The following article was written by a graduate student and Celia Oyler, his professor at Teachers College, Columbia University.
In this article, co-written by a teacher and a professor, the authors examine possible explanations for why Adam (first author), a New York City public school special educator, failed the edTPA, a teacher performance assessment required by all candidates for state certification. Adam completed a yearlong teaching residency where he was the special educator intern of a co-teaching team. He received glowing reviews on all program assessments, including 12 clinical observations and firsthand evaluations by his principal and one student. In this article, the authors analyze Adam’s edTPA submission showing evidence of how he met his teacher education program’s expectations for teaching inclusively in a heterogeneous Integrated Co-Teaching classroom using frameworks from Universal Design for Learning and culturally sustaining pedagogy. They speculate that this pedagogical approach was in conflict with the Pearson/SCALE (Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity) edTPA expectations or scorer training. They conclude by discussing the paradigmatic conflicts between the Pearson/SCALE special edTPA handbook and the aims and practices of inclusive education
Numerous people have complained about Pearson’s edTPA. Not because its standards are too high but because it does not accurately identify good teachers. At a time of teacher shortages across the nation, what is the point of using a test that weeds out good teachers along with some who are not so good. Shouldn’t human judgement count for more than a standardized test?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Using secretive, subjective, for profit, faulty tests to weed out allegedly incompetent teachers is super-overkill when we look back at the Vergara vs. California court case where so-called expert witnesses from Havard took the stand for the plaintiff and guessed (yes, guessed — they even said it was a guess), based on years of classroom observations, that 1 to 3 percent of teachers were incompetent.
What did that mean in California?
California has 10,477 public schools and 274,246 teachers in those public schools.
one percent x 274,246 = 2,742 teachers
three percent = 8,227 teachers
If we focus on that 3-percent guestimate, that means 2,258 schools might not have even one incompetent teacher or some schools have more than others. What about if that number was less than 3-percent?
Yet, these subjective, faulty, fraudulent, wasteful, FOR-PROFIT tests created and sold by a FOR-PROFIT corporation out of the UK is punishing all the teachers and blocking way more than 1 to 3 percent of the candidates that want to become teachers from becoming teachers resulting in a shortage.
Those tests have nothing to do with weeding out incompetent teachers. It’s all about money … about greed, about corruption.
I’m a former U.S. Marine who fought in Vietnam and that was easier than being a teacher and I was also a public school teacher for thirty years. In addition, before becoming a teacher, I worked in the private sector for more than a decade.
Teaching was the toughest, most demanding job I ever had. It was harder than being a parent (I helped raise a son and daughter so I know what being a parent means). It was harder than being a Marine and fighting in the Vietnam War. Parents get no training. Teachers are educated and trained to death and that training and those evaluations never end until you retire and leave the classroom. Most parents are never evaluated.
In fact, any idiot can be a parent. For example: Donald, the serial lying, con-man and fraud, Trump, Putin’s Agent Orange.
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Thank you, Lloyd. Teachers: Ever filled out one of those 156 multiple choice question Pearson surveys to identify learning disorders in a student? The questions are bafflingly inane. Guesses must be made. Everything Pearson does is worthy of ridicule. If Pearson made a standardized test or survey to measure leadership competency, Trump would be deemed the best president ever. A Pearson test would rate his parenting style of ogling and groping his daughter the best. Pearson would make Donald a highly qualified teacher with no training or experience:
“Kids, you’re gonna love this Friday quiz. Trust me. I got the best people, the meanest negotiators, to make this quiz. You’ll all get 100% correct, maybe more. Lily, don’t look at me like that. You’re fired. Get her outta here! Get her out!”
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Should we skip teacher education programs and pre-service tests and allow schools to hire any college graduate?
The Charter School Institute in New York State, a charter authorizer has changed its regulations and allow charter networks to train and hire their own teachers and skip formal state certification. Is this the appropriate path?
Most colleges embed the edTPA process in their student teaching program, it requires a video tape of a lesson taught by the prospective teacher and a series of reflections on the lesson. In addition New York State requires the Educating All Students test and a Content Area test, multiple choice and extended response questions.
No test is perfect, tests should be constantly reviewed; however, licensing is important. We license attorneys, nurses, doctors, dentists, etc., sixty professions in New York State are licensed and the training institutions are all approved by New York State. I doubt anyone would be advocating for eliminating licensing requirements for nurses or doctors.
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I don’t hear anyone here calling for an end to licensing. What I’m hearing is some cogent issues regarding the EdTPA. Teacher licensing has been around a long time; EdTPA not so much. But perhaps long enough to measure its quality, its contribution to the licensing process. If as suggested here it’s a bad fit, based in some fields on long-outdated stds, fails in some cases mentors’ top-reviewed students– with no recourse– then it’s just one more nail in the coffin of programs the moneyed ed-reform lobby is out to kill (in this case college ed depts), using their fave MO: top-down rigidly-mandated data-metrics, liberally applied until patient is half-dead, at which point doctor throws up hands & suggests leeches.
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Mets: I thought what the article was saying was that there was a person who had been vetted through a different process that had been culled out by a questionable process. Who benefits from all this? Certainly not the children.
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Roy, so yes the article looks at the process. However should we ever base decisions on just one example (good or bad). Did children suffer if a supervisor passed a student who really shouldn’t have been in the classroom but he/she felt bad for them that they had always wanted to teach but then that teacher was a poor teacher or quit mid year?
EdTPA is not perfect – and I think NY example of allowing multiple pieces of evidence for those on the cuff is a step in the right direction.
