The Professional Readiness Examination (PRE) is a test that most education students, including myself, are stressing over.

I feel like I am a capable student and will one day be a capable teacher, but I have taken this test multiple times and am waiting to get my results yet again.

I am not the only one.

There are many paths to help prepare for these tests: seminars, personal meetings with faculty, and an online study guide. With each additional path, however, there is an additional cost, and nothing has helped me pass so far. I am funnelling money into what seems like a hopeless, endless loop of tests.

Oakland University has offered seminars to help better prepare for this impossible test. The very first seminar, held in spring of last year, was free for any education student. Now, however, there is a fee for each testing session (there are three sessions for this test).

The Michigan Test for Teacher Certification (MTTC) website provides a small version of a study guide as well as the objectives for the test. There is also a study guide that you can purchase from the website, but the study guide material is more basic than the actual testing material.

Each paper-based test costs $50, late fees are $80 dollars, and the price just goes up from there. 

Due to such a small passing rate on the PRE, there are now two ways that can help students like me “pass” this test. The first is your ACT score; if it’s high enough in a subject, it will make you exempt in that subject. The second is if two sections of the test are passed. If that’s the case, the score on the third is dropped to a lower exceptional score.

The school does not seem to understand why students cannot pass this test in the first place.

I think I can.

First of all, the time crunch makes things very difficult. Four and a half hours may seem a reasonable enough amount of time to take the three sections of the test. However, when you account for the reading passages, the many math problems, the writing questions that involve a fair amount of reading, and the two writing passages, there is just not enough time to really focus on the test closely.

Second, the way the test is scored seems too complicated. The last time I took the PRE I scored a 210 in the writing with a 220 needed to pass. Four stars means that most of the questions in that category were answered correctly. I received mostly three and four stars. So how did I not pass?

Educators that are already working in their field say they understand that the test is hard. They say they have not heard good things about it. They can’t relate, however, to something they themselves have not taken.

It seems that the state of Michigan is trying to test future educators to the max in order to have better test scores show up later on in the classroom. There are many other qualities, however, that a person can have to be a great, successful teacher. A good test-taker does not always make a good educator.

This month Bridge Magazine published an article on Michigan’s pass-fail rates of the PRE exam, an exam all education students must pass to continue their programs. The PRE is a new test, and the results are shockingly lower than those from the previous Basic Skills test.

The report shares data compiled by the state board of education and features comments from OU’s associate dean of the School of Education and Human Services and the chair of the Department of Teacher Development and Education studies.