You hit it on the head, sir.
I am a teacher in Massachusetts, and I had to take the exact same test that this dolt can't pass. I can tell you that this test is passable for middle schoolers, let alone superintendents.
The test consists of 3 parts.
First, you listen to a spoken essay on a tape recorder (played for the whole room-god help you if you are sitting in the back). They play it a few times, once very slowly, and you write what you hear, adding punctuation, capitalization, etc.
Second are some multiple choice and fill-in questions that your 8th grader could ace.
Lastly, they give you some writing prompts, and you write a couple of essays.
As I recall, one of mine was a persuasive essay, and I forget the other.
I make no apology for the state of public education, because I know first hand that many teachers and administrators are complete idiots. Instead, I switched careers and became a teacher in an effort to make a difference.
Freepers here who declare open season on teachers could consider doing the same.
I had thought this might make an excellent follow-on career for me, as I am of retirement age, but have many years of service left to give. I do enjoy going in to substitute in math and science for a few principals whom I know well, and in my youth I did teach in private school while awaiting military assignment. Uniformly, the PS teachers I meet, (most of whom are very good and dedicated people) do not have ANY subject matter mastery, or even command of what used to be known as facts, as they are discussed every day by contributors to this site. I meet HS foreign language teachers who would die of thirst before they could order a glass of water in any foreign land. I mean these nice young folks are ignorant of what you could learn in your barber shop from reading the Reader's Digest or National Geographic.
However, I simply cannot sit still for the idiotic "Education" courses. Speaking of examinations, I have offered to sit for the examination on the these spurious "subjects." The final exams at your local Teacher's College are about as difficult as the one Laboy flunked. Shockingly, they require as much study.
This is a national racket. The question is, how do we end it?