New Jersey Teachers No Longer Required to Pass Basic Literacy Test – Campus Safety Magazine

Aspiring teachers in New Jersey are no longer required to pass a basic skills in order to be certified.

New Jersey Democratic Governor Phil Murphy passed Act 1669 as part of the state’s 2025 budget in June to address a teacher shortage, Read Lion reports. The law went into effect on Jan. 1, 2025. Individuals seeking an instructional certificate will no longer need to pass the Praxis Core Test, a basic skills test for reading, writing, and math that is administered by the state’s Commissioner of Education.

“We need more teachers,” Democratic Sen. Jim Beach, who sponsored the bill, said in May 2024 when the chamber cleared the bill in a 34-2 vote. “This is the best way to get them.”

Just a few months prior, Murphy also signed a similar bill into law that established an alternative pathway for teachers to sidestep the testing requirement. According to Read Lion, the New Jersey Education Association (NJEA), a teachers union, was a driving force behind the bill and called the testing requirement “an unnecessary barrier to entering the profession.” NJEA is associated with the National Education Association (NEA).

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New York, California, Arizona Lower Teacher Requirements

In 2017, New York also scrapped its basic literacy requirements for teachers, noting it was meant to increase diversity among teachers. According to the NEA, only about half of New York students in grades three through eight tested proficient in English and math during the 2022-2023 school year despite the state spending almost twice the national average on education.

California and Arizona also lowered requirements for teacher certification by implementing fast-track options for substitute teachers to become full-time educators and eliminating exam requirements to make up for shortages in the field that were worsened by the pandemic, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Former Educator Gives Opinion on Eliminating Teacher Literacy Exams

Erika Sanzi, former educator and current director of outreach at Parents Defending Education, a national grassroots organization, spoke to the National News Desk about why she is against Act 1669.

“It’s important to know that the teachers union, specifically in this case, the NEA, pushes really hard for this. I’m a former member of the NEA in two states. Generally, whatever they push for, tends to be something that’s not particularly good for students,” said Sanzi. “The NEA wants to eliminate all barriers to teaching because that increases their number of dues-paying members, and when that’s your mission, student learning and quality control really aren’t priorities at all and so that’s a concern, for sure.”

Sanzi says she took a similar test in Massachusetts in 1998 to get her teaching certification and that removing the requirement will hurt both students and teachers.

“These are low-rigor tests. We’re not talking about the LSAT here. So the fact that the failure rates on these tests have been so high for so long, that is a problem. That’s really an indictment of not only of the education system that these aspiring teachers are coming out of but the colleges of education that give them a degree even though they’re not remotely qualified,” she said. “Teacher shortages are real in some subjects, that is true, but eliminating the test requirement, in my opinion, does not bode well for students who are still trying to recover from massive learning losses during the pandemic.”

According to an annual report from the state’s Department of education, New Jersey is especially in need of math and science teachers.

Teachers of Tomorrow reports various studies place the current teacher shortage in the U.S. at 55,000 vacant positions and an additional 270,000 teaching positions currently filled by underqualified teachers.

Education Department Announces 5-Year Plan to Improve Teacher Recruitment, Retention Strategies

In Sept. 2024, the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education’s research wing, announced a newly-funded five-year initiative intended to find more effective teacher recruitment and retention strategies for American schools. Retention policies being studied by the group include:

• Grow-your-own initiatives designed to address shortages of teachers in high-needs districts and increase teacher diversity;
• Financial support to teacher candidates in exchange for work commitments;
• Provision of labor market information to teacher candidates intended to influence their decisions about specialization and job searching;
• Licensure reforms that provide temporary licensure and/or change the cut scores required to pass licensure tests;
• Financial incentives, including salary floor policies, pay-for-performance policies, and financial incentives targeted to teachers in low-income schools and/or in specific shortage subject areas; and
• Teacher working conditions, including the 4-day school week, Advanced Teaching Roles, and working conditions negotiated in collective bargaining agreements.

Read more about teacher shortages by state and how schools and lawmakers are trying to fix the problem.