Laura – Yes EdTPA does have a focus on how folks should teach – student focused lessons, encouraging discussions, etc. you mentioned Dead poets society – I have a feeling Mr Kearing would have scored quite well with his lessons that focused on who his students were instead of rote lessons on poetry
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The edPTA website is closed to inquiries unless you are a student, faculty member, etc. The last time I checked on the visual art edPTA the handbook (2014) wanted teachers to refer to standards in the visual arts that were written in 1997. New standards are in place. I imagine that these new standards are causing havoc in teacher education programs that attempt to prepare students for edPTA tests.
The edPTA rubrics for scoring are an affirmation of the architecture of “direction instruction” and “management by objectives” from mid-century last. They insist that teachers-to-be plan lessons around “academic language.” That is a fancy label for a reworked version of several taxonomies of behavioral objectives, also from mid-century last (e.g, Bloom et. al.) The rubrics aggrandize academic language as a component of high quality lessons and candidate submissions. Using that language in part of the Secret Sauce in being a good candidate. (thank you, EdShyster, for the secret sauce).
The writers of the edPTA procedure for rating teachers insist on videos of the candidate’s performance with a blatant disregard for the difficulties in managing permissions, the technology needed, how ratings will be influenced by the aesthetic for lighting and movement and camera angles— similar issues in editing, and so on.
In addition to inadequate field-testing of these requirements, the edPTA is detached from reports on the validity and reliability of the ratings. I looked at reports about edPTA from the scholars at Stanford. I could not find validity studies for specific subjects. Reliabilities varied by subject and in some cases for grade levels in the same subject. Reliability is no virtue when the rubrics are rigged to fit one image of “proper “ teaching across all grades and subjects.
I was especially interested in the rubrics and guidance for prospective teachers of visual arts. Unlike some subjects where edPTA rubrics and reliability studies are tied to grade spans–elementary, middle, and high school–the edPTA handbook that I could access had a “one size fits all grades” in the visual arts. The rubrics called for attention to visual arts standards written in 1997. There are new grade-by-grade standards with sample assessments in the works. I do not claim to be an expert on edPTA, but with Pearson in charge there are few paths for scholars to question what it is requiring.
Bottom line: This is an important article, and rich in details provided by the author and by the student who passed really important tests as a teacher, even if not the dubious edPTA. https://ed.stanford.edu/news/stanford-and-pearson-collaborate-deliver-teacher-performance-assessment
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Rubrics and Bloom. All this reminds me of the Dead Poets Society teacher played by Robin Williams, who had his students tear out the description of poetry included as the rule by which students could recognize good poetry.
I have this vision of Michelangelo making up a list of all his objectives before painting the Ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I bet Henry Ford had a set of standards before he formed the assembly line. Most Souix youth who go through the purification program list objectives before they go off to have their vision. For God so loved the world that he did not send a rubric.
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Roy, so agreed!
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I know two teachers who took the TPA and were instructed to lower the difficulty of their video lesson and lesson series. Neither were proposing developmentally inappropriate goals; they were looking to create a deep discussion among their young students that would involve age-appropriate skills with a lot of student control. They were both told by different coaches to focus more direct instruction with less critical thinking and no open-ended structures. In short, they were told the TPA wants students to do less thinking and more rote regurgitation. So my sense is whatever the TPA thinks is good teaching is aligned with students who are good at following directions but not creative thinkers who collaborate to build knowledge.
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I would agree with what mets2006 said. As those of you have read me here before, I will come out and say that I am a proponent for the edTPA for various reasons. As she notes, no assessment is perfect, but in my mind edTPA is a step up beyond what is currently required for certification (i.e. praxis – multiple choice exams that have no relation to real practice).
As for the impact on teachers, I recently completed my dissertation (it is in revisions, so not published yet) that look at 20 practicing teachers who completed the edTPA at one university. It had them look at the assessment they did during their student teaching and asked them if they use any of the practices from the assessment (things like encouraging student discourse, providing detailed feedback on assignments, or creating lessons that address prior student knowledge or student personal/cultural assets). These things seem like pedagogical practices that anyone would want in a teacher.
As with any assessment, one can find examples of poor implementation. Or poor support. Or both. (I am thinking of the person who said that the TPA wanted less thinking and more regurgitation – I can assure you that this is opposite of what the edTPA encourages or asks of teachers)…
Is the edTPA perfect? No – I don’t believe any assesssment, is. Do I think that it’s a step i the right direction? Yes.
Three final thoughts: 1) No one involved with the edTPA would advocate that the assessment be the ONLY measure of a candidate’s readiness to teach. They have and continue to advocate the programs do observations, have supervsiors, etc. It is NOT replacing the human aspects…2) There are flaws with the human aspect as well…How often have supervisors, or professors given a student the benefit of doubt even if he or she would not be ideal in the classroom, only to see that teacher leave early in the semester; 3) This article was clearly written and compiled before NY made what I think are strong changes to it’s edTPA policy – First, it lowered the cut score from 41 to 37 (with gradual growth over time to a 41/42). This was a area of concern for many in NY and across the nation – the way NY implemented the assessment, 2) in addition, for those that score within a range of the passing score (maybe 1-2 points) there is an opportunity to use other evidence for the teacher candidate to get certified.
I think that these steps are positive ones in the right direction and applaud those in NY for taking these steps…
Implementation and context matter. As responsible educators, we should not just throw out something completely because of one poor instance.
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Do the TFA turds have to take this? Do Eva’s scabs have to take this? I would imagine there is a way to game this test – but then how does one live with oneself? Who the heck gave Pearson so much leverage? Shame shame.
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I can’t speak for charter schools but anyone who wants or needs certification in NY had to take this assessment. From what I know TFA teachers will take it during their first year
FYI Pearson is only an operational partner. No one at Pearson created the material for the assessment – teachers and higher ed people did that work
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Name these “higher ed people” —
If all you know is that alleged “Higher Ed People” did the work without knowing who they were, that tells us nothing.
