Pearson administers a new teacher certification program called edTPA. The acronym stands for Teacher Performance Assessment. Student teachers must pay $300 to be evaluated and tested.
In this article, Alan Singer explains why education faculty and their students reject edTPA.
Although some states are delaying implementation, Arne Duncan is forging ahead to make this process a national requirement.
Singer says his students don’t like edPTA:
“Although it is being used to evaluate student teachers for certification, the TPA in edTPA stands for Teacher Performance Assessment. Student teachers in my seminar suggested a better title would is “Torturous Preposterous Abomination,” although “Toxic Pearson Affliction” was a close runner-up in the voting.
“All of my students passed the edTPA evaluation, including some who I felt were weak. In one case, two student teachers that handed in very similar packages received significantly different scores, which calls into account the reliability of the evaluations.
“Statewide, the passing rate was 83%. One graduate student summed up the way the class felt about the procedure. “The whole process took time away from preparing in advance for future lessons . . . It really just added unneeded stress.”
When Singer testified before an Assembly Committee, he said:
“Did Mike Trout learn to play baseball by writing a fifty to eighty page report explaining how he planned to play baseball, discussing the theories behind the playing of baseball, assessing a video of his playing of baseball, and explaining his plans to improve his playing of baseball?
“Did Pablo Picasso learn to paint by writing a fifty to eighty page report explaining how he planned to paint, discussing the theories behind painting, assessing a video of his painting a picture, and explaining his plans to improve his painting?
“Did you learn to drive a car by writing a fifty to eighty page report explaining how you planned to drive a car, discussing the theories behind driving a car, assessing a video of your driving a car, and explaining your plans to improve your driving?
“Of course the answer in all three cases is a resounding “NO!” You learn to play baseball, paint a picture, or drive a car by playing baseball, painting pictures, and driving cars, not by writing about it.
“Yet Stanford University, Pearson, and New York State are trying to sell the public that you learn to teach, not by teaching, but by writing about it. They also want you to believe that they have perfected a magically algorithm that allows them to quickly, easily, and cheaply assess the writing package and accompanying video and instantly determine who if qualified to teach our children. Maybe they plan to sell the algorithm to Major League Baseball next.
“New York State is currently one of only two states that proposes to use edTPA to determine teacher certification. Not only should New York State postpone the implementation of edTPA, but it should withdraw from the Pearson, SCALE, Stanford project. edTPA distracts student teachers from the learning they must do on how to connect ideas to young people and undermines their preparation as teachers. Instead of learning to teach, they spend the first seven weeks of student teaching preparing their edTPA portfolios and learning to pass the test. Based on preliminary results on the first round of edTPA, most of our student teachers are pretty good at passing tests, so edTPA actually measured nothing.”
The most outspoken opponent of edTPA to date was Barbara Madeloni, a professor at the University of Massachusetts. After she won national attention for her resistance to outsourcing her job to Pearson, she was fired. As Michael Winerip wrote in the New York Times in 2012:
“Under the system being piloted, a for-profit education company hired by the state, like Pearson, would decide licensure based on two 10-minute videos that student teachers submit, as well as their score on a 40-page take-home test.”
“This is something complex and we don’t like seeing it taken out of human hands,” Ms. Madeloni said to me at the time.
“By protesting, she said, “We are putting a stick in the gears.” A total of 67 out of her 68 student teachers refused to submit their videos or take the test during last year’s trial run.
“On May 6, the article appeared in The Times; on May 24, she received a letter saying her contract would not be renewed for the 2013 year.”
Just a few weeks ago, Madeloni was elected president of the 110,000-member Massachusetts Teacher Association.
The times, they are a’changing. Maybe.
Thank you for this. I am so proud to have Barbara as our president!
Why does anyone buy into the idea that this massive outside intrusion into the process of learning how to teach is of benefit to anyone? Why should some anonymous, part-time, contract employee of Pearson be considered a better judge of a teacher candidate’s ability than the people supervising their program? Stanford should be ashamed of themselves. Pearson is just in it for a buck.
