What I find hilarious is it was suggested instead of the test, a mathematics course in undergrad. Which I'm sure way more future teachers couldn't complete if they couldn't pass this basic test.
During my engineering undergrad I had to take various general education courses related to reading/writing, PE, those sorts of things. It doesn't seem unreasonable for teachers to also take even a pre-calculus course as a part of their studies.
I would assume that taking a course where you're taught by a professor, you can ask questions, practice with homework, work with friends and classmates, etc sounds much more reasonable and similar to real-world scenarios than sitting someone down and having them bubble in answers.
As an anecdote, I was able to get through my Calc I and II courses, received an engineering degree, but today I probably couldn't sit down and complete an exam on some of the content learned in high school math. It's about what you use every day and what you're exposed to through your work. If a fine arts teacher went through 6 years of college without having to do any math courses, I'd expect them to fail a math exam, too. Doesn't make them a poor teacher.
> What I find hilarious is it was suggested instead of the test, a mathematics course in undergrad.
A math course in undergrad should of course be required if you're going to teach, y'know, math. In fact, all teachers should have the equivalent of a full undergrad education wrt. the subject they're expected to teach. The fact that we don't require this explains much about the failings of our K12 education system.
That can be remedied by sinking the passing requirements to "just sit there and sign your name on the attendance list". Hey, no disparate impact, fully constitutional.
I’m not sure why you would expect that everyone who would fail a test for a course they hadn’t taken would also fail that course if they took it. I’m pretty sure there are lots of things I don’t know now that I could learn if I took a course. That’s kinda the whole reason that courses exist and generally administer tests after material has been presented.
and why couldn't prospective teachers study for the Ontario Math Proficiency Test ahead of time by going to khan academy or something? is replacing that test with a 4 year degree really better?
I'm from Ontario. This test is relatively basic. Any math course at an Ontario university would be more demanding than this test. Although I do remember a friend of mine taking a history of mathematics course at McMaster while doing an English degree to have enough credits to teach high school math. He had however already taken first year calc.
But such a requirement might be constitutional. The court seems to think so, at least—though might perhaps change their mind when they are subsequently shown that "racialized" teacher candidates have trouble passing that too...
In the US, an accredited undergrad degree requires a math course. Many years ago I taught that course at my friendly neighborhood Big Ten university. The topics were those that were required for accreditation, and were in my opinion disjoint and archaic. The course didn't even touch on the use of computers.
However, the legislature in my state introduced a bill, believed to be written by ALEC, that would have eliminated the college degree requirement for K-12 teachers altogether. So count your blessings.