For instance, Betsy DeVos is now considered a “higher ed person”.
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Lloyd Betsy DeVos is not someone in higher education (as in from a university). There were many people involved (I am one that assisted way after the project had begun), but you can look at the Stanford Center for assessment learning and equity as a starting point. Oh Linda darling Hammond (well known in education and someone who was going to be the speaker at Dr Ravitch’s speech before falling ill) was one of the creators and I’d an advocate of the assessment
That work for you Lloyd??
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No, that does not work for me. Provide a link to prove Hammond worked for Pearson creating these flawed and crappy tests.
In addition, it doesn’t matter who writes the tests, they are still crap when it comes to judging if someone is competent or not. Bubble tests are horrible for that.
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Lloyd Darling Hammond did NOT work for Pearson creating the tests – she was the faculty advisor and one of the early architects of EdTPA at Stanford. SCALE owns the intellectual property for EdTPA not Pearson.
I am not at a computer now but look up SCALE and it has information on edtpa
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Since you keep bringing up Darling Hammond as justification for using tests to identify incompetent teachers before they even have a chance to teach out of their own classroom, you might be interested in this report that was co-written with Darling Hammond.
Problems with the use of student tests scores to evaluate teachers
http://www.epi.org/publication/bp278/
And this piece was written by Linda Darling-Hammond that appeared in the Washington Post in 2012. What she describes as edTPA is not based on a bubble test. The foundation of the edTPA she writes about is
“Like assessments in other professions, such as the bar exam or the medical boards, the edTPA is a peer-developed process that evaluates how well candidates have mastered a body of knowledge and skills, and a tool that teacher educators and institutions of higher learning can use to develop their programs. It does not restrict or replace the judgment of professionals in designing their courses and supervising their candidates, as they always have. It adds information about the candidate’s performance to supplement those judgments. The edTPA scorers are themselves experienced teacher educators and accomplished teachers in the same fields as the candidates being evaluated, many of them from the programs participating in the assessment.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/a-new-way-to-evaluate-teachers–by-teachers/2012/08/14/5844dc86-e677-11e1-936a-b801f1abab19_blog.html?utm_term=.5861d9f54c51
The pertinent question is, how has the edTPA evolved and changed since Pearson was brought on board? That is the answer we should be focusing on. What the edTPA was in 2012, is not what it is today.
“Pass/Fail information is not supplied on the edTPA score profile, as not all users of edTPA have an established standard in place, and requirements may be specific to the state or educator preparation program user. Note that you may not be able to meet a state- or program-specific passing score requirement if you have condition codes.
“Please select your state to review information (if applicable) about any state-specific passing score requirements.”
https://www.edtpa.com/PageView.aspx?f=GEN_Scores.html
“New and revised teacher certification exams were released to the field in May 2014. One of those new exams, the edTPA, is a subject-specific, multi-measure performance assessment. At that time, the Board of Regents also established an edTPA Task Force to explore possible improvements to the edTPA going forward. The Task Force is comprised of representatives from CUNY, SUNY, the Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities, the Teacher Education Advisory Group, the United University Professions, the Professional Staff Congress and New York State Education Department staff.”
http://www.nysed.gov/news/2017/board-regents-act-amend-states-teacher-certification-requirements-based-recommendations
Pearson is a for-profit, private sector corporation and it is in the corporations interest (That means increasing profits) to make the edTPA certification exam equal to or worth more than the “peer-developed process that evaluates how well candidates have mastered a body of knowledge and skills”. …
“The Task Force expressed a number of concerns with the Academic Literacy Skills Test (ALST), an exam currently required for certification. Concerns included the cost of the exam, the ongoing need for the exam in light of the other required exams and the total number of exams required for certification. Because of these concerns, the Task Force recommended eliminating the ALST.”
Peer review is not the same as taking a bubble test and when the bubble test becomes more important than observed peer reviews, the original concept that Darling Hammond wrote about in 2012 becomes meaningless. Corporations don’t make a profit from observed peer reviews. They make their money from charing fees to take and retake exams that have been failed and those exams are unimportant when observed peer review is worth more and can pass you without passing the bubble exam.
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Lloyd – So happy that you did some of the research on your own. Here are a few answers for you:
SCALE, the organization that Darling Hammond used to be the faculty advisor for and where edTPA began, owns the intellectual property for edTPA and is responsible for any changes to the handbooks, etc. So Pearson has NOTHING to do what that aspects.
I never said it was a multiple choice bubble exam – in fact I stated more than once that I felt that edTPA was an improvement on the Praxis exams that ETS has.
So why is Pearson involved? Here’s the short answer – SCALE has a staff of a total of five people working on edTPA. You can imagine the scale (no pun there) needed to have such a project go nationwide. It includes an operational platform for scoring, hiring scorers. etc. Pearson plays NO role in scoring decisions, etc. In fact, when the request for proposals went out for who would become operational partners on edTPA – suprirse, surprise both ETS and Pearson bid for the job. The main difference – ETS wanted the intellectual rights for the assessment (i.e they could write the rubrics, etc). Pearson didn’t want that component.
The quote you pulled about edTPA from the 2012 description from Darling Hammond is on point – the exam has NOT changed to a bubble exam since Pearson has been involved. If anything, the exam has become better over time – not related to Pearson’s involvement, but rather since SCALE or others don’t need to worry about the process for recruiting scorers, the platform for scoring, they can focus on the assessment.
Laura – you mentioned way back the the visual art standards for K-12 were based on old standards. I’d recommend that you reach out to those at SCALE and share you concerns. From my experience they have been very responsive to feedback.
This type of assessment doesn’t go against Darling Hammond’s notion that student test scores should be used for teacher evaluation (aka VAM)…More so, as she stated, it is more like a bar exam/licensure exam.
