Lifting Gates and Building Skills: Preparing Diverse Candidates to Pass New Certification Exams

• In Event: 53.057 - These Challenges Are Not New to Us: Lessons From Teacher Education at Minority-Serving Institutions

Abstract

One of the most significant obstacles to certifying teachers of color: licensure exams. This paper acknowledges the tension between certification exams that can be gatekeepers to capable, and often gifted, diverse teacher candidates for entry to the profession, and the imperative to ensure that children in schools have well-prepared teachers who can meet their needs. As teacher educators who prepare candidates who identify as racially/ethnically, culturally, religiously, linguistically, and socio-economically diverse, and who often gain employment in low-resource, high-accountability public schools environments, we understand the importance of gatekeeping to the profession. Writing from a Hispanic Serving Institution in New York state, we detail the ways the university has responded to the changing battery of licensure exams in order to prepare their students to pass.

Authors

• Joni Kolman, California State University, San Marcos

• Denise L. McLurkin, California Baptist University

• Laura M. Gellert, City College of New York - CUNY