C. M. Steele and J. Aronson (1995) showed that making race salient when taking a difficult test affected the performance of high-ability African American students, a phenomenon they termed stereotype threat. The authors document that this research is widely misinterpreted in both popular and scholarly publications as showing that eliminating…

By themselves, standardized teacher competency tests only aggravate the impending shortage of qualified teachers. A more comprehensive approach is needed to make teaching the kind of appealing profession that can both sustain higher standards of admission and attract greater numbers of candidates able to qualify under those higher standards.…