Finally, as stated and restated here – I don’t think that Darling Hammond would tell a state or any teacher preparation program to do away with observations. As I previously noted, NY state made what I think is a good step in the right direction – that if a teacher were on the cusp then he or she could appeal using observation protocols
Any other questions Lloyd?
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I do research on my own all the time. That’a why I reject bubble tests as a way to judge if people are competent or not or to judge how much a child has learned. Tests should never be used for that purpose. The only test that I agree with is teacher-made tests designed to help the teacher improve instruction.
edTPA offers nothing new except the bubble test. Evaluation by peers and/or administrators was in place before I started teaching in California’s public schools in 1975 and was still being used when I retired 30 years later in 2005.
The reason I don’t do a lot of research replying to you is that it won’t do any good. I think it’s clearly a waste of time.
Why? Because I think you are a deplorable minion or a paid troll for the crooked, lying, cherry picking, privatize-everything-public bunch of crooks that are robbing the people to enrich the few while punishing the many.
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Lloyd – I am confused – where are you getting that edTPA is a “bubble test” – it is FAR from it…
As for that last line, yep, that’s the exact type of communication that to me really shows the lack of willingness to listen to someone else. And that to me is really sad. I have been willing to listen to you, and in many cases, have shared that I don’t think that edTPA (or any assessment) can solve all issues. But as I have said, it’s a step in the right direction. I haven’t insulted you. I have listened to your points, and simply tried to correct misconceptions that you had. And yet you chose to insult. Just wondering if that is the way you dealt with students or colleagues you disagreed with you when you taught.
One final thought – just wondering, do you believe there have ever been any instances when a teacher was observed and an administrator tried to be nice and give the benefit of a doubt and leave a poor teacher in the classroom? IS that good for kids? Just wondering?
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How did Pearson become the arbiter of what or who a good teacher is?
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Dr. Ravitch – I think it’s a broad statement to say that “Pearson” is the arbiter of who a good teacher is…First of all, it’s not a corporation who is making the decision. The scorers for the edTPA are either K-12 teachers or from higher education (professors, doctoral students, university supervisors). So it’s not a company making the decision. Second. Darling Hammond and those at SCALE have always viewed edTPA as one of multiple measures to determine readiness to teach – those measures should include observations in student teaching, etc. As you well know, it’s the states that make the decision on how these exams are used. One of my criticisms with those that point out these issues around edTPA being a “gatekeeper” of any sorts – is the same criticism levied against the Praxis Exams in terms of content or pedagogy (personally, I think that edTPA as an assessment looking at actual teaching is better than a bubble exam on pedagogy)….I haven’t seen those articles come out – I haven’t seen one that says “I failed the praxis content exam and it prevented me from becoming a teacher”..Why is that?
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I have a hard time seeing the value of outsourcing decisions about good teaching to a corporation, or ot “experts” who never meet the teacher.
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Dr. Ravitch – so do you feel the same way about lawyers and doctors taking medical boards or the bar exam? They’ve never met the lawyer or doctor, and yet they judge them as ready to enter their professions? Each of those professions also have observations within their fields during medical school or law school…Why should it be different for teaching?
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The difference is that there is very little professional trust in edTPA.
A little known professor of education named Barbara Madeloni led a strike against edTPA in Massachusetts. Her students supported her. She was fired. She went on to be elected president of the Massachusetts Teachers Association, where she has been a magnificent leader. I trust a Barbara Madeloni. I don’t trust edTPA. Who made it the arbiter of good teaching?
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I understand and respect (although I don’t completely agree with) your trust of Dr. Madeloni, Dr. Ravitch. Yet honestly I am a little surprised that you would have had Linda Darling Hammond speak at your lecture yet for some reason don’t place the same trust in her as someone who was an architect of edTPA. Why is there so much lack of trust? The role of Pearson? As someone who has worked with the assessment for years, I think that Pearson’s role with edTPA is misunderstood. Does the fact that PEarson was the only company that didn’t want the intellectual rights around edTPA make any difference to you (it did for me). Also, the fact that Pearson employees are NOT involved at all in scoring decisions – those are all made by K-12 educators or higher ed (aka people in the profession). How do you suggest this notion be spread out?
Also, what about implementation? What role does that play in all of this?
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I love Linda Darling-Hammond. I don’t love standardization. The older I get, the less I like it. I love creative flights of fancy. I love imagination. I love people who defy the norms, not those who set them.
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Individuals should be allowed to define their own norms, who they want to be and what they want to do with their lives. They should not be relegated to an IQ number or forced to think a certain way or be defined by a test score of any kind.
For instance, when I was still a Marine and had returned to the states from Vietnam and was stationed at Camp Pendelton, one of the Marines in my unit was considered a genius because of his IQ number. The Marines kept forcing him into military jobs that matched that IQ and he failed at every job they made him do until he was finally allowed to pick his own field.
He became an MP and loved that work.
MP is the military police.
An IQ number or a test score must not be allowed to define an individual or identify what job we should work in. We must be free to walk the path we want and make our own decisions to be really free. IF someone like Bill Gates or Trump or Betsy or Eva decides what our future is going to be, that is not freedom. That is not choice.
Our journey through life defines who we become and who we are, and the community based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public schools were built around that public concept.
The corporate charter school movement is the exact opposite of that thinking.
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Amen, brother Lloyd.
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Lloyd – in my mind you are taking one situation and applying it to all things. No one is saying that a teacher should be defined by one test score. In fact, more than once I have said that there should be multiple measures of teacher readiness as well as teacher evaluations, etc.
