Teachers’ unions are cheering the news that New York state education officials have killed off a literacy test which successfully revealed that almost a third of candidate teachers cannot meet eight-grade standards.
Members of the New York state Board of Regents voted on Monday to eliminate the literacy exam which revealed the prospective teachers’ poor reading and writing skills, saying the controversial test is “flawed” and that it puts Latino and African-American teacher applicants at an unfair disadvantage.
Advocates of testing said the decision to kill the literacy test will lower teaching standards, especially for minority students in the city.