2old2teach: what you said.
And another example of how ‘surrendering our judgment to the algorithm’ [see below**] is pervading all sectors of education. To respectfully paraphrase a famous observation: ‘a mandated toxic inanity anywhere is a threat to healthy sanity everywhere.’
*“Initially, we use data as a way to think hard about difficult problems, but then we over rely on data as a way to avoid thinking hard about difficult problems. We surrender our better judgment and leave it to the algorithm.” —Joe Flood, author of THE FIRES (from Jim Horn and Denise Wilburn, THE MISMEASURE OF EDUCTION, 2013, p.55)*
😎
“. . . so edTPA actually measured nothing.”
YES! And it can never “measure” anything as the test is not a measuring device. It is an assessment device, a piss poor one at that, that suffers all the epistemological and ontological errors that all standardized tests contain which render the whole process COMPLETELY INVALID! To understand why read and comprehend what Noel Wilson has proven in his “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” found at:
http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/577/700
Brief outline of Wilson’s “Educational Standards and the Problem of Error” and some comments of mine. (updated 6/24/13 per Wilson email)
1. A quality cannot be quantified. Quantity is a sub-category of quality. It is illogical to judge/assess a whole category by only a part (sub-category) of the whole. The assessment is, by definition, lacking in the sense that “assessments are always of multidimensional qualities. To quantify them as one dimensional quantities (numbers or grades) is to perpetuate a fundamental logical error” (per Wilson). The teaching and learning process falls in the logical realm of aesthetics/qualities of human interactions. In attempting to quantify educational standards and standardized testing we are lacking much information about said interactions.
2. A major epistemological mistake is that we attach, with great importance, the “score” of the student, not only onto the student but also, by extension, the teacher, school and district. Any description of a testing event is only a description of an interaction, that of the student and the testing device at a given time and place. The only correct logical thing that we can attempt to do is to describe that interaction (how accurately or not is a whole other story). That description cannot, by logical thought, be “assigned/attached” to the student as it cannot be a description of the student but the interaction. And this error is probably one of the most egregious “errors” that occur with standardized testing (and even the “grading” of students by a teacher).
3. Wilson identifies four “frames of reference” each with distinct assumptions (epistemological basis) about the assessment process from which the “assessor” views the interactions of the teaching and learning process: the Judge (think college professor who “knows” the students capabilities and grades them accordingly), the General Frame-think standardized testing that claims to have a “scientific” basis, the Specific Frame-think of learning by objective like computer based learning, getting a correct answer before moving on to the next screen, and the Responsive Frame-think of an apprenticeship in a trade or a medical residency program where the learner interacts with the “teacher” with constant feedback. Each category has its own sources of error and more error in the process is caused when the assessor confuses and conflates the categories.
4. Wilson elucidates the notion of “error”: “Error is predicated on a notion of perfection; to allocate error is to imply what is without error; to know error it is necessary to determine what is true. And what is true is determined by what we define as true, theoretically by the assumptions of our epistemology, practically by the events and non-events, the discourses and silences, the world of surfaces and their interactions and interpretations; in short, the practices that permeate the field. . . Error is the uncertainty dimension of the statement; error is the band within which chaos reigns, in which anything can happen. Error comprises all of those eventful circumstances which make the assessment statement less than perfectly precise, the measure less than perfectly accurate, the rank order less than perfectly stable, the standard and its measurement less than absolute, and the communication of its truth less than impeccable.”
In other word all the logical errors involved in the process render any conclusions invalid.
5. The test makers/psychometricians, through all sorts of mathematical machinations attempt to “prove” that these tests (based on standards) are valid-errorless or supposedly at least with minimal error [they aren’t]. Wilson turns the concept of validity on its head and focuses on just how invalid the machinations and the test and results are. He is an advocate for the test taker not the test maker. In doing so he identifies thirteen sources of “error”, any one of which renders the test making/giving/disseminating of results invalid. As a basic logical premise is that once something is shown to be invalid it is just that, invalid, and no amount of “fudging” by the psychometricians/test makers can alleviate that invalidity.