Yes, there is freedom, but shouldn’t there also be standards? Would you want me, someone who has no medical experience at all, showing up to do surgery on you just because I have had a dream of being a surgeon? What if I had other folks say that I was good with details so that I would make a good surgeon, and well, they’ve seen me win many games of Operation so that means I would make a good surgeon…
I know, this is an extreme, but I hope that my point comes across…Why is is ok for us to have standards for doctors and lawyers and not have standards for teachers?
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“Would you want me, someone who has no medical experience at all, showing up to do surgery on you just because I have had a dream of being a surgeon?”
Good point because we could ask that same question of “Would you want Betsy Devos, who has never attended a public school or taught in a public school classroom, running our nation’s schools?
Why did you ask that question? I think you asked that question to change the subject and introduce a distractor.
Teacher training and credentialing programs. up until the corporate reform movement to get rid of the community based, democratic, transparent, nonprofit traditional public schools staffed with unionized teachers and replace those with autocratic, secretive, often fraudulent and child/teacher abusing, corporate charter schools, every teacher had to learn how to be a teacher based on the education code of each state.
In “The Teacher Wars” by Dana Goldstein she compares different teacher training programs and the worst was from TFA and the best was an urban residency program.
I went through an urban residency program. The urban residency I went through put me in a master teacher’s 5th-grade classroom full time for one complete school year. I took my classes in the late afternoons and early evenings. At the end of that year, I earned my teaching credential. Goldstein’s research while writing her book revealed that teachers that went through an urban residency program similar to what I went through were considered the best teachers by public school administrators.
My learning never ended. California required teachers to continue taking classes and attending lectures to keep up with the latest teaching methods, and we were required to prove we had taken those approved classes and lectures.
Again, bubble tests do not teach a future teacher how to manage a classroom and teach.
Peer observations have always been part of the California Ed Code and are used to monitor that teachers are still teaching and managing their classrooms as efficiently as they did when they first started teaching after whatever training they went through to learn how to manage a classroom and teach children.
No matter how qualified a teacher is when they earn their credential, those peer observations are in place to make sure the teachers are still doing a good job. Teaching is a tough profession and many teachers end up stressed out and a few studies have r3evealed that many teachers end up with PTSD especially when they are working in schools with a high ratio of child poverty and at-risk children.
I have no problem with every teacher prep program in the U.S. the same as what I went through in the urban residency program where I earned my teaching credential and even after that full year of training in the classroom working with students under the guidance of a master teacher, I was still on probation for several years before I earned my due process rights.
And even after I was off probation and had full due process rights that the U.S. Constitution protects for public employees, I still had peer observations with a follow-up meeting that included feedback based on a rubric the observer, who was also an educator, used.
So, don’t ask ignorant questions that allege that teachers have no training or education before becoming a teacher. That teacher can easily become a teacher just because they want to. That is BS x 1000.
Are you a public school teacher? If so, what kind of training program did you go through to earn your teaching credential and how long was your probation and how many peer observations have you had by another trained and experienced educator and if you don’t work in California as a teacher, did your state require you to continue taking classes on a regular basis to keep up with the lastest successful trends in education?
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Lloyd – I went through a traditional program (graduate school program)…in MA where I graduated they were one of the first states to use a bubble exam to measure content (why you ask? Probably because of inconsistency in content knowledge across the state – that a math major from one university didn’t mean the same thing as a math major from another)
I think it’s you who are changing the topic asking about Betsy DeVos Neither one of us are president of the US and I am guessing that both of us may have voted in a similar way in the 2016 election. That being said, one thing has nothing to do with the other.
I am all for teacher residency’s…but they are costly…
Oh, BTW, for the 100th time, edTPA IS NOT A BUBBLE TEST…Not sure what part you have not gotten with that…or why you keep on stating that it is a bubble test.
“Don’t ask ignorant questions that allege that teachers have no training or education before becoming a teacher. That teacher can easily become a teacher just because they want to.” – Um what you would call Teach for America – six weeks of training and then you are placed into the classroom for two years? There are PLENTY of pathways out there with little or no training one can become your teacher.
Yes. I taught for 10 years, including five years in DCPS…And yes, we had to constantly do continuing professional development…And guess what = in many cases those were not very productive -it was just checking the box:
Check out this article:
https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2017/12/06/is-teacher-recertification-broken.html
Lloyd – what is interesting is that in some cases we appear to be saying the same thing (i.e. TFA is not strong, etc)…and yet you continue to pick a fight.
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Do you support bubble tests? I don’t. I think you do. Why bother to reply to my comments. As long as you appear to support bubble tests, I will fight back.
I hate bubble tests.
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I want to add something to my previous comment.
It took me five years to earn my BA in journalism, and after I did, I went to work in the private sector for a few years before I decided to become a teacher and quit that corporate job in middle management. Just because I wanted to become a teacher didn’t mean I could walk across the street from my corporate office and walk into a classroom and start teaching the next day.
To earn my teaching credential through the urban residency program I went through required me to go through another, full sixth year of college. In addition to being in a classroom full time for an entire school year under the guidance of a master teacher, I was taking classes in the afternoons and evenings that taught me what I should know before I started teaching — lots of stuff I’m not going to go into detail about.
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No, but these days there are programs that will allow you to teach in six weeks (see TFA) And in other areas, such as math, science, special education, folks can get emergency credentials and enter into the classroom with even less training…They do it on the job. Is that really ideal?
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Oh, spare me the TFA comparison. That is pure BS. TFA never offered a serious, quality teacher training program. TFA was a tool designed to help destroy the traditional public schools.
TFA is a joke. Instead of supporting a bubble test, fight to get rid of TFA and increase the quality of teacher training programs. Every teacher should be required to go through an urban residency similar to what I went through.
In California, teachers had to earn a BA in the field that they taught in before they earned their teaching credential. If they didn’t have a BA in the field they taught in, they had to go out on their own and earn two college units from classes in that field in addition to earning the teacher certificate by completing a teacher training program.
