Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3

Having decided to stay in New York for at least another school year, I decided it was time to get my literacy certification (I have the Masters but not the certification to do anything with it yet) and to get a New York teaching license for secondary language arts; I have a license from Tennessee already, but to teach at a public school here I'll need to transfer it. NYCDOE (New York City Department of Education), I have learned, is the largest educational institution in the world. As such, it is absolutely ensconced in red tape, and I've had to begin unwinding it. This is going to be a slow, painful process.

First order of business: take two tests at $149 a pop at a computer testing center downtown; this is for the inter-state transfer of the teaching license I already have. The hardest part about the test I took this morning was keeping my eyes open throughout. I showed some of the practice questions to Manu, a lawyer who has never taught, has no interest in teaching, and whose knowledge of the art of teaching comes from watching a few episodes of "Boston Public" in 2001. He aced them. Frankly, I'd rather take a test for which I had to study, as these questions were so easy it felt like a completely useless formality that I even be required to answer them. There were maybe 3 that required some sort of knowledge about teaching/academia, one of which involved special education law (although three of the four answer choices were so ludicrous that it was pretty easy to identify the correct one), one of which concerned very basic statistics terminology, and one of which essentially asked for the definition of "cognitive development." There was an essay question at the end, and to eat up a few minutes I proofread my answer about six times just because I felt weird walking out with so much time left over.

This morning's exam was the secondary level teaching test. I was allowed 255 minutes, of which, hungover and sleepy, I used only 130 or so, and that was including a bathroom break and a few very brief catnaps. I take the primary level teaching test on Wednesday, which will be the same format, and then there's a literacy test which will count as my area of specialty and will cover the stuff I learned at TC; that one will be for the new certification. I hope and pray that the latter test will require at least some thought on my part. Not that I love taking hard exams, but I don't like the idea of having to call a bunch of moronic people my colleagues because they managed to pass this ridiculously easy test. Once I've passed all three, TC has to "recommend" me for certification, which basically means they vouch for the fact that I went through their program without flunking anything, being convicted of any hate crimes, etc.

At least the testing center was interesting. To ensure that I was who I said I was, they asked for two forms of government-issued photo ID when I walked in. They took my picture and scanned my palms when I entered the lobby of the testing center, then watched me walk down the hall to the testing room where I was compared with the picture they'd just taken and my palms were rescanned to ensure that my vein pattern matched that of the person who'd just come from the lobby. The process was repeated when I went to and came back from the bathroom. (I once proctored an ACT test and had two sets of identical twins in the room. Even though they showed me their driver's licenses, I had no idea which was which, and they very easily could have tested for each other. I guess the palm vein scan thing is designed to prevent that sort of shell game.)

And we wonder why public education is a mess.