Methodology: Exit exams
We examined the sets of licensing tests required for certification at the elementary, middle and high school levels and for special education certification to determine their adequacy for assessing the content knowledge of teacher candidates in every subject they will be licensed to teach. We found that the Illinois licensing tests designed to assess content mastery were inadequate in a number of certification areas: early childhood, elementary, special education, and in the sciences and social sciences at the secondary level. We therefore examined the exit requirements of teacher preparation programs that offer these certification areas to see if the programs filled the vacuum with their better exit assessments of content knowledge. In terms of defining "better exit assessments," performance assessments in which teacher candidates are evaluated extensively on one or more teaching episodes, whatever their merit in evaluating overall professional competence, are not comprehensive assessments of content mastery and are therefore not relevant to the standard.