The only exception was when there was a shortage of teachers and to fill a position a district was allowed to issue an emergency credential with a short time limit on it. To keep that teaching job, those teachers had to take night classes and work toward a full credential in addition to taking classes in the field they were teaching in under an emergency credential.
Until TFA came along, I never heard of a teacher training program like the TFA joke.
Until the greed drenched, the fraudulent corporate reform movement to hijack public education came along, there was an almost adequate number of college graduates that wanted to become teachers. Now we have a growing shortage, an epidemic because the word has spread that if you want to become a teacher you are going to be tortured, terrorized, demonized, stereotyped and attacked repeatedly by a huge far right media machine designed to destroy the country and turn it into a fascist, racist/segregated, theocratic kleptocracy.
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Lloyd – either you are not reading my comments carefully or somehow you are misinterpreting them…not sure which one.
When you say SPARE me the TFA comparison – I have no idea what you are trying to say. I can fight all I want to get rid of TFA, but then other alt cert programs will pop up (and be called different names)…And why do you keep calling edTPA a bubble test? Because it’s not.
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From what I understand, one element of edTPA is a bubble test and if a teacher candidate tanks it, it can be weighted so heavily that it will sink them regardless of peer observations.
Get rid of that bubble test and get rid of Pearson. Let each state manage its own edTPA inside the public education sector district by district. Do not farm it out to a for-profit corporation like Pearson.
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“From what you understand?” – Where did you get that information…please share so that I can help better inform you. None of it is a bubble trst
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What’s wrong with the edTPA?
I’ll let the Larry Vigon of the Chicago Reporter explain it to you.
http://chicagoreporter.com/a-laundry-list-of-problems-with-new-edtpa-teacher-assessment/
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Lloyd this is a biased perspective that is two years old. Some of it is inaccurate (for example the part about the type of feedback that can be provided)…The author says the evaluators at Pearson, yet these are evaluators that are K-12 teachers or people from higher ed. One other point – IL was like NY one of the first states to make edTPa policy…
And for every point there is a counter point…See here:
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may16/vol73/num08/The-Benefits-of-edTPA.aspx
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Ha! Ha! Ha!
It is a common tactic of the Alt Right to reject every source that doesn’t fit what they think.
And earlier you shared this link to support what you think.
josteach wrote in a comment in this thread, “Check out this article”
https://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2017/12/06/is-teacher-recertification-broken.html
Do you have any idea who funds Ed Week?
Just three of the fourteen … all three are rabid enemies of community-based, democratic, transparent, non-profit, traditional public education and unionized teachers.
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Eli and Edythe Broad Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation
https://www.edweek.org/info/about/philanthropy.html
Why would they fund EdWeek.org if it was printing the truth that revealed who they really were and what they were up to?
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Lloyd this will be the last message that I decide send on the specific post. I think it’s really sad that and education there people that can be such ideologues that they refuse at all to see somebody else’s point of view. The fact that I found one article that was counter to your article and you compared me to the alt right I think is ridiculous. I then shared an article from Ed week mainly discussing how the recertification process in most states is broken. It had nothing at all to do with being against community schools democracy in schools etc. etc. I’m wondering since Jeff basos just purchased the Washington Post if that means you consider anything coming from Valerie Strauss, a columnist Dr Ravitch Has often cited here but now suddenly be invalid because of who owns the paper. I really had hoped that the space on this blog would be a space for true discussion and not just one person’s opinion or one point of view. Sadly it seems that may not be the case. Finally Lloyd I’d like to point out that unlike you and all of my responses I was civil and never stooped so low as you just did in this post. As a former first lady said so well we go high when others go though.
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Dr. Ravitch – I respect much of your work, and I hope that you see this exchange as being a respectable back and forth exchange. You may not, but I hope that it is the case.
First of all, I find it a little interesting – you say here that you are against standardization and that you love creative flights of fancy. Yet at the same time on this blog in many cases you have spoken out against things like Teach for America or even charter schools, which some could argue as being creative….You are against standardization but at the same time you are against alternatives…
Second – what do you consider to be the difference between standardization and professionalization? Can the two mutually exist? To me, the push behind an assessment like edTPA isn’t to make everyone one in the same like teaching robots, but rather to have a floor of an expectations for all teachers. As LDH has said many times before, edTPA is similar to the bar or medical boards – are you against standardization there?
Third – since you were going to invite Darling Hammond to be the speaker at your talk, I’d love to see an exchange between the two of you on this topic on this blog. Certainly LDH sees some value in edTPA as a means to help to try and insure that all teachers entering the field have a minimum level of readiness (I say help, as I know that there will always be some cases where good teachers don’t get a certain score and that poor teachers do get a passing score. I cannot think of any test where there are 0% false positives or false negatives)
There have been many things that I have been for and then swapped to against in my life. But at the same time, in both cases, I have tried to see the situation from the other side and understood the other side. To me, it seems that it is all or nothing for you in the case of standardization. Freedom does allow for creativity, but it also can allow for the opportunity for introducing practices that are not good for children. What about those cases?
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There is nothing creative about putting unprepared college graduates into challenging classrooms. There is nothing creative about taking funding from public schools and giving it to entrepreneurs. I am not an expert on teacher education, but those I respect do not agree with you.
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Well, Dr. Ravitch, except for Dr. Darling Hammond, whom you say that you do respect and I suspect would agree with me on the role of edTPA. Why not engage her on the topic and share the conversation on your blog?
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I can’t say for sure, but I doubt tha TFA or Eva’s Teachers take the edTPA unless they seek certification. As I recall, SUNY gave Eva the power to certify her own teachers so no edTPA required
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Dr Ravitch TFA teachers take it in their first year of teahjng (they cannot do it in their six week training as well that’s too short)
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Is that true of all TFA teachers?