6. Having shown the invalidity, and therefore the unreliability, of the whole process Wilson concludes, rightly so, that any result/information gleaned from the process is “vain and illusory”. In other words start with an invalidity, end with an invalidity (except by sheer chance every once in a while, like a blind and anosmic squirrel who finds the occasional acorn, a result may be “true”) or to put in more mundane terms crap in-crap out.
7. And so what does this all mean? I’ll let Wilson have the second to last word: “So what does a test measure in our world? It measures what the person with the power to pay for the test says it measures. And the person who sets the test will name the test what the person who pays for the test wants the test to be named.”
In other words it measures “’something’ and we can specify some of the ‘errors’ in that ‘something’ but still don’t know [precisely] what the ‘something’ is.” The whole process harms many students as the social rewards for some are not available to others who “don’t make the grade (sic)” Should American public education have the function of sorting and separating students so that some may receive greater benefits than others, especially considering that the sorting and separating devices, educational standards and standardized testing, are so flawed not only in concept but in execution?
My answer is NO!!!!!
One final note with Wilson channeling Foucault and his concept of subjectivization:
“So the mark [grade/test score] becomes part of the story about yourself and with sufficient repetitions becomes true: true because those who know, those in authority, say it is true; true because the society in which you live legitimates this authority; true because your cultural habitus makes it difficult for you to perceive, conceive and integrate those aspects of your experience that contradict the story; true because in acting out your story, which now includes the mark and its meaning, the social truth that created it is confirmed; true because if your mark is high you are consistently rewarded, so that your voice becomes a voice of authority in the power-knowledge discourses that reproduce the structure that helped to produce you; true because if your mark is low your voice becomes muted and confirms your lower position in the social hierarchy; true finally because that success or failure confirms that mark that implicitly predicted the now self-evident consequences. And so the circle is complete.”
In other words students “internalize” what those “marks” (grades/test scores) mean, and since the vast majority of the students have not developed the mental skills to counteract what the “authorities” say, they accept as “natural and normal” that “story/description” of them. Although paradoxical in a sense, the “I’m an “A” student” is almost as harmful as “I’m an ‘F’ student” in hindering students becoming independent, critical and free thinkers. And having independent, critical and free thinkers is a threat to the current socio-economic structure of society.
Three quick comments here…First states set policies, not Stanford or anyone else. So those of you who are concerned that one assessment determines teacher certification, talk with your state representatives. Second, why is it that a test is ok for doctor’s or lawyers but not teachers? Interesting that in these professions we seem to think its ok for a multiple choice test to determine if someone can be board certified or practice law or medicine in a state, but an assessment focused on practice isn’t ok.
finally, I will not address the other analogies, but I will address the baseball analogy. In Alan Singer’s testimony, he stated:
“Did Mike Trout learn to play baseball by writing a fifty to eighty page report explaining how he planned to play baseball, discussing the theories behind the playing of baseball, assessing a video of his playing of baseball, and explaining his plans to improve his playing of baseball”
Alan, do you know how many players today, probably including Mike Trout (I don’t know this for sure), DO watch videos of themselves to become better baseball players. This is a common practice. a quote about baseball hall of famer tony gwynn: ” They called Gwynn “Captain Video” because of the way he would pore over the video of his at-bats and take comprehensive and detailed notes. He had an ability to absorb the information he picked up watching video and the perhaps unique ability to use that information when hitting. ”
So yes players use videos. Furthermore, do you think that Trout or others have ever had to answer the question, “so what were you thinking when you hit that 1-1 fastball to the opposite field? How did you know what to look for..” And then Trout or someone else explained his thinking? That is what edTPA does…it allows a candidate to explain his or her thinking….
