Teacher Testing to Return to Alabama

It looks as though subject-matter testing for Alabama teachers will resume for the first time in 20 years. Testing was ended in 1985 as the result of a lawsuit contending that the tests were racially biased. The suit had been brought by a group of black Alabama State University students who complained that they passed the tests at lower rates than graduates of other state universities. In legal lingo, it was claimed that the tests had "disparate impact" on black teachers.

In settling that case, the State Department of Education agreed to develop new tests and to pay the plaintiffs $500,000. The settlement also required that any new test adopted by the state must ensure that the failure rate for blacks does not exceed that of whites by more than 5 percentage points. It's not clear to me yet whether this guarantee will be part of the final agreement to resume testing.