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Dr Ravitch – given that EdTPA is only legislated policy in 16-17 states it isn’t true for every single tfa teacher. Each state would have its own rules on how tfa teachers complete EdTPA
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I have taken and passed so many tests to become a teacher. I DID NOT STUDY for 95% of those tests. I walked in with NO PREPARATION whatsoever. So, what does this say about the validity of the test?
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This “test” isn’t your typical test. You have to plan lessons for 3-5 hr learning segment, video tape your teaching and do an analysis of student work. In fact your post hits exactly on WHY such an assessment like EdTPA is needed. Previous measures didn’t do enough
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It probably says more about the quality of your education than the quality of the tests.
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I didn’t go through a traditional teaching program. I don’t have and “education” degree. I did a lot of Assistant Teaching during my Master’s Program with a lot of good feedback. I really think most of the tests that teachers take are useless. It’s the teaching experience that is important – and having a good mentor.
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The edTpa puts a financial burden on prospective teachers. It is expensive and time consuming to complete. Prospective teachers have already completed coursework in education as well as in the discipline in which they intend to teach. In addition, students have completed student teaching and have been evaluated by their supervising teacher as well as representatives of the education department from the college that they attend. The students also need to pass exams covering content as well as professional knowledge. I fail to understand the need for the EdTpa. Why would the evaluation of this material by a Pearson ‘expert’ be more insightful than the evaluation by the supervising teacher, the education faculty, and the content faculty?
Anecdotally, I spoke to one father of a student teacher (himself a high school principal) who hired someone to help his daughter compile her Edtpa. Not every student can afford this additional expense.
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Diane, re the requirements for state certification for alternate route teachers (such as Relay/TFA) each state has different requirements. In NYS TFA teachers are on a “Trans B” certification until they gain their initial certification. Hence, they have had 2 years of being teacher of record before they have to record and write their edTPA. In this way, it is a little more like National Board Certification (which is some of the roots of the edTPA).
Jlsteach: the number of weeks of student teaching in NYS differs by university. The State of NY has a very low minimum number of days required (and now even fewer days for folks who are getting certified via the charter school programs). For student teachers in short student teaching placements (say of 8 weeks), getting to know the classroom sufficiently to plan, instruct, and assess (which you need for the edTPA) is as you might imagine, extremely challenging. (I think few teacher educators would defend such a short period of student teaching, and every program I know works hard to include many supervised and unsupervised field experiences before student teaching.) Also, it is important to note, that in NYS teachers are required to pass the edTPA in order to obtain initial certification. (The exception, as I noted above, is if one is teaching on a Trans-B, certification, which is not an initial certification.)
This is my second peer reviewed paper on edTPA implementation in my local context. As I pointed out in both papers: no one in education has any criticism of the basic cycle of plan-teach-assess/evaluate/reflect. That is not what is problematic for me. The problem is one of validity of the assessment (who decides what is good teaching — in this case what should a beginner special educator know and be able to do), and the reliability of the assessment (do we have a high degree of certainty that Adam would have received the same score, or near the same score, if he had had other raters?).
As should be clear to people who read the entire journal article, we use Adam’s case to call into question both the validity of the assessment (for inclusively oriented special educators) and the reliability of the assessment. Personally, and not stated in the article because we were trying to avoid guessing, I wonder if the scorer was trained as a behaviorist and Adam’s Universal Design for Learning just didn’t seem educationally sound to him/her. I further wonder if s/he really didn’t like that Adam made a unit of study about gangs. And my final wonder is if s/he was intimidated by Adam’s references to third-space and scholars such as bell hooks. I think his write up might have been really far outside the scorer’s “zone of proximate development” and background knowledge.
How can one scorer who only met Adam by computer be allowed to determine a preservice teacher’s fate, when at least 5 professionals who saw him in action over 10 months agree that Adam was a good enough beginning teacher? This makes no sense to me. Preservice teachers pay $300 to submit, and the scorer is paid $75. Where is the profit going? Who benefits, who loses, who decides?
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Celia – I have read your work on edTPA, and I have disagreements with it for a few reasons. First, I appreciate that you state in both cases, and in this post that, “no one in education has any criticism of the basic cycle of plan-teach-assess/evaluate/reflect”…
My concern is that you point to the assessment as the issue rather than other aspects – such as NY having a low minimum number of days for student teaching (8 weeks)…To me, that is a separate issue – imagine if you wrote this paper from the perspective that Adam couldn’t really be expected to do all of what he is required to do on edTPA in 8 weeks and that NY state should change its rules on student teaching requirements. That would be a different issue…yet you seem to point the issue around the assessment as opposed to something else.
In terms of special education, I am sure that you are well aware that the special education handbook underwent major revisions in the last two years…I an not sure when Adam took the edTPA, but my guess is that he took it prior to the revisions (possibly not).
As for the requirements for scorers, all of them are either K-12 educators or in higher ed, special educators. I have no idea if they are experts in universal design, etc. but I am fairly confident (can’t be 100% since I didn’t train them, etc) that they have some strong knowledge of special education.
You make a lot of assumptions about the scorer in Adam’s case (connections to bell hooks, etc). Again, I didn’t see his scores. Have there been cases with candidates that I work with that I question some of the scores they have received? Probably yes.
In this article, the authors completed a meta-analysis on tests teachers took as pre-service teachers for licensures and some of the possible predictive value:
D’Agostino, J. V., & Powers, S. J. (2009). Predicting teacher performance with test scores and grade point average: A meta-analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 46(1), 146-182.