“So yes players use videos. Furthermore, do you think that Trout or others have ever had to answer the question, “so what were you thinking when you hit that 1-1 fastball to the opposite field? How did you know what to look for..” And then Trout or someone else explained his thinking? That is what edTPA does…it allows a candidate to explain his or her thinking….”
So, some anonymous scorer gets to rate my performance rather than someone who has taken the journey with me as my teacher and mentor. Is that what they do in baseball? NO! Their professional performance is guided and judged by the coaching staff of THEIR team. I want to be mentored and assessed by my team!
Considering the number of teachers who leave the profession every year, I would say we already have a very effective way of weeding out those who find themselves unsuitable for reality of teaching. In fact, we are so “good” at it that we probably are weeding out some potentially very talented teachers given the draconian stranglehold of present policies in addition to the increasingly malignant administrative policies that plague schools under intense pressure.
Sorry, one other thing. From the article, Barbara Madeloni is quoted as stating, “This is something complex and we don’t like seeing it taken out of human hands”
Machines aren’t completing the assessments for edTPA. Humans ARE doing the assessment. An no none, except state policy makers, have ever stated that edTPA should replace observations, etc.
Yeah, let’s turn EVERYTHING over to Pearson. Perhaps Pearson should come into people’s homes and evaluate their parenting. Perhaps they should follow state legislators around with cameras and have them submit essays on their plans for improving their legislating. Perhaps no local human judgment should every be exercised with regard to anything whatsoever, given that in ALL MATTERS, Pearson knows best.
For, as Hobbes argued in the Leviathan, monarchy is best. Surely, in Hobbes’s words, we all need to live under “a common power to keep [us] all in awe,” or as Queen Elizabeth I wrote in 1601, “The Royal Prerogative [is] not to be canvassed, nor disputed, nor examined, and [does] not even admit of any limitation.”
Surely, in all things, Pearson knows best.
Pearson, not Persons.
For me, this teacher evaluation – the way it is being implemented – is ludicrous. In our school system way back when, administrators and teachers worked together to make a great school system.
Teachers were encouraged to evaluate themselves, to choose ways in which THEY thought they might improve. We audio, then videotaped when that became available, our classes and watched ourselves teach. It became obvious, ourselves, looking objectively at what we were doing how improvements could be made. Sometimes something as simple as asking a question, then waiting a few seconds before asking for answers – giving students a chance to think – made a huge difference. In viewing myself, I never suspected that I talked as fast as I did. Etc etc.
Administrators did not look or listen to those tapes. Teachers themselves did and evaluated their own teaching. One administrator worked with a few volunteers, suggested things which teachers could try – in one case, positive reinforcement – and then teachers experimented with this and when it succeeded they became enthused and passed that enthusiasm and techniques along to fellow teachers. Monetary considerations NEVER entered into the equation. Teachers found new techniques made teaching easier and more productive.
How VERY different now. From the top down, autocrats who are “experts” impose their views on those on the battlefront. The efficacy of democratic principles seem no longer to be valued, only fascism – top down. Working with and building on the strengths of the individual teacher resulted then in better teaching. Teachers are human beings with different aptitudes and backgrounds. Each has unique abilities, strengths and weaknesses. Understanding that teaching is an art, not just a science has been forgotten by those in power it seems.
Does no one believe in democratic principles any more?
It’s good to see some critique of the edTPA posted here. It’s clearly part of the corporate reform agenda that Diane has been critiquing so well.
My state, Oregon, has adopted edTPA as requirement for licensure, effective in a few years. It was clearly a result of political pressure from the (Democratic) Governor’s office, based on national political pressure for accountability through “reliable and valid” assessments.
I’ve seen it in practice, as my institution participated in the pilot studies. It’s going to have many of the same effects on teacher preparation that standardized tests have had on K-12 teaching.
