In Louisiana, the state rated fiftieth in literacy, racism has been legitimized under an educational credo. The Louisiana legislature has established requirements for teacher certification that are insidious and far-reaching, among them laws that affect an undergraduate education major's curriculum, academic standing, student teaching experience, and certification. Legislation requires, for example, that education majors take courses in teaching reading and have three hours professional counseling on careers in teaching (without funding positions to teach those sessions), and that education majors possess a minimum overall grade point average that is higher than that required of science majors and achieve a specified score on the National Teacher Examination (NTE). The effects of such legislation are that enrollment is increased in upper level and graduate courses to free sections, that could be converted to reading courses, that group counseling sessions with panel presentations are substituted for individual counseling where meaningful evaluation could occur, that tracks are ironically set up by the minimum grade-point requirement in an academic unit that has always mainstreamed its students, and that the number of certified black teachers is effectively reduced due to the method used to determine the passing level on the NTE. The legislatively mandated changes have discouraged majors, overloaded the curriculum, and created instability within the profession, and they will have covert racial implications as long as "separate but unequal" rules teacher preparation in Louisiana. (AEA)