As we wrote recently, we were pretty discouraged about a new law in Illinois
that removed the state’s long-held requirement that aspiring teachers must pass a basic skills test before they are eligible
to be admitted to a teacher preparation program. The new law now lets institutions
go ahead and admit candidates who fail the test, as long as they pass it before
they begin their student teaching experience, often the last semester of
college.
But
something has cheered us up a bit. According to the Chicago Tribune’s coverage of the now-weakened law, a bunch of
institutions are taking the high ground and have pledged not to relax their own
requirements for admission. They recognize the law’s potential harm,
passed in a misguided attempt to keep the profession diverse, because it will
almost certainly allow institutions to collect several semesters of tuition from
unqualified wannabe teachers–and then at the last minute kick those out who can’t pull off a passing score.
For
some of the right-minded institutions, like Northwestern and Loyola, it wasn’t
that hard of a decision, since they are unlikely to admit many college students
who can’t pass the basic skills test. But it takes real guts for the less
selective institutions on this list such as Northern Illinois, National Louis
and, in particular, Northeastern who also seem to have made this decision.
Good on
them. We hope their colleagues at other institutions
follow suit.
