ABSTRACT
The Texas Examination of Current Administrators and Teachers (TECAT) was a paper-and-pencil test of basic literacy skills, was born out of a concern of the citizens of Texas that weakly regulated state teacher colleges were producing graduates unqualified to teach. The authors' benefit-cost analysis of the TECAT, however, is full of mistakes. The mistakes take several forms: arbitrary inclusions or exclusions of benefits or costs; and miscalculations of the value of time, specifically, the value of teachers' after-hours time and the compounded value of recurring benefits. The Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, and Student Testing (CRESST) report portrayed the acceptance of the TECAT as a quid pro quo of the teacher's union, agreed to in return for a salary increase in the midst of the state fiscal crisis caused by the collapse in oil prices in the early 1980s. The quality of CRESST's work takes a nose-dive, however, when its researchers venture into the field of testing policy.
