New Jersey Teachers Union: Not Only Do We Not Want Basic Skills Test For the Children We Supposedly Teach, We Want An End to Basic Skills Tests for Teachers, Too

by Ace

You can always tell who the good employees are. They’re the ones crying out, “We demand an end to objective evaluation of our job qualifications and job performance!”

Yep, qualified, productive people are always looking for ways to end measurement of job performance. Highly skilled people hate evaluations based on merit!

One of New Jersey’s main teachers unions is calling for the end of the basic skills test for certifying teachers.The New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) is advocating for the demise of the Praxis Core Academic Skills for Educators: Reading, Writing and Math. New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy’s signing of Bill S1553 would eliminate that requirement; NJEA called the test “an unnecessary barrier” hindering the alleviation of teacher shortages.

“When the New Jersey Department of Education (NJDOE) adopted changes to the administrative code around teacher certification, it missed an opportunity to eliminate this requirement, which created an unnecessary barrier to entering the profession,” stated NJEA.

Passing scores for the basic skills test are 156 for reading, 150 for math, and 162 for writing. The maximum possible score is 200.

So, if I’m reading this right, to teach children basic skills at a child level, adults have to score about 75% — a C grade, in other words — on a basic skills (for children) test.

And our current crop of The Real Heroes and The Best and The Brightest finds this too difficult an ask.

Certain educators don’t have to take the basic skills test: those who achieve an SAT, ACT, or GRE score in the top third percentile of the year they took it, as well as those who obtain a master’s or terminal degree with a 3.0 minimum GPA.Nicki Neily, founder and president of Parents Defending Education, insisted that there were better options for overcoming the teacher shortage other than reducing entry standards.

“Teachers should be able to pass a basic skills test before they’re tasked with educating children in those core subjects,” said Neily.

NJEA successfully advocated for the end of another teacher certification test last year, the educative Teacher Performance Assessment (edTPA). NJEA criticized the edTPA as a costly, discriminatory, and unnecessary hindrance to overcoming the teacher shortage.

Of course it’s “discriminatory.”

NJ Governor is likely to give in to the teachers union, as Democrats always do.

He’s also going to make it easier for students to show “growth.” In other words, he’s going to make it easier for incompetent teachers to fail to teach their students by ending another objective measure of student, and therefore teacher, performance.

Murphy also indicated that his administration would put Student Growth Objectives (SGOs) “on a diet,” which he concurred were “bureaucracy-like.” The SGOs are long-term academic goals for students set by teachers in collaboration with supervisors. The governor’s remarks elicited applause and cheers from the NJEA conference crowd: “No more SGOs!”

This covid fascist then claimed that anyone objecting to teaching children that they can decide to the opposite sex, or to be a cat or dog or unicorn, is an “extremist.”

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