Reviews the history of initial teacher licensure testing in the United States and summarizes issues and problems, focusing on Massachusetts, a state that has only recently begin initial licensure testing. Provides information on past practices and a table of current state approaches to teacher licensure. (SLD)

Fossey's perspectives on legal issues faced by personnel in school districts are too generalized and fail to account for specific problems faced by individual districts and efforts made to cope with them. Illustrates the discussion with examples from the Miami-Dade County Public School System (Florida). (SLD)