s questioning of the test was troubling. “I want to ask Judge Wood,” Ms. Walsh said, “would she be willing to have any of these teachers teach her own children or grandchildren, and I would bet my life she’d say no.”
“They’re saying, at the risk of not appearing racist, or at the risk of having to make a hard call against adults, I’m going to sacrifice the best needs of kids,” she added.
Regardless, the judge appears to be applying the law as it exists rather than making up public policy through her equity powers. The state of the law in these matters is, indeed, that disparate results shifts the burden of proof to the state. That strikes me as crazy, but it’s the law under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
[UPDATE] OzarkHillbilly observes in the first comment below that this is as it should be in that,
When a policy (like voter ID) shows racial inequalities in it’s results, there is a problem with the policy. In this case, the problem may be in the test, or it may be in something that happens earlier in the process (including schools, education funding, etc, these things can and do limit a persons potentialities and they have and do continue to affect those of color more than whites). Either way it is indicative of a problem in the process and it is incumbent upon the state to find the problem and fix it.
I agree but that’s a different thing entirely. It’s one thing to argue there’s a public policy need to solve the problem of racial inequality and quite another to argue that a policy clearly motivated by something other than race should be halted when there’s disparate racial impact.
If we’re failing to prepare black teachers as well as white ones, we should absolutely fix that. But that doesn’t mean that unprepared teachers, of whatever race, should be sent into the classroom. Indeed, given that black teachers are likely to be disproportionately hired in districts that have more black students, doing so would perpetuate the problem. [/UPDATE]
As an aside, those of you over a certain age may recall the name “Kimba Wood.” She came to public prominence when Bill Clinton put her name forward for US Attorney General but became his second choice for that post in a row (following Zoe Baird) to be disqualified for having hired an illegal alien as a nanny for her children.* She was, incidentally, put into her current post by one Ronald Wilson Reagan way back in 1987.
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*Correction: The original version of the post appended ” and failing to pay Social Security taxes.” But, as Patterico reminds me in the comments, that applied only to Baird.
