Majority of New York city’s trainee teachers flunked literacy tests
How do you spell illiterate?
A majority of students training at scores of New York colleges to become teachers flunked a literacy test they have to pass to be licensed, new figures show.
The state Board of Regents for the first time is requiring would-be teachers to pass the Academic Literacy Skills exam.
It measures whether a prospective teacher can understand and analyze reading material and also write competently. The results show many don’t belong anywhere near a classroom.
At Boricua College in The Bronx, 13 students took the literacy test. Not a single one passed.
At a half-dozen City University campuses, about half or more failed to make the grade.
Only 29 percent passed at York College in Queens, where there were 68 test takers.
Just one-third of the 21 test takers at Brooklyn’s Medgar Evers College passed.
The pass rate was only 41 percent at CUNY’s College of Technology in Brooklyn; 47 percent at Lehman College in The Bronx; 51 percent at City College; 54 percent at Brooklyn College and 55 percent at the College of Staten Island. CUNY vowed better results going forward.
Related: when a stands for average.