The authors note that the bubble tests, like Praxis, weren’t predictive. However, they note that there is some potential for performance assessments like edTPA…They acknolwedge they did not include them here because of the potential challenge of variability in scores.
That being said, I see the edTPA as as step in the right direction..
Celia – you never address the recent changes in NY State. I understand these changes would not help Adam, but I am guessing you see them as a step in the right direction as well
Last point – I see a common theme between this article, and the recent post from Alexandria on the edTPA (as she notes she has posted in various places on her issues with the assessment as well)…Both authors (and many of the critics of edTPA) have stemmed from NY state, where as previously noted, implementation has been less than ideal…So, is it the test, or is it the implementation – two very different things,
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“The authors note that the bubble tests, like Praxis, weren’t predictive.”
A test can’t predict how “effective,” or “good” a teacher will be. We can’t predict what others will do in the next 5 minutes. So, let’s just get over the idea that there is any certainty in all of this.
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Similar to medical tests can’t 100% predict if someone has a disease or will be cured, right?
I understand your point – but I disagree that assessments can’t tell something about a teacher at that particular moment..Could teachers change over time, of course (for better or for worse)…I don’t see why it’s not a good thing to consider how a teacher will be entering the classromo
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The changes that SCALE made to the special education handbook of the edTPA and the changes NYS made to the cut scores would not have helped Adam. (You can see his scores as an appendix in our paper….) When NYS made its most recent changes, I was on the state edTPA task force and held out for a way for program faculty to submit a portfolio of evidence collected by authentic performance assessments in cases when student teachers fail the edTPA. Those of us asking for this were out voted. I just can’t grasp why the State of New York would put the final decision on teacher certification in the hands of ONE PERSON sitting at a computer and willfully disregard 10 months of actual performance assessment, collected by multiple people on many occasions. It just makes no sense to me. The only explanations I can come up with are: someone must be profiting or people really do not trust in the professional wisdom of teacher educators. .. In the case of the special education handbook I am most concerned that it will unintentionally limit special educators’ knowledge and skills to support inclusively oriented instruction for students. By privileging differentiation over UDL and behaviorism over culturally sustaining pedagogy, we are creating a generation of special educators better suited for segregated self-contained teaching. This is a major issue in our country given the disproportionate number of students of color in the most restrictive settings (when compared to white students). This is a matter of great urgency to many of us in inclusive education. [We will of course teach our preservice teachers how to get a passing score on the test, but this just takes time away from teaching them how to teach inclusively.]
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Have you raised these concerns about UDL to those at SCALE – and if so, how have they addressed it? Also, I imagine you are much more on top of changes in NY State, but in reading on twitter, I was under the impression that there was going to be an option for students that scored within a point or two to use other pieces of evidence in order to gain their license.
Look, your article notes that in one instance this assessment may have prevented a teacher from being certified. In medical terms, call it a false negative. I agree that this is not ideal. But to throw the entire assessment out – do you think it’s plausible at all that the assessment has helped demonstrate where some teachers should not be in the classroom?
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“proximal”
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This thoughtful and important article on Adam’s experience with the edTPA should be required reading for all who care about education (and here is the link by the way: https://www.academia.edu/35185213/I_Failed_the_edTPA). As pointed out by Celia Oyler, the issues of validity are significant because they affect people’s livelihoods, their ability to become licensed teachers, to follow their dream. Even with the minor tweaks to rules in New York State, the problems raised by these authors are not going away. Laura Chapman raised other concerns that have art educators tearing their hair out, and there are similar problems for librarian certification through edTPA. I have written on my blog about the many problems with edTPA and its horrendous implementation in New York so I am not going to repeat myself. But I urge people to consider where all this is headed, where we are right now. Do we care if preservice teachers forego important learning in their apprentice experiences to focus on passing the edTPA, and does it matter if the teaching they do to pass the test has to fit into a pre-determined box with extensive rubrics and instructions? If you doubt that there are bad unintended consequences to the edTPA, have a look on Twitter at the #edTPA comments and chances are you’ll get a feel for the angst, rage, despair, and frustration felt by all. In the end, I think Adam is lucky. He wrote an articulate critique that has had over 1,500 views on Academia.edu. In the edu world, that’s a lot of people he is influencing and provoking.
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The net effect will be to discourage competent teachers from not only seeking teaching jobs in NY State but even from enrolling in cert programs at colleges in NY.
Just as VAM and other Cuomo policies have done.
“RMS Reform”
Reform is like Titanic
With iceberg in it’s sight
It’s “Full speed!” and “Don’t panic!”
“The ship is water tight!”
“But set aside a life-raft
The Captain Cuomo says
“Cuz going down is simply daft
For me, who will be Prez”
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I’ve always found it very interesting that college professors really need none of the teacher training gobbledygook whatsoever. Yes, there’s professional development but they have more latitude in deciding what they will do and how. I love teaching at colleges. I was treated like a professional and had the freedom to set my own course. I didn’t receive ridiculous feedback like I often did with K-12 administrators. Unfortunately, the data driven garbage-ola is now infiltrating our universities so that others can gain a profit. I even had a college professor say that he would like to see a study of how foreign languages help students have a better vocabulary and how languages help them. Why? Do we really need a study for that? Isn’t it common sense?? How do you “measure” that? I totally agree, Diane. I like those who set their course, who are imaginative. There have been times in class (and in life) when I spontaneously thought of a great thing to do and changed course rather than rely on my same old plan. You’ve got to take risks based on your knowledge, experience and wisdom. A rubric followed is a life lost. And who made that rubric and why did s/he get to decide? And why the HELL am I following it like a lemming to the cliff?? But then again, to quote a master of contumaciousness, “For nonconformity, the world whips you with its displeasure.” (Emerson, if you don’t know.) Whip away, world!!! I won’t submit!
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