If you feel that the nation
is playing political Whac-A-Mole one tweet or headline at a time lately, you’re
not alone. Here in New York, those attempting to become teachers have been
feeling that way for some time with the policies coming from Albany regarding
teacher certification exams. In the latest round, the task force
recommendations have been released, but you probably didn’t even know there was
an edTPA task force. This sort of important work is buried in the Regents’
meeting minutes:
“Commissioner
Elia gave an update on Regent Cashin’s work with the edTPA Task Force. The Task
Force is reviewing current regulations and practices related to the edTPA, the
literacy requirement, and student teaching requirements.” (from December 2016)The committee made the following proposals to fix myriad problems (the memo from D’Agati is here):
1.
Convene a standards setting committee to review and potentially recalibrate
edTPA score requirements;
What this means is they may lower the cut score and raise
it incrementally (as they are doing in the state of Illinois where a passing
score is currently 35. In New York it’s 41).
2.
Establish a multiple measures review process so a teacher candidate who fails
the edTPA within a narrow margin may be recommended for certification by
program faculty based on other
evidence of readiness to teach;
Apparently highly qualified, award-winning teacher
candidates are capable of not passing the edTPA, and institutions have no
recourse other than to recommend resubmission to Pearson. This would give some
control back to colleges, but it could be murky as to how that would work
exactly. Coupled with a lowering of the cut score, even temporarily, there is
likely to be political grandstanding on this issue.
3.
Work with teacher educators to review edTPA handbooks of concern, with two possible outcomes:
— Handbook
revision, or
— SED
approval of an alternative performance assessment when a mismatch occurs between the edTPA
and professional practices in a particular teacher education specialty area;
This is about those edTPA exams that are in specialist
areas, most notably special education, library science, foreign language,
and performing arts. I don’t think they really plan to just revise the handbooks.
Teacher educators in these fields want to toss the edTPA and find something more
suitable. Despite promises that changes were coming to these edTPAs, it’s been
a case of too little too late (or nothing at all).
4.
Review certification exam costs and evaluate pass rate variations in different certification areas and
across different student populations, as well as why they occur;
There is absolutely no data on just how disastrous edTPA
has been in terms of discouraging potential teacher candidates from continuing
to pursue their goals of becoming teachers. Everyone I speak to in my circle
of teacher educators has multiple examples of people who gave up, in some cases even after
finishing student teaching. It’s not just that the edTPA is daunting and hard
to complete while meeting all the other demands of program completion. It is
also that the costs are prohibitive, and many simply have to return to other
kinds of full time employment. Once that happens, they just give up.
5.
Eliminate the Academic Literacy Skills Test, which duplicates other parts of
the certification process;
Hallelujah! I am praying everyone will agree this is the
worst test on the planet. Goodbye ALST, you won’t be missed.
6.
Examine the Educating All Students exam for possible content problems and to assess variations in
pass rates across certification areas;
As Professor Devin Thornburg has pointed out, the EAS is riddled with ill-defined problems with no clear
right answer. Instead, finding the right response is about identifying language
use and assumptions being made in the wording of the question.
7.
Examine statewide discrepancies regarding the length and content of the student
teaching experience.
This is a problem that is not going to go away no matter
what the Regents decide. Increasingly, people are moving into full time
classroom teaching who are already working in education in various capacities,
and it is challenging to figure out how to manage the requirements of student
teaching, short of leaving their jobs altogether. That is not financially
feasible for most people.
The Regents are meeting on
Monday next week. You should temporarily stop calling and tweeting and emailing
your senators and representatives, and get in touch with your Regents. Let them
know your perspective on these proposed changes. Then, if there are proposed
changes in the coming weeks open for public comment, it will be time to really
make some noise.
Maybe you’d like to speak
your mind on the question posed by Professor Alan Singer on Huffington Post this morning:
Why keep edTPA at all?
Enrollment in teacher
preparation programs statewide is tanking. Oh and there’s this: the Regents
also moved to approve in 2017 budget priorities this line item:
Excessive Teacher Turnover Prevention
Grant Expansion ----- $4 million OK, let's go!
Need help with talking points? See UUP press release.
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