Test Questions

By Continued

The social studies test felt like the game Trivial Pursuit to Peter Kiang, an associate professor in the graduate college of education and Asian-American studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. "There was some attempt to have a few questions related to Massachusetts' constitutional history in particular," Kiang says, "but beyond that, any possible question was the universe" being tested.

Kiang, who took (and passed) the test to know how to better prepare his social studies students, also worries that few prospective minority teachers sat for the tests, and that fewer still passed them.

Once the tests were given, setting the "cutoff scores" that would serve as the benchmark for passing...