First, in response to jlsteach regarding the videos and the baseball analogy: Mike Trout doesn’t expect to see everything about his hitting from two short unedited video segments totaling no more than 15 minutes, which is the edTPA requirement. And he certainly would not want to be judged as a hitter, which is the more relevant point, based on those two short segments of video. Certainly people can learn from watching themselves, but that’s much different than judging instructional ability from short pieces of video.
Next, the problems with edTPA include 1) that it is high stakes; 2) that because it is high stakes it diverts attention from other aspects of teaching; 3) its high cost; 4) it’s a writing test, not a performance test.
1. High stakes tests create all the predictable consequences we have seen with other such tests: teaching to the test, high pressure, high consequences for failure on a test that is only marginally relevant to actual ability, and then eventually cheating.
2. Diversion: The edTPA says virtually nothing about cultural competence or multicultural/social justice teaching. Those of us who value social justice in teacher preparation will inevitably find that we can focus less on it because we must spend so much time preparing students to pass the high stakes test. And students will care less about the things that are not tested.
Resources, as well, are diverted. The programs we have talked to have all had to divert FTE into edTPA support as well as considerable dollars into supporting the technological requirements.
3. Not only does it cost $300 up front, but if a student fails any section, they must pay at least $100 per section to redo it. This is likely to become a significant obstacle to low-income students.
4. As noted before, the edTPA is really a writing test – a test of a student’s ability to write about their teaching. It says very little about their actual performance in the classroom. So those who can BS well will do ok, others not so much.
I wonder what the audience and participants on this blog think of the National Board Certification process for teachers. Could you express you views on that, please? I think it might be an instructive and constructive point of engagement.
2old2teach…Just wondering – what do you think scouting in baseball is? Somewhat anonymous people who work for a team that have knowledge of the subject who measure a person based upon one game, sometimes even one at bat or a few innings of work…The baseball analogy really doesn’t hold here!
As for your other comment about the number of teachers who leave each year – I once taught in DC and can tell you that there are plenty of teachers who play the system – they focus their energies not on the classroom but on the teacher evaluation, learning just enough to get a passing score every year…So no, not everyone that leaves leave because they find themselves unsuitable for teaching. You are right about one thing – we need to do a better job of supporting those that are good and leave the profession…
We could continue to fight over the baseball analogy trying to score points off each other. I dislike the national ranking system: you don’t. Let’s leave it at that. As to teachers “playing the system” during their once a year evaluation, of course they do. What else do you do in a once a year process that is basically designed to find something wrong? Learning just enough to get a passing grade every year? What the heck does that mean? Gordon Wilder wrote a response to one of the posts that resonated with me. He was lucky enough to teach during a time when “evaluation” was a reflective process in which a teacher chose their own yearly goals in collaboration with a supervisor who was interested in supporting the growth of teachers. Only my last assignment’s evaluation in a low economic urban/suburban community was a once a year checklist including such high value instructional activities as writing SWBAT on the board daily and posting word walls. Of course, teachers game those ratings! The fact that they can tells you how poor the system is.
Ok, truce on the baseball analogy…And to teacher in resistance, I would agree with you that the way that edTPA was implemented in NY state may not have been ideal (ok, so it wasn’t ideal at all)…I also agree that the work of observation should coincide with scores on edTPA and that observation is rich and meaningful work. However, I also think that having an unbiased opinion is valuable.
In terms of observation, I completely agree about the reflective process…which is what edTPA is about – the chance for candidates to reflect on their practice. Studies that have been conducted about candidate performance on the predecessor of edTPA, the PACT, have noted that the assessment has helped candidates with their reflective practices. Unlike checklist observation tools, the edTPA asks candidates to reflect on their decisions…
And then grades them on their reflections?! Do you really think the responses to a high stakes instrument are going to be honest? When applying for a job through online teaching applications, I have been told by administrators who are involved in hiring to use as many buzzwords as possible to advance through the screening process. The edTPA is set up to produce the same sort of reaction: make sure you give them what they want. Who is going to chance their honest reflections to the mercy of an anonymous screener especially when one’s future as a teacher is at stake? The reflective process is much better suited to a close mentorship between supervising professionals and
would -be teachers.
