The New York Board of Regents, which is the state’s Board of Education, has begun the process of eliminating the controversial edTPA as a requirement for certification.
The New York State United Teachers applauded the decision, which is almost certain. Theres no evidence that the test is weeding out people who would not be good teachers. It has had a disparate racial impact. At a time of teacher shortages, there’s a need to hire more teachers, not fewer.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The best way to evaluate student teachers and probationary teachers is to have trained supervisors who are master teachers observe them teaching lessons, assessing student learning, conferencing with students, and by conferring with the new teachers about what they intended in each setting and how they assess their own work including evidence for their judgments. The tenure period at universities is normally 7 years. Edtpa was a failure at many levels especially because it was a mechanical process lacking a developmental process at the school led by master teachers and supervisors.
The tenure period for new teachers should be extended to 5 years and should have a professional and planned process of development at each school where professional master teachers and school supervisors work collaboratively with new teachers in a planned process of development and evaluation that leads to or denies tenure in the school district.
Robert I’ll agree to disagree some about why Edtpa failed. My dissertation on Edtpa demonstrated some potential of the assessment in impacting teaching. I’d argue as with many things the implementation matters.
As for your other ideas I completely agree. But all of those things cost $$. Also without tenure newer teachers could be more susceptible to being let go without merit
“This study includes twenty teachers who participated in two hour-long
interviews given roughly six months apart. All of the participants were recent secondary mathematics education graduates from one university.”
This very limited study shouldn’t be given much credence in regards to saying much of anything regarding EdTPA.
As an arts teacher I would add that our “master” teachers and evaluators should actually be master teachers IN THE FIELD OF art, music, dance, etc. In 20 years I’ve had observations and evaluations done by people both in and out of my field. Those done by people outside were 90% useless; couldn’t answer my questions or speak the language of my field. If this process is so important, why oh WHY, would a school or district not send someone qualified for the task?
I agree that a master teacher must be one certified in the subject being taught although a supervisor may be a generalist trained in classroom observation and teacher-student interactions.
I have never been evaluated by an evaluator who was qualified.
I have never been evaluated by an evaluator who was evaluated.
I agree with the idea of a master teacher being involved. I was lucky, I had that. But I now see in retrospect, to have understood this, however late it may have been, is also not as obvious as it might seems.
The excuse, “implementation is flawed but, not the origin”-
In an analogy, the origin is Bill Gates instituting a process where a pitcher of boiling water is tipped with water flowing out of its spout.
The implementation is teachers and students told to position their arms under the deluge of boiling water.
Separation of the two lacks logic.
“poor implementation” might (at least in principle) explain why some things don’t work in practice, but it is all too often simply an excuse for why garbage doesn’t smell like roses.
“There was nothing inherently wrong with your garbage arrangement” said one florist to another. “It was just poorly implemented. You needed a few more egg shells, chicken bones and month old tunafish in with the rotted Brussell sprouts to create the perfect bouquet.”
Admirers of the old USSR used to say that Communism was a great idea that was poorly implemented. Anything that is poorly implemented is deeply, irreparably flawed.
Should we be concerned that people are right now saying the same thing about American democracy? — that it’s a great idea that has been poorly implemented?
When a civil engineer designs a new traffic pattern for an intersection and, the result is increased injury to people and damage to vehicles, the person who blames implementation is rightfully laughed out of the discussion.
Looks like December 13th is the Day of Exhilarating Posts here on the blog! I have some great reading to do this evening.
Why did black and Hispanic teachers do more poorly on this test than other test-takers?
The tests are tests of whiteness. All standardized tests that involve the use of language are racial sieves. Always have been.
By the way, the purpose of language is to communicate meaning, not to display membership in an aristocracy.
How were the tests “testing whiteness”? I don’t get that.
The MCAT simply tests whiteness? Should it be abolished? Medical board examinations? Bar exams? These are just testing whiteness?
(And why do Asian-Americans do better on tests that test “whiteness” than . . . white people?)
I’m assuming you passed a bar exam. Do we need more proof how meaningless they are? Shysters, grifters, and narcissists seem to pass them easily.
If there is an English part to the test, like the Common Core state tests, the SAT, and exit exams,, it’s difficult for it not to be biased.
