Emerging Issues With Consequential Use of the edTPA: Overall and Through a Special Education Lens

Abstract

The purpose of teacher preparation programs is to ensure that teachers are adequately equipped with the necessary knowledge and skills to support the various educational needs of their students. Nevertheless, a call for a uniform process through which teacher candidates can demonstrate their ability to meet their students’ educational needs using authentic learning environments has been called for. To that end, the American Association of College for Teachers Education (AACTE) partnered with the Stanford Center for Assessment to create a form of assessment that encompasses the three levels of teaching: planning, instruction, and assessment. This multileveled evaluation process is known as the Teacher Performance Assessment or the edTPA. The purpose of this article is to discuss some challenges that have arisen in connection with the implementation of the edTPA. The authors discuss issues such as time commitment, variability of school environments, inconsistent national implementations, and issues specific to special education.

Keywords

Teacher Performance Assessment edTPA teacher preparation program planning instruction assessment

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

(2013). What’s a nice test like you doing in a place like this. Rethinking Schools, 27(4), 22-27.

Baratz-Snowden

(1992). National board for professional teaching standards-updates. ERIC Clearinghouse on Teacher Education. ED351336. Retrieved from https://www.ericdigests.org/19921/board.htm

Chiu

(2014). edTPA: An assessment that reduces the quality of teacher education. Teachers College, Columbia University Working Papers in TESOL & Applied Linguistics, 14, 28-30.

Dover

A. G.

Schultz

B. D.

(2016). Troubling the edTPA: Illusions of objectivity and rigor. The Educational Forum, 80(1), 95-106.

Goldhaber

Cowan

Theobald

(2016). Evaluating prospective teachers: Testing the predictive validity of the edTPA (CALDER Working Paper 157). Washington, DC: National Center for Analysis of Longitudinal Data in Education Research.

Greenblatt

(2016). The consequences of edTPA. Educational Leadership, 73(8), 51-54.

Greenblatt

O’Hara

K. E.

(2015). Buyer beware: Lessons learned from EdTPA implementation in New York State. Teacher Education Quarterly, 42, 57-67.

Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium. (2013). Standards, assessment & accountability. Retrieved from http://www.ccsso.org/What_We_Do/Standards_Assessment_and_Accountability.html

Jordan

A. W.

Hawley

(2016). By the elite, for the vulnerable: The edTPA, academic oppression, and the battle to define good teaching. Teachers College Record. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adam_Jordan4/publication/300006079_By_the_Elite_For_the_Vulnerable_The_edTPA_Academic_Oppression_and_the_Battle_to_Define_Good_Teaching/links/5707fc2908ae2eb9421bde97/By-the-Elite-For-the-Vulnerable-The-edTPA-Academic-Oppression-and-the-Battle-to-Define-Good-Teaching.pdf

10.

Lachuk

A. J.

Koellner

(2015). Performance-based assessment for certification: Insights from edTPA implementation. Language Arts, 93, 84-95.

11.

Ledwell

Oyler

(2016). Unstandardized responses to a “standardized” test: The edTPA as gatekeeper and curriculum change agent. Journal of Teacher Education, 67, 120-134.

12.

Lys

D. B.

L’Esperance

Dobson

Bullock

A. A.

(2014). Large-scale implementation of the edTPA: Reflections upon institutional change in action. Current Issues in Education, 17(3), 1-12.

13.

Madeloni

Gorlewski

(2013). Wrong answer to the wrong question. Rethinking Schools, 27(4), 16-21.

14.

Meuwissen

K. W.

Choppin

J. M.

(2015). Preservice teachers’ adaptations to tensions associated with the edTPA during its early implementation in New York and Washington states. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(103), 1-29.

15.

Miller

Carroll

Jancic

Markworth

(2015). Developing a culture of learning around the edTPA: One university’s journey. The New Educator, 11, 37-59.

16.

Parkes

K. A.

Powell

S. R.

(2015). Is the edTPA the right choice for evaluating teacher readiness? Arts Education Policy Review, 116, 103-113.

17.

Piaget

(1972). Judgment and reasoning in the child. In Cartalis

Warden

(Eds.), International Library of Psychology, Philosophy, and Scientific Method.

18.

Proulx

(2017). Reflections on an edTPA experience: A disappointing, anticlimactic conclusion. Working Papers in TESOL and Applied Linguistics, 14(2014), 25-26.

19.

Ratner

A. R.

Kolman

J. S.

(2016). Breakers, benders, and obeyers: Inquiring into teacher educators’ mediation of edTPA. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 24(35), 1-29.

20.

Schon

D. A.

(1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

21.

Sato

(2014). What is the underlying conception of teaching of the edTPA? Journal of Teacher Education, 65, 421-434.

22.

Stanford Center for Assessment, Learning and Equity. (2016). EdTPA supporting documents. Available from https://scale.stanford.edu/

23.

Teacher Preparation Assessment-edTPA. (2016a). Resource library: EdTPA handbooks. Retrieved from http://www.edtpa.com/content/docs/edtparetakeguidelines.pdf

24.

Teacher Preparation Assessment-edTPA. (2016b). Resource library: EdTPA retake policy. Retrieved from http://edtpa.aacte.org/faq#54 https://www.ericdigests.org/1992-1/board.htm