2old2teach – you assume that teachers would have honest conversations with their supervising officials. I was an award winning teacher in Washington, DC. My first three years I worked for an amazing principal as a mentor – someone who knew my subject, who took time to mentor and challenge me without judgement. Sadly, he left to work for the district and his replacement was not the same…when I had conversations with him I simply gave him the buzz words he wanted…
There is no perfect assessment – any assessment that is rubric based will have some folks who complete it to give folks “what they want”
I want to go back to what Amy Adkins asked about the role of NBCT – how does that fit into the assessment realm. In addition, I think that edTPA, with its focus on the teaching, vastly improves on many “teaching portfolios” of the past, which were either vast notebooks that collected evidence over the years OR where electronic platforms where pre-service teachers were asked to upload these documents. to me, this is where edTPA is a growth in the profession…
“The reflective process is much better suited to a close mentorship between supervising professionals and would -be teachers.”
I believe that you are describing a different situation in which you already were certified to teach (at least I hope you were!). The conversation is about the process of certifying that students in a teacher education program are ready to teach.
I was, but still there is the assumption that such a situation would exist in teacher education programs. How often have you, or others you know as faculty in teacher preparation programs, made a decision about a candidate based upon emotion (this person has tried so hard to improve, they have spent the past four years wanting to be a teacher, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt and sign off on them) as opposed to using data that the candidate may not be ready for the classroom? We all have done it (I would raise my hand as a guilty party as well)…Should scores on edTPA be the only decider – I would say no (I know, that’s not how many states view it). But should they be included in the conversation and a factor – I would say yes.
I am not a teacher educator, but I suspect I would be a pretty tough judge. I also think if I encouraged a candidate to complete the program that I must have identified something that led me to believe this individual could be a good teacher well before any culminating judgement. As a special ed teacher, I have run into many teachers who became teachers because they were poor students and thought that they could reach students who faced similar issues. I knew a talented middle school teacher who was a very good teacher but struggled with dyslexia. Although not a special ed teacher, he was particularly sensitive to his students who were and was very good at teaching science to them. The edTPA would have been hell for him.
Since my chosen specialty has a necessary focus on social emotional understanding, I would be looking for a teacher who could establish a rapport with struggling students which would not necessarily be obvious on the edTPA but should be obvious to a supervisor in an education program. I don’t see the edTPA as being a help in these situations. I would much rather have the opinions of other professionals with which the candidate had interacted. I certainly don’t see it as a “tie-breaker.” I just am not a fan of over zealous standardization. I think we are in much more danger of losing, in this case, good teachers than we are of gaining more. If teacher education professions see problems in their programs, is the answer really in nationally mandated procedures?
2old2teach – I think that we may have to agree to disagree, but I will say a few thoughts. Like any assessment, the candidate you mentioned who had dyslexia would be able to get support/modifications on edTPA as he would on other assessments he had to take…As for standardization, I somewhat agree. But I was at a meeting of principals within my local area the other day, and a common theme all of them shared was the need to find a way to compare candidates from teacher programs….in a world of grade inflation (at all different levels) as well as alternative programs like TFA claiming that they produce better teachers than many colleges of ed edTPA can act as an equalizer…
Given the negative comments from people who are required to prepare students for the edTPA, I seriously doubt that the “accomodations” are going to make the process fair. It is not a fair assessment of individual candidates as it is. I just wait for the day when districts start asking potential teachers for their scores, so they can rank candidates. Just what we need: another tool by which computers can eliminate job applications. Do you suppose anyone will do pilot studies to see if edTPA candidates are “better” than others? I wonder how they will define “betterness”?
