Do You Have to Do the Edtpa Again
Georgia will no longer require aspiring teachers to pass the performance-based licensing test edTPA, calling it a barrier to entry.
EdTPA is the first standards-based assessment for teacher-candidates to become nationally available, and is meant to ensure that new teachers are constructive from day one. Supporters said it would enhance the bar for the instruction profession, but critics have long worried that it has forced colleges of education to teach to the exam and has pushed aspiring teachers—especially those from marginalized backgrounds—out of the profession.
In Georgia, edTPA became a requirement for program completion and certification in 2015. The Georgia Professional Standards Committee, which oversees teacher-preparation programs, unanimously voted Thursday to drop the statewide requirement, although individual programs tin can still require candidates to take the edTPA. The determination goes into effect on July ane.
"We recognize ... that while nosotros have gained much from edTPA, we, as an agency, demand to be as responsive equally possible to the expressed needs of schools related to staffing and capacity," said Matt Arthur, the executive secretarial assistant of the commission, in a memo.
And in a statement, Georgia's State Superintendent of Schools, Richard Woods, praised what he called a "mutual-sense decision" that will help strengthen the state'due south pipeline of teachers.
"Now more always, we should be removing barriers that arrive harder for qualified individuals to join the teaching profession," he said. "The COVID-19 crunch has made clearer what many of u.s.a. already knew: measuring a teacher'southward preparation and skill is more complicated than a high-stakes assessment tool can capture. The edTPA cess served a purpose, but it has become articulate over time that it caused unintended barriers and burdens for teachers entering the profession."
The edTPA costs $300 to accept, and many students have had to retake the test multiple times before passing. Candidates must submit a portfolio of materials for review, including a series of lesson plans, a video of themselves pedagogy, and written analysis of their instructional practice.
"At its base of operations, the edTPA essentially asserts that every child deserves a well-trained, highly competent instructor," said Raymond Pecheone, the executive manager of the Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning, and Equity, which developed the assessment in 2009. "That's always been the mission of the edTPA—to create a system of assessment where regardless of ZIP code, teachers in the state will be held to a mutual standard."
Most states have at to the lowest degree i teacher-grooming program that participates in edTPA, and at least xx states take approved edTPA to count for their program completion and licensure requirement.
Diversity Concerns
Studies have shown that candidates of color are less probable to laissez passer the edTPA than their white peers, prompting concerns that the licensing test is contributing to an already overwhelmingly white profession.
Pecheone said Calibration is working with states to consider an approach to setting standards for licensure that uses multiple measures—a combination on how the candidates perform on the edTPA and how they perform in student-teaching, as determined by their teacher-training plan. That fashion, a candidate who doesn't laissez passer the edTPA but has succeeded in clinical experience could still become a teacher.
Oregon, New York, and Wisconsin already use other information in their licensure decisions, Pecheone said, and California is working on like processes.
SCALE is currently compiling insights and all-time practices from universities that take narrowed or closed the gap in pass rates, he said. Those instance studies are expected to be released in the fall. Likewise, in partnership with the American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, SCALE has created a library of resources to support both candidates and programs, Pecheone noted.
Even so, the edTPA has been unpopular amongst instructor educators in Georgia, particularly those who work at historically black colleges and universities and other minority-serving institutions, said Marsha Francis, who works with preservice teachers in the Fulton County school district and is a site company for the Georgia Professional Standards Committee. (Francis, who is one of Education Week'southward Leaders to Acquire From, used to be the edTPA coordinator for Spelman College, a historically black women's college in Atlanta.)
"Yous have this asssesment that feels thrust upon the different programs and the candidates, and information technology'due south been used to say XYZ about a schoolhouse, and they feel as if those scores are perhaps not the best picture of the types of candidates they produced," she said.
Research on whether the test predicts good pedagogy has been mixed: A 2022 study from the American Institutes of Research found that the students of teachers who passed edTPA on their first endeavor scored higher in reading than students whose teachers didn't, only passing the examination didn't have whatsoever effect on students' math scores. And in a 2022 written report that asked teacher-candidates how they perceived the cess procedure, some said they thought the test helped them reflect on their practice, develop effective assessments, and analyze student data, while xl percentage said the edTPA didn't help them grow at all as educators.
Maintaining a High Bar
EdTPA has too been criticized for how the assessments are scored. Recently, a study published in the American Educational Enquiry Journal argued that the results are not always reliable or precise, and can even exist "misleading." (The developers of the exam have disputed the report's conclusions.)
Francis said she worries that the context of individual schools is lost during scoring, and that the process can atomic number 82 to biases. "Do nosotros feel comfortable having someone in Idaho judging my teaching in metro Atlanta?" she said.
Pecheone said "to the degree possible," raters—who are teacher-educators, National Board-certified teachers, and other experienced teachers who have worked with preservice teachers—score portfolios from instructor candidates who are in the same setting as them. (Urban teachers are matched with urban scorers, rural with rural, and suburban with suburban.)
The rigorous implementation of the edTPA has improved instructor quality across the state of Georgia, Pacheone said, and he's worried that removing this standard could lead to unqualified teachers entering the classroom, which could cause students to fall "significantly behind."
"I'thou concerned that the hard-fought standards for teacher functioning and accountability [developed over] the final two decades could be rolled back," Pacheone said, calculation that other professions accept rigorous licensing tests.
But Francis said she hopes removing the requirement volition send a message to prospective teachers that Georgia is "invested in their success."
"As a teacher educator, I know the importance of preparing thoughtful, highly competent educators," she said. "I think that equally nosotros proceed to work together, we can find ways to ensure that the expectations and standards we have for strong teachers don't eliminate first-generation college students who choose to be teachers, minority students who choose to be teachers, and students who don't have the resources to be retaking expensive tests—so that they're able to become into the classroom because they have gained the knowledge and skills to be effective to run into the needs of kids who look similar them."
Image via Getty
A version of this news article start appeared in the Educational activity Now blog.
Source: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/georgia-eliminates-the-edtpa-requirement-for-teacher-candidates/2020/06
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