Future teachers can’t pass a math test

Math teachers are hard to find in South Dakota, and some K-12 leaders wonder whether a challenging certification test is creating a bottleneck.

Almost half of aspiring teachers in South Dakota who take the exam fail. The abysmal passage rate started about two years ago when the certification exams and scoring requirements were updated.

State officials are looking for answers, which might include lowering South Dakota’s requirement score for future math teachers.

“Nobody wants to lower the bar,” said Don Kirkegaard, president of the state Board of Education. “We just want to make sure we have a realistic bar.”

All South Dakota public school teachers must pass certification exams to teach, including content-specific tests for particular subjects, such as math.

Eric Ruppelt is scheduled to take it next month. He’s a little nervous. Three and half hours. Sixty questions, ranging in subject from algebra to calculus.

Like many future math teachers in the state, the 21-year-old Dakota State University junior needs to pass the test before he can student teach.

And he’s ready to get into the classroom, Ruppelt said.

“I love math,” Ruppelt said. “If I could see the spark and the interest in the kids, that would be most enjoyable for me.”

For teacher certification, South Dakota uses Praxis series tests, created by the North Carolina-based nonprofit Educational Testing Service. Thirty-five other states depend on the same service to measure a teacher’s worth in high school-level math.

Ruppelt and other future math teachers in South Dakota must score at least a 160 out of 200 to pass. Most states have the same requirement, but three states have a lower threshold. Teachers can get by with a 134 in Iowa, with a 145 in Alabama and a 152 in Kansas.

Some of the students in South Dakota’s college education programs have repeatedly failed the test by one or two points, said Paul Turman, vice president of academic affairs for the South Dakota Board of Regents.

“Something about the test is holding them up,” Turman said.

Potential problems with testing sparked the concern of some school district officials, who already struggle to find qualified teachers, said Rob Monson, executive director of the School Administrators of South Dakota.

Schools across the state reported single-digit candidate pools for teaching jobs this school year, according to a SASD survey, and 41 districts said math teachers were the hardest to find.

Monson’s group asked the state Department of Education to investigate.

“We’re running our own people out-of-state because the score’s too high,” Monson said. “Can we look at doing something about this?”

Math education majors have a higher passage rate, but problems arise when teachers from other specialties are considered.

Combined, 48 percent of people who took the most recent version of the test failed, while 28 percent of students with a math focus failed.

Not all test-takers will go on to focus only on high school math. Some just need the credential because it’s part of the job.

Middle school teachers might need it if they have a high school-level math section. Special education teachers need it if they are responsible for grading a student’s coursework in math.

Everyone takes the same test, regardless of discipline or grade-level, whether they teach ninth-grade algebra or calculus.

Officials will look at possible alternatives for those teachers who might not have a strict high-school math focus but need some kind of certification. It might mean using a different test, or finding a way to grant certification to students who finish required college classes.

“We don’t know what action we would be considering,” said Mary Stadick Smith, a spokeswoman for the state education department. “We’re trying to figure out what is the best route.”

Lowering the cut score is another option, but Stadick Smith declined to say whether it was a possibility.

Kirkegaard, who also is the superintendent of the Meade School District, said the state board will evaluate whether South Dakota’s requirement score is appropriate. The matter is slated for discussion at the group’s May 18 meeting in Aberdeen.

“The only risk that I see is if you would arbitrarily lower them and not have high expectations of our math teachers,” Kirkegaard said. “The key is, you need to make sure that when we evaluate the scores, we’re not just reducing the bar.”