You totally lost me with principals saying that TFA produces “better” teachers. Sounds like your district is just overflowing with talented administrators capable of identifying good teacher candidates. Damn, what are we fighting for if five week wonders with ivy tatooed on their chests can produce produce lifelong learners, oops, I mean excellent test takers? Who needs career teachers?
You have inadvertently tapped into a deep well of animosity toward those who think education is a task analysis process followed by instruction in how to follow the steps. I am a great believer in the phrase “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” I don’t disagree that teacher prep programs should continually strive tofind ways to improve their programs. I don’t agree, however, that there are systemic solutions that will aid in that process. Even if the traditional teacher prep system was systemically flawed, I wouldn’t choose a standardized test as a solution. I don’t think we would gain anything by trying to standardize teacher prep. A high stakes standardized test is the first step down that path.
Just to clarify, my district does not think that TFA teachers are better, but that is a common sentiment amongst urban districts (in part because of the PR machine that TFA is). You (and I) can say all we want about how five weeks of preparation isn’t enough time, but districts still keep hiring TFA teachers. So why not really test the hypothesis? And what could you use? Test scores on standardized tests of students? We know that TFA prepares strong test takers. Why not assess all teacher candidates from the outset?
Now, I’ll add a couple comments about research…yes, I think that there will be studies done to compare candidates completing edTPA and those that don’t – to see how the assessment impacts their teaching (or their thinking about teaching). In terms of your questions about NBCT, there are lots of studies (Bond, Smith, Baker, Hattie (2000); Goldhaber and Anthony (2005) amongst others) that examine the exact question you ask, and many have found that teachers going through the NBCT process improve their teaching (and yes, student achievement).
To your last point, “Perhaps more of NBCT should/could be incorporated into initial teacher prep. We are really talking about an evolutionary process here. New teacher candidates are being introduced to teaching with NBCT tools and experienced teachers are refining their teaching through NBCT certification. The level of discernment differs.”
Yes ,you have got it. That is what edTPA is…sure, the level of discernment is different with edTPA because you are working with a pre-service teacher (one that has not even been in the classroom for one year) vs. at least a 5 year veteran. Would a first year medical student be expected to have the same details as a chief resident?
What I find most interesting is that you (and others) are up in arms about edTPA being a “standardized test” about teaching, and yet no one that I has raised a similar stink about students having to take the Praxis exams or the state content exams, which to me are truly standardized tests – multiple choice exams with one correct answer. While you may say that there are buzz words around edTPA for teacher candidates to say, the reality is that two candidates can get the same score by addressing the same aspects of the rubrics with very different lesson plans, videos or assessment analysis. To me, that is not so standard.
We don’t need the test. I reject the notion that standardized tests are necessary or desirable gatekeepers. The techniques of NBCT certification could be/should be/are incorporated in teacher prep programs. As to not railing against state standardized tests, my state, thankfully, has yet to have enacted such high stakes standardized monstrosities although I have repeatedly posted my confusion as to why any state would institute them. I doubt there is uniformity of opinion on this topic although I seriously doubt there is marked enthusiasm for the practice. In any case, we are addressing a smaller battle in a much bigger war. Standardized testing is being used as a weapon against the public school system.
“Why not assess all teacher candidates from the outset?”
So now I have to prove that I am better prepared to teach after years of study than a five week wonder? How demeaning is that to the teaching profession. NO!
2old2teach, you say that your state doesn’t have any high stakes monstrosities as you have them? So no Praxis exams? No accountability? So anyone can simply show up and teach in your state? Now that is scary.
As for proving yourself vs. a five week wonder, I agree that it’s somewhat demeaning. But right now, that is where the profession is at.. There were enough teachers who weren’t doing their job that led to the creation of TFA, and when those teachers, experts at test preparation, began to show successes on standardized tests, then it led to more of them being hired. The only way to stop the continuation is to demonstrate the they aren’t as effective…and an assessment like edTPA could do that.
