New York: We Need Black Teachers For Black Students. It Doesn’t Matter If The Teachers Can Read.

On Monday, the New York Board of Regents announced that it would dump the Academic Literacy Skills Test. They didn’t dump the test, which was designed to test teachers on reading ability in order to raise standards, because there was anything wrong with the test per se. They dumped it because too many minority teachers were failing it.

One of the members of the task force that looked at the teacher certification tests, Professor Leslie Soodak of Pace University, said, “Having a white workforce really doesn’t match our student body anymore.” And it turns out that, according to ABC News, 54 percent of Hispanics and 59 percent of blacks who took the test failed it on the first try, as opposed to just 36 percent of whites. Does that mean the test was racist? Not at all – a federal judge in New York, not exactly a bastion of conservatism, ruled that the test was fine. But that wasn’t enough for the state of New York, where it’s more important that your teacher is black than that your teacher can read and understand material well.