Case 2: Teacher Educator as Test Tutor: Tensions and Successes in Supporting Students

In my first week as a full-time teacher educator at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a distressed student named “Kiara” (a pseudonym) arrived at my office, asking for resources to help with the state content exam required to student teach. She shared that she had already failed the exam twice and was carefully saving to fund a third attempt, so she did not want to pay $30 for the official practice test. I noticed an exam review book on the shelf, left by my predecessor, and quickly copied a sample test from it. I also told her to come back next week, and I would prepare study materials to review together. I assumed the exam would be like the test I took for licensure more than a decade before, not realizing a recent redesign resulted in significantly lower passing rates. Later that day when I spoke to my program director about Kiara, I learned that the Illinois English language arts content exam was one of the biggest challenges facing our program.