I am wondering 2old2teach, it seems as if you are advocating for no accountability…
No, we have them. For some reason, I misread your comment to be talking about high stakes exit exams for our children rather than as testing for teacher certification. When I received my Masters in educational therapy (LD/ED), there was no testing. Fortunately, I kept my special ed certification up-to-date through my years as a stay at home mother. When I returned to teacher first as a substitute, testing had been instituted. Although I had been eligible for elementary certification, I had not paid over the years to maintain it. If I had wanted to be an elementary school teacher, I would have had to to take a basic skills and a elementary teaching test. For the heck of it, I took the basic skills test that really just said I could pass eighth grade content tests and write coherently. I found it easy since I had been teaching middle school classes in a high performing district for about a decade when I took it. I have often joked that I can ace Jr. High in all academic areas. I seriously doubt that many adults can as the generalist skills we learn in school become less germane to our specialist adult lives. I decided not to take the elementary test since I had no intention of teaching in an elementary classroom. I know people who have gone back for advanced degrees have struggled with this basic skills test. People who are going for administrative certificates have little use for the ability to calculate the density of an unknown substance. I’m not sure they spend a lot of time worrying about the properties of right triangles or the finer points of sentence structure.
EdTPA, one of Pearson’s monsters, is wrecking havoc in New York State. Our students teachers are worth so much more than their edTPA test scores! I find it absurd that a for-profit education company can be hired with PUBLIC FUNDS to decide licensure in our state. In the teacher education program in which I work, we visit our student teachers 15 times, and work closely with their cooperating teachers and supervisors to connect the practical experience of their student teaching placement with the theory and knowledge gained from their coursework. Our core courses are specifically designed to interrogate and work to actively challenge the many socio-cultural, institutional, bureaucratic, and interpersonal ways in which children and their families experience marginalization and exclusion in schools. How could this rich and relevant work possibility be reflected in a test score? I feel that as experienced and dedicated professionals with deep knowledge of the student teachers we work with, we should be trusted to evaluate them as teachers. This rich and meaningful work should not and cannot be outsourced to for-profit companies that have no personal knowledge of our students and use rubrics which do not reflect the inclusive practices we embrace. Teachers and fellow educators, this is something we must resist! They will be coming after us in in the form of outsourcing our teacher evaluations next!
Since jlsteach, alone, acknowledged my question about NBCTs, I’ll go ahead and tip my hand. The edTPA is modeled precisely on the national board process, developed by the same assessment scholars, but expressed at the level of competent beginning teaching, as opposed to NB’s accomplished teaching.
The architecture is identical, save the attention to practice within professional learning communities. It starts with planning based on knowledge of students and teaching toward worthwhile learning objectives and cycles through to assessing student learning and moving on from there. Reflections are not “how did you feel” or other ambiguous senses of the term. The prompts are there to elicit their thinking behind their instructional choices, bringing forth their judgment and making their attention to students’s strengths and needs and deepening conceptual understanding explicit. In short, to be crass, so we can see that they know what they should be doing, instead of having a “neat idea for the kids.”
And if you’re wondering, the scoring of NB portfolios is managed by Evaluation Systems, recently acquired by Pearson, also managing the scoring of edTPA submissions.
Now, are we ready to throw NBCTs under the bus?
“Now, are we ready to throw NBCTs under the bus?”
I honestly have no clue. Do those teachers who when through the process feel it was valuable? Did it fulfill its obligations to those who received their certification as NBCTs? Is their performance markedly different that other teachers with advanced training? Although I found the concept interesting, I was never in a position where I could pursue it, so I never really investigated it.
However, I do not see a rejection of a edTPA as a rejection of NBCT. Perhaps more of NBCT should/could be incorporated into initial teacher prep. (Do I hear shouts that it already is?) I hardly think a standardized test competes with the process through which NBCTs go. We are really talking about an evolutionary process here. New teacher candidates are being introduced to teaching with NBCT tools and experienced teachers are refining their teaching through NBCT certification. The level of discernment differs.