And the point of this question is?
See my comment below. I kind of immersed myself in grilling people about this test and I proofread my friend’s entry. It relies primarily on the ability to BS. I can think of a number of qualities that correlate with and amplify the ability to BS. The confidence that comes from being a U.S.-born entitled member of the dominant culture (that would be me, though I’m female and over 60) directly feeds into the ability to BS. Is the ability to BS really the top-priority characteristic we want in our teachers?
So black and Hispanic teachers did worse on the test because they’re not members of a “dominant class”? And non-black, non-Hispanic teachers are members of a dominant class?
What are some examples of questions on this test that black and Hispanic teachers would perform badly on because they’re not members of a dominant class?
I proofread a friend’s EdTPA here in California when she was seeking her credential. (This is legit, not cheating.) It took my friend three tries to pass it, and I asked around among people who had passed it.
Here’s my view: It’s largely based on the ability to BS. BSing comes fairly naturally to a U.S.-born entitled person from the dominant culture (like me) — and I rapidly grasped that was the key when I learned more about it. BSing is not natural at all to some cultures and requires a whole lots of code-switching and confidence.
My friend, who’s an immigrant and fluent but non-native English speaker, completely failed to grasp the situation at first.
Is the ability to BS really the top skill we want in our teachers?
Standing 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏. 👍. 😂.
Those who operate the edTPA have effectively been accused of BSing about the reliability and precision of the results of the test.
(See my comment below)
The ability to BS is critical to our country.
That’s why it’s called the “BS of A”
If the edTPA is not a valid, reliable assessment of teachers, the “results” of the edTpa
are irrelevant.
Following is from “Who’s assessing the assessment? The cautionary tale of the edTPA ”
Drew H. Gitomer, Jose Felipe Martinez, and Dan Battey
February 22, 2021
“In December 2019, we published an article detailing serious concerns about the technical quality of the edTPA in the American Educational Research Journal (AERJ), one of the most highly rated and respected journals in the field of educational research (Gitomer et al., 2019). We argued that edTPA was using procedures and statistics that were, at best, woefully inappropriate and, at worst, fabricated to convey the misleading impression that its scores are more reliable and precise than they truly are. Our analysis showed why those claims were unwarranted, and we ultimately suggested that the concerns were so serious that they warranted a moratorium on using edTPA scores for high-stakes decisions about teacher licensure.”
https://kappanonline.org/whos-assessing-assessment-cautionary-tale-edtpa-gitomer-martinez-battey/
What a surprise that yet another “techno-evaluation” scheme should use “woefully inappropriate procedures and statistics” at best that possibly even amount to “fabrication” (aka fraud)?
Not!
The convictions of the Atlanta teachers should be overturned. They recognized the unfairness of the colonialists” testing schemes and attempted to protect their students, first, and their jobs, second.
Again, the nation has proof that authoritarian billionaires like Melinda and Bill Gates are damaging to the nation.
It perfectly illustrates Campbell’s law:
“The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor”
In other words, the outcome was entirely predictable.
As was the fact that it was not the folks who created the high stakes testing regime (including pressures on teachers and schools to “perform or pay the consequence”) that led almost inexorably to the outcome who were held accountable, but instead those who were subjected to the conditions.
Same as it ever was. Rarely are the folks at the top held accountable.
Poet, excellent points.
It’s a shame communities stopped running people like those associated with edTPA, out of town on a rail.
You mean, it’s a shame they haven’t started running them out of town?
Are you asking about the origin of the 18th and 19th prescription to
“carry someone perched uncomfortably on a rail to a point outside of the city”?
Oh, I get it.
I want aware where that term came from
Thanks
Who will make edTPA promoters accountable and when?
Billionaires like Bill and Melinda Gates don’t “risk” their money on education, they make the taxpayers waste tax dollars. They force local money to be used against the civil servants who work for citizens.
Meanwhile people like Bill and Melinda Gates sit on their thrones eating cake or, in the case of Bill, visiting Epstein’s palace.
Nobody should take either Bill or Melinda seriously after they BOTH met with Epstein years after Epstein went to jail for soliciting sex from a minor.
Melinda claims the meeting of Bill and her with Epstein left her disgusted by Epstein, but why wasn’t she disgusted before the meeting, as most normal people would have been?
Why did she actually feel the need to meet with the guy?
That shows incredibly poor judgement if nothing else.
And these are the people we let “experiment” on our kids ? (With Common Core, testing and the rest)
While I know very little about the test in question here, I would suggest that other fields which use a test to bar some people from practicing law, medicine, and related professions are using a broad brush to exclude people. Maybe we should. But maybe it is just a thing that gives us a false sense of security.
Layers of safety should enter into who is allowed to teach. I should not be teaching if I am a pedophile. I should not be teaching if I cannot put subject upon verb in a clear manner; communication is of the essence in teaching. Just as layers of safety surround the pilots of potentially dangerous machines, there should be layers of safety surrounding children.
All of us know someone who should not have ever been allowed into the school door, let alone the classroom. It is much more difficult, however, to agree on who these people are. Evaluation of teaching is difficult at best, perhaps impossible. All of us know that the observer affect the observed, and teacher evaluations are the the worst example of this phenomenon. Some teachers come apart when “observed” by an authority, others, not so much. Observation is hardly effective, since being in someone’s classroom constantly would be no more possible than having a designated evaluator in the cockpit of every jet.
I have always found it interesting to note who was cited by whom as an influential teacher. On more than one occasion, the most unlikely person seems to have had the most unlikely effect on some student. Let’s all learn to get along.
Long struggle, but good to see this going down.
Thanks, Barbara! Bad things are quick to be adopted, slow to eliminate.
Indeed!
Bad people too.
The Cuomo brothers are exhibit A.
Of course, I may be (probably am) making a big mistake in assuming we are rid of them.
Siblings like Charles Koch, Bill and Melinda Gates, John Arnold and Bloomberg, next to go down.
Bill and Melinda are siblings?
Why am I not surprised?
Hallelujah! I’m so pleased to hear this.
I wish this were the case in NJ. EdTPA has removed the local faculty who prepared the teacher candidates from the ultimate decision that determines which program completers will teach. The students, at least in NJ, have so many hurtles to jump and pay for in the process, that finishing up a teacher education program is too expensive for many of them.
Just as they over-test kids, policymakers have succeeded in over-testing teacher candidates. Over the years, to become a teacher has become a process of taking one standardized test after another, which provides little information that proves you will be effective when teaching in a classroom.
“Just as they over-test kids, policymakers have succeeded in over-testing teacher candidates.”
Gotta get those prospective “educators”–not teachers as they know what is bullshit and refuse to be “educated” by such nefarious forces as those that push (as in drug pushing) EdTPA and the rest of the standards and testing malpractice regime.
I am a career changer that had a previous teaching career. I did not stay in the career long enough to get permanent certification because I did not complete masters program. After 15 years I decided to teach again, NY made me go through a battery of tests including Pearson’s edTPA. I student taught 30 years ago. The assessment and certification process was clearly designed for a student teacher with the support of a college based teacher prep program. I went in blind and my score was not a passing score. I took one of the 3 tasks over thinking if I improved on 4 of the 5 rubrics I will pass. I improved on 4 of the 5 rubrics. The rubric I left alone because I had an acceptable score was then re-scored to a lower #. My assessment was graded by someone else and that lower score on one rubric was enough to take me below the standard. edTPA is the only requirement keeping me from certification. I’m 54 years old and feel that my experience on this planet could benefit young people. Get rid of it!
I hope it works out for you. So many teachers are dedicated, but need to be licensed. The edTPA is a financial barrier. But I hope we’re all validated soon. I know teachers who taught for years without a license. They have college degrees and classroom experience. Teacher exams were passed, but that edTPA is a dream killer if you know what I mean. Many of the children we taught have graduated from college. What does that say about those of us who have taught children for years without passing the edTPA, and still the students we taught have been successful?
Question: The edTPA is no more. Millions of inspiring teachers will be happy to here that. What requirements would a teacher need for initial certification in 2022? What if a teacher has a Bachelors and Masters degree, years of classroom teaching experience, passed CST, ATS-W , and EAS exams, what else do they need In New York City? Somebody please explain to me what will teacher certification/ licensing will look like in 2022?
No standardized test, including the edPTA, can assess teacher quality.