"Losing One Preservice Teacher of Color Is One Too Many": Countering Praxis Core as a Eurocratic Gatekeeper

• In Event: Recruiting, Retaining, and Supporting Black Teachers

Abstract

Four teacher educators describe challenges and outcomes in addressing the racialized nature of testing as gatekeeper to teaching certification. Recognizing that African American preservice teachers are regularly eliminated from teaching because of the racist nature of the Praxis Core examination and racist assumptions about their determination and ability, we challenged and replaced systems dominated by condescending attitudes, lack of attention to students’ cultural and linguistic strengths, the need to teach translation (not correction) to standardized English when testing, and the destruction of student confidence through years of biased testing. Student perspectives are centered to create counternarratives grounded in critical race and decolonizing methodologies describing institutional barriers to and characteristics of effective support for Preservice Teachers of Color.

Authors

• Susi Long, University of South Carolina

• Kamania Wynter-Hoyte, University of South Carolina

• Terrance M McAdoo, University of South Carolina