Fifty per cent of DISD teachers fail to pass test, said the headline in the Dallas Times Herald last summer, and the wire services relayed the news to much of the civilized world. Poor Dallas. Twenty years in court over desegregation and busing, and now this. Actually, the Wesman Personnel Classification Test was given not to all Dallas teachers but to 535 first-year teachers. Half fell below the score considered acceptable by the DISD—and that standard itself was far from rigorous. The teachers were considerably outperformed on the same test by a volunteer group of juniors and seniors from Jesuit College Preparatory School, a private high school in North Dallas.
Why Teachers Can’t Teach
by Gene Lyons
Texas Monthly
September 1979
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For at least 40 years, teacher preparation has focused on ed courses (process-oriented) instead of content courses. At my state university, secondary-ed majors and minors required exactly HALF of the subject-specific credit hours required by the College of Arts and sciences. Also, the ed school was widely regarded as having the worst teachers in the whole university. Strong students rarely survived the four years of edu-babble. I doubt